Indie Agency

Mark Aink, the driving force behind new Dutch powerhouse Indie, talks to Isobel Roberts about reinventing the rules of engagement with his agency’s radical approach to consumers, clients, creativity and control.

Two years ago Dutch shop S-W-H was cruising along as one of the Netherlands’ top creative joints. In fact, they’d just been crowned agency of the year and awarded for their innovative approach to advertising. And it was right then that they decided it was time for a total makeover.

“We just thought this was where it could all go horribly wrong,” explains managing partner Mark Aink. “We were agency of the year and part of the establishment. At that point you can either sit down, relax and enjoy the success or reinvent yourself. They were so many changes happening in the industry, and everything was moving so fast, that we thought it was perfect time to reinvent ourselves.”

So the team took the phone off the hook, shut themselves in a room and tried to work out their future. Looking back over the past 10 years and seeing all the things that hadn’t existed before – YouTube, Facebook, camera phones – they wanted a structure that could cope with everything that would be thrown at them in the coming decade. And so in June of last year, S-W-H was laid to rest and Indie stepped out into the spotlight.

“You see for us it’s all in the power of independent thinking,” reveals Aink, “and getting the best thought leaders from different disciplines together on projects to come up with really innovative ideas. It’s about being a collaborative hub.” The core team still consists of proven ad professionals, but industry outsiders are regularly drafted in to keep that team on their toes. So for a recent project working on strategy for Nike Football, the agency recruited two football journalists to help brainstorm, knowing that they were at the heart of the subject and could produce ideas an in-house planner might not have the knowledge to think up by themselves. And the collaborative approach extends to creative work too – for an upcoming Ben & Jerry’s campaign, the team enlisted the talents of a social artist, an ex-guitar playing healer, and an online creative.

Aink is enthusiastic about this collective method, but does admit that it’s taken time to get the formula right – letting non-ad folk loose with a client’s brief is something many creatives would baulk at. “It’s earth-shattering what happens to us as well,” he describes, “because we’re used to controlling every bit of the concept and that’s one of the first things you have to let go of, otherwise it remains confined and controlled. But you have to get the balance of steering and directing in order to get something which is productive and valuable for that certain brief, while on the other hand losing control and letting it flow and seeing where it goes.”

At Indie’s launch seven months ago, bang in the middle of the banking crisis, their approach might have been slightly ahead of the curve, says Aink, but now clients are ready to embrace the transformation: “I think the smart ones right now feel there are structural changes going on that they need to adapt to, to be in front of the flock rather than lagging behind.”

On top of creative collaboration, a second crucial part of Indie’s manifesto is to keep clear of any traditional ATL or BTL labels. Instead, their mantra is FTL (we’ll let you work that one out for yourselves). “everyone’s talking about 360 degrees, and above/through/below the line. But lines are in the heads of marketers and advertising people,” explains Aink, “not in the heads of consumers, so we talk about contact points and moments, and our ideas should work in all of these.”

And with the advertising landscape continually evolving, so is what makes for good creative work. But at Indie, at least, they’re prepared for whatever the next 10 years chuck at them: “You can see ad agencies, and digital and design agencies, and advertisers all searching for the new holy grail in communications. This is kind of a journey, and at Indie we don’t pretend we have all the answers now, but we do know we have the structure in place in order to find those answers.”