Why ASOS, FT and Waitrose chose to go independent

Global brand briefs don't usually go to year-old studios, but Airalo's just did. The company has tasked a refresh of its brand positioning to Uncharted — an independent agency with no global footprint, no holding group and no legacy, beyond the people who built it.

Launched in March 2024, Uncharted is the name chosen by Laura Jordan Bambach, Hannah Hattie Matthews and Fern Miller — three of the UK's most seasoned agency leaders, each with decades inside the systems they've since stepped away from.

Between them: 18 Cannes Lions, 11 D&AD Pencils and over six decades of digital innovation, with senior roles at Grey, Karmarama, R/GA, Digitas, ScienceMagic, LBi and Accenture. Credentials that holding companies once showcased as proof of integration, now building something lighter and more culturally attuned.

For Airalo, an eSIM provider operating in over 200 countries, that made Uncharted the right fit.

"Agility is key for this brand," says Matthews. "We can work nimbly and efficiently across every market. You don't need bricks-and-mortar offices in every region to access the world's best creative talent."

If holding companies were built to give marketers access to the industry's best talent, what happens when that talent no longer sticks around?

Who's left the building

After decades at AKQA, Ajaz Ahmed departed to launch Studio.One. Mat Goff stepped away from Adam&EveDDB to launch ARK with former Anomaly MD Mike Wilton. Alicia Iveson left Saatchi & Saatchi UK to found Hijinks. Emily Gray launched Untangld with fellow leaders from CHE Proximity.

Each represents decades of corporate experience and client relationships, now available outside the network system. All are building small, senior, sharp creative teams that reflect the way they now want to work — and the way clients want to buy. 

The exodus reflects institutional inertia within an obsolete system. "The best minds are escaping from places that have traded ideas for politics," says Ahmed. "The growing realisation that bureaucracy is the enemy of excellence."

There are striking parallels between client-side and talent-side frustration. Both are walking away from systems that mistake coordination for value — and seeking something tighter, faster and more emotionally engaged.

"Clients enjoy working with teams that have a vested interest in their success," Ahmed adds. "Rather than bait and switch teams combined with an absence of passion for fantastic work."

What marketers gain

This talent migration creates a unique opportunity for marketers. The premium you once paid to access senior creative leadership within holding companies? You can now hire it directly.

At Vue, this shift delivers tangible value. "We move fast and need partners who match our pace," says Shona Gold, group director of brand, marketing and communication. "Direct access to creative leadership brings creativity into the heart of our business at senior level."

This isn't boutique romanticism — it's structural. Vue's experience reflects a fundamental shift in how marketing partnerships create value. When senior strategists and creative directors work directly on your account rather than supervising junior teams three levels down, the quality difference shows up in performance metrics.

In the US, independent agencies are setting the creative standard. Mischief consistently dominates effectiveness awards with campaigns that deliver measurable business impact. Mojo Supermarket's "Depression Stick" campaign for Truth Initiative fundamentally shifted youth tobacco perceptions. Most dramatically, L&C became the smallest agency ever to win a Cannes Grand Prix for their "Piñatex" campaign for Dole, proving that independence unleashes creative ambition.

These aren't outliers. They represent a new creative vanguard where independent agencies are outperforming network counterparts on the industry's biggest stages.

That ambition is matched by a different operating rhythm — one designed for pace, not process.

"Getting work out at the speed of culture is incredibly difficult in a big network agency," says Alicia Iveson. "The Hijinks model removes barriers to producing and delivering great work."

That kind of responsiveness doesn't come from scale. It comes from curation.

"We can curate the perfect team for each and every brief," she adds. "That means clients get the best people for the job. Not just whoever has the least work on." 

This mentality is reshaping brand decisions across categories. Waitrose shifted key accounts to Wonderhood Studios. Uber works with Mother. ASOS works with The Or. Bed Head recently chose Cream's media offering. The Financial Times selected the7stars for media and Orange Panther Collective an independent led by a team with 142 D&AD pencils, 8 Cannes Lions and IPA Effectiveness wins to their name. GAIL's chose Ourselves for their brand strategy. Papa John's moved both creative and media to Bicycle. The list goes on.

These brands aren't settling for alternatives. They're actively choosing independents because they deliver what network agencies can't: direct access to the people creating the work.

New structures, new strategies

This shift extends beyond creative control or senior access. It's about structure, and what happens when you rebuild it from scratch.

Independent agencies aren't lean because they're scrappy, but because they're intentional. No layers of account management adding cost without value. No paying for global infrastructure you don't need. No subsidising the holding company's quarterly earnings targets through inflated rates. Just senior talent solving problems, directly.

