I've never been the most organised person in the room.

But I've usually been the one who spotted the opportunity everyone else was too busy to see.

That's not a humble brag. It's just taken me twenty years to understand that's actually the job. Not the admin. Not the process. Not the board reports. The seeing. The connecting. The building of things that didn't exist before.

I started Lunar Group because I believed independent agencies deserved better thinking than the big networks were giving their clients. That was twenty years ago. The belief hasn't changed. The industry has.

What I've watched happen over two decades is an entire sector running the same playbook on repeat — brief in, pitch