Founder note
Why we built an independent agency for global brands
I did not want to run a branch office of someone else's idea. So we built our own.
People assume that the goal of any agency is to be bought. Build something good enough, sell it to a network, fly the new flag. I understand the logic, and I have watched friends take that road. We chose not to. Hoopla is independent on purpose, and after years of running it that way I am more sure of the decision than ever. Here is the honest version of why.
What the holding-company model optimises for
A network agency is a business, and like any business it optimises for the thing it is measured on. Inside a holding company, that thing is margin. Margin is protected by layers, and layers are filled with people who manage other people who manage the work. The senior person who dazzled you in the pitch is expensive, so once the contract is signed they are quietly moved to the next pitch. The work falls to whoever is left. None of this is villainy. It is arithmetic. But arithmetic is not a great brief.
The other quiet cost is allegiance. When an agency answers to a parent company, some of its attention will always point upward, toward the target it has to hit this quarter, rather than outward, toward your brand. You feel it in small ways. The recommendation that suits their roster more than your problem. The reluctance to do the unglamorous work that does not bill well. I did not want to spend my career managing those compromises.
What independence lets us do
Being independent is not a romantic stance. It is a set of practical freedoms. The first is that senior people stay on the work. The person you meet is the person who answers for it, and that does not change after you sign. The second is speed. We do not pass decisions up a chain to be ratified by someone who has never met you, so a call that takes three weeks elsewhere takes us an afternoon. The third, and the one I care about most, is that we answer for the result. Not the deliverable, the result.
Independence is not the absence of bosses. It is choosing your clients as your only bosses, and then having no excuse left.
That last freedom is also a discipline. When there is no holding company to blame and no internal target to hide behind, the only thing standing between us and our reputation is whether the work grew the brand. That is a healthy place to stand. It keeps everyone honest, me included.
Building for global scale from India
The other thing people assume is that independent means small, and small means local. Neither is true for us. We are 75 people across three hubs, in India, the United States and Dubai, working for brands that operate in many markets at once. Building from India was not a constraint to apologise for. It is one of the reasons we can do what we do. India taught us to make work that has to land across languages, regions and wildly different audiences, all at once, without the budget of a single rich market to cushion the job. That is exactly the muscle a global brand needs.
So independence and reach are not in tension. A network solves scale by opening offices and stamping a template on each one. We solve it by keeping one team that knows the whole picture and making the idea travel intact. AI helps us produce at that volume, but the idea still has to be good before we multiply it, which is a point I keep making to anyone who will listen.
Why this is the right model for how work is made now
The economics that built the network model are quietly coming apart. For decades, scale lived inside the holding companies, because only they could afford the production muscle, the offices and the headcount. That advantage is thinning. A focused independent team with the right tools can now produce at a volume that used to need a building full of people. When the cost of making work drops, the value moves back to the thing the networks have been steadily diluting, which is judgement. The clear idea, the taste to know which version is the right one, the nerve to say no. Those do not come from a bigger org chart. They come from people who own the outcome.
That is the bet behind Hoopla. Not that independence is morally superior, though I happen to think it is more honest, but that it is now simply the better way to make work. Fewer layers, faster decisions, senior people who stay, and a tool stack that lets a small team punch far above its size.
What we are building next
We are not trying to become a network in miniature. We are building the opposite. A company small enough that the founder still reads the work, big enough to carry a global brief, and structured so that the person who has the idea is the person who ships it. We will add people slowly, in the hubs where the work is, and we will keep answering for the result rather than the deliverable. AI is a tool we use heavily, and you can read why I think of it as a tool and not the idea, but the through-line is older than any tool: we are here to grow what our clients have built. That is the whole job. We just decided to do it without a flag over the door that is not ours.
Questions, answered
Why choose an independent agency over a network agency?
An independent agency answers to its clients and its own standards, not to a holding company's quarterly margin. Senior people stay on the work, decisions get made in hours rather than passed up a chain, and the team that wins your business is the team that runs it.
What does independence mean for clients?
Fewer layers between you and the people making the work, faster decisions, and an agency paid to grow your brand rather than to hit an internal target. We pick the right approach for the problem, and we answer for the result, not only the deliverable.
Can an independent agency serve global brands?
Yes. We work across hubs in India, the United States and Dubai, make work travel across markets and languages, and ship at the scale large brands need. The difference is that you get senior attention on every account instead of a branch office running a template.