"We built Untangld to be the antidote to bloated decks, siloed teams, and strategy that gathers dust," says Emily Gray. "Too often, strategy is treated as a one-off deliverable — over-polished, under-implemented. Our model is lean, senior, and sprint-based. No layers of hierarchy. The team you meet on day one will hold the pen throughout."

That difference shows up in how work is approached. "We work in the open, with our clients," she continues. "That means co-creating strategy that's usable. Strategy that lives in the business, not just in the boardroom."

ARK's model reaches a similar destination via a different route: aggressive subtraction. "The first thing we agreed on was no departments," founders Mat Goff and Mike Wilton explain. "They make decisions harder and slow you down. The moment you start hiring managers to manage managers, you lose touch with the work."

They've rethought fee structures, too. "Charging by timesheet is anathema to how we operate. The value we bring isn't measured in hours. It's in outcomes."

These moves are less rebellion than redesign — and for many marketers, a relief. Instead of paying for structures designed to serve themselves, they're opting into ones designed to serve the work.

Where scale stops serving

The tools that once gave networks an edge — planning platforms, global ops systems, media buying power — are no longer proprietary. Tech has flattened the playing field. Now, any agency with sharp strategy and the right partnerships can operate globally, without carrying the weight of a global structure.

"Thanks to new technologies that are available to everyone, there's an opportunity to build the kind of companies talented people want to work at," says Ajaz Ahmed.

That shift shows up in the work. Independents aren't burdened by pre-bought inventory or volume discounts. They plan around client objectives, not internal targets. No commitments to shift or incentives to misalign. Just strategy shaped by what's right, not what's already been bought.

Private equity has noticed. Where investment once flowed primarily to network acquisitions, funding backs independent marketing agencies. The value isn't in consolidation anymore, but in elasticity — in businesses built to flex with the work, not bloat around it.

The best independents are built to adapt. Hiring around briefs, not hierarchies, and solving with partners, not process. In an industry still chasing scale, they've quietly rebuilt around stretch.

Uncharted's approach illustrates this perfectly. Rather than building expensive in-house capabilities across every discipline, they've formed strategic partnerships with specialists like Territory Studio and AI platform providers. It's a modular approach that delivers sophisticated outcomes without corporate overhead — exactly what modern marketing budgets demand.

"We've built a connected, tech-enabled process and brought together diverse global talent that delivers real relevance for people, wherever they are in the world," Jordan Bambach explains.

The new shape of risk

The "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" mentality that favoured network agencies is becoming obsolete. Risk hasn't gone away. It's changed shape. It's no longer about reach, scale, or how many offices you can point to on a map. It's whether the same senior team shows up week after week. Whether the strategy gets implemented, not just presented. Whether the work cuts through and holds up.

What once made a network agency feel like the safe choice — size, structure, surface-level integration — is now what makes them harder to move with. Marketers aren't looking for safety. They're looking for grip.

The integrated promise still sounds good in pitch decks, but what many clients get is a patchwork of junior generalists, not deep, focused expertise. Independents, by contrast, are structured around mastery. The best social strategists live in the feed. The best cultural thinkers aren't briefing in from the boardroom. They're already on the ground.

Focus over footprint

The marketers adapting fastest aren't switching agencies. They're switching logic — away from default rosters and inherited models, toward a more intentional structure: one built for embedded thinking, senior access and systems that flex with the work.

"Marketers should reframe what they're buying," says Emily Gray. "Not a service, but a strategic partnership. Not a deliverable, but a capability."

That kind of partnership reshapes expectations. "The best work happens when there's genuine, open dialogue between marketing and agency teams — without bureaucracy-laden gatekeepers," says Alicia Iveson. "It takes a village, on both client and agency side."

Independents don't move faster because they have something to prove, but because they're structurally closer to the outcome. With effectiveness under scrutiny, creative quality isn't aesthetic. It's commercial. The difference between good and exceptional is often the difference between growth and stagnation.

The talent exodus from holding companies isn't slowing. It's accelerating, as more senior professionals conclude that building great work requires breaking free from corporate constraints.

For marketers, that shift represents one of the most valuable opportunities in a generation: access to the industry's best thinking, without the overhead that once made it feel out of reach.

For marketers, choosing independents might feel like a contrarian choice, but it's actually the smart money move. It's happening quietly — one roster, one pitch, one relationship at a time.

And it's being led by the talent networks were built to keep.

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Amar Chohan, is the founder and CEO of DCA, where he writes about the business of creativity and champions independent agencies. Previously, he spent over a decade as managing director at Contagious. You can follow him and DCA on LinkedIn.

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