There’s a rhythm in independent ad agencies that’s hard to explain until you’ve lived inside one—it’s flat but not structureless, always in motion but not aimless!
For those of us inside it, this isn’t just a way of working. It’s a way of being. A response to the new ‘algorithmic life’ – where identity, taste, trends & communities form instantly, iterate hourly, and dissolve just as fast. Attention is now fragmented, culture is atomized and relevance has a shorter shelf. Meeting this reality, takes cultural fluency with speed, not just brand studies to tell creatives from afar what’s needed.
Indie agencies understood this early on. And that’s why some of the most ‘culturally resonant’ and awarded work in recent years has come from independent ad agencies globally. What started as a quiet movement within the industry is now its parallel reality.
But from where I sit, it’s a counterculture!
INSIDE THE CREATIVE UNDERGROUND
We, indies are unmistakenly different in our spirit – briefs don’t always arrive perfectly packaged, timelines are not sacred, ‘research’ isn’t a separate phase, but a constant undercurrent, feedback is a living layer, not a scheduled step, employees are shapeshifters and more. Yet, there is a sense of unspoken discipline beneath it all.
THE CODE BENEATH: Non-conformity (unorthodox workflows & rituals), Resistance to Bureaucracy (no institutional lag), a Disdain for Gatekeeping (permission to contribute beyond ‘your scope’), Supreme Creative Sovereignty (expression is respected, not filtered), and most importantly, Mischief Making (knowing when to push, how to prod and what to push).
This code flows through every function, expressed differently through every hand it passes through. For instance…
Planning is no longer just a relay of fieldwork, reports, and strategy handoff but a cross-sensory, analysing lunch breaking with digital lurking, analogue-observing & instinct-led pattern spotting. It means prowling through subreddits, collecting what’s pebbled to us all day, analysing lunchbreak debates, an Instagram aesthetic that took over a colleague’s desk set-up, how kids mimic influencers or identifying the codes behind memes – tuning into both the loud signals and the background noise.
Influencer marketing isn’t just an outreach function. They behave more like platform ethnographers—living where creators live, listening like fans, navigating platform politics, and social subtext. They’re already in on who’s heating up, who’s peaked, and who’s quietly shifting categories.
Tech isn’t just a separate function. Strategists are building second brains; servicing teams are designing recommendation engines to track feedback loops and performance patterns. Planners are shaping mini systems to tag shifts and surface behavioural patterns. Not everyone is an engineer, but they tinker. And what quietly kicks in is learning. Not the kind you block time for, one on-the-go, mid-scroll, figure-it-out-yourself kind. Somewhere in there, it starts to feel like its own kind of fun. A slightly nerdier flavour of mischief.
No one’s working off a master playbook or a prescriptive formula, just with the appetite to explore, and the permission to make a mess worth shaping.
ORCHESTRATORS OF THE UNDERGROUND
The ones leading this system are in the mischief themselves, adopting a “software mindset” committed to continual “personal upgrades.” That orientation gives them a different tolerance for uncertainty, developing comfort with ambiguity and treating their decisions as working hypotheses. They work with data in hand, but judgment in charge—an analogue skill in a “data-driven” world.
Authority isn’t held, its shared, but not just reserved for trusted lieutenants. They see beyond functional silos and organizational levels – extending an invitation in decision-making & creating culture that makes people feel safe enough to take risks and acting on behalf of organizational interests. So, they don’t just hire for IQ. EQ and AQ carry just as much weight.
This leadership is an exercise in trust – in self and system!
THE OUTCOME OF OPERATING OTHERWISE
This way of being doesn’t just shift output, it shifts experience –
For clients, the relationship can feel less like delegation, more like a co-conspiracy. They get a team that’s culturally embedded and structurally fast, capable of pivoting at a moment’s notice.
Brands shaped inside this system operate like someone who’s already in on the joke, understanding importance of tiny emotional calibrations & not just loud messages – offering ambient companionship, creating a digital rest-stop, intellectual stimulation or social token to pass on as pebbles etc.
For Talent, it’s a crash course in creative survival and creative becoming and the agency, overtime becomes less of a container and more of a current – that moves people forward, pulls new energy in, and reshapes itself without losing direction.
This isn’t a leadership treatise. And it’s not an attempt to romanticize the indie setup either. Just a view from the inside of what it looks like when the boundaries are porous, the decisions stay close, and the ways of working evolve around the people, not the other way around.
We are different, not by defiance but by design. But our ambition? That part’s shared with the wider industry. Here’s hoping that wherever we sit in the system, we keep making space for each other!
– Swejal Gangan, Director- Brand Planning, White Rivers Media
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