The indie era: why big network agency veterans are breaking away

I’ve spent most of my career in the network world – rebuilding teams, winning awards, navigating restructures and weathering the mergers. I’ve seen the best of big agency life – and the worst. Let me tell you, the model is fundamentally broken.

Clients pay gold, they get bronze, they’re offered creativity, they get bureaucracy, they’re promised stability, they get another merger. Same story, different logo.

The region is wise. It wants more, needs more, and is no longer afraid to ask for it. That’s why we’re not simply witnessing the rise of independent agencies in MENA – we’re watching a long-overdue industry correction.

For years, our region has served as an outpost for global brands: local adaptation markets, not creative engines. The work arrived from London or New York, got translated, trimmed, re-sized, and sent out the door. And this marked the genesis of big agencies in the region – network models designed to deliver fast, compliant, efficient output. Few ideas. Little impact.

That system worked. Until it didn’t.

The industry today is bloated. Layers upon layers. Fractured teams. Slow everything. Client-agency relationships that feel tired before the second quarterly review. Clients want agility. Culture. Candour. Instead, they get bureaucracy.

I recently oversaw a significant rebuild of a major legacy agency in the region. From obscurity to multiple-gold award-winning work with a sensational team. That team was on the ascendency until it wasn’t. Days after a major win came the latest news of a merger. Our logo, name, legacy, and key people — gone. Our clients? Confused, disrupted, frustrated.

What’s a person to do? I travelled back to my homeland and in the deep, hazy French summer sought solace in the challenge of what comes next … not just for me, but the industry as a whole. This pattern can’t continue. Something’s got to give. But what would look like?

For me, it was an independent agency recently born in Abu Dhabi by people that care deeply about Abu Dhabi and the region – Magnitude Creative.

It answers the question so many of us, at all levels, have been asking for so long: what would be the agency you wish already existed?

This is what I’ve been asking clients across the country. Creatives across the country. And leaders across the country. None of them are looking back, they’re all looking forward.

Sluggish processes? We run lean. Clients talk directly to the team doing the work. The creative is original and authentic. The right people are in the room. With strategists, creatives, filmmakers, even the first agency-licensed drone flyer in the UAE. We build idea-to-live. Not just a fancy pitch thought.

Transactional relationships? We’re here to fix what’s broken. No more vending machine dynamics. We are a partner, not a supplier. We’re not here to ask what the brief is, we’re here to ask what’s keeping our partners up at night? What do they need to do to get that next promotion? How can we help? This requires vulnerability. We take brainstorms into the room with our clients — allow them to be part of the process. The good and the bad. A proper partner.

And these actions require a real shift. Because from where I stand, the work isn’t the problem, the relationships are. Clients are feeling short-changed, agencies are burned out, and this dysfunction has become the norm.

The starting point of all this was an agency designed to service the country, not a boardroom of shareholders. It was to create a platform for the best talent to do their best work, for the better of local brands. It gives us permission to break this cycle. I’m no longer fixated on scale, but momentum. Momentum comes in all shapes and sizes.

That’s why we’ve invested in our own podcast, Emirati-first creator program, and film director. It’s the dynamism the market is crying out for. It no longer looks like numbers in a margin. It’s in the people, the design, the culturally-embedded thinking.

The era of the indie isn’t coming. It’s already here.

And for those of us who spent years climbing the global ladder, it turns out the most exciting work happens when you finally step off it—and start building something of your own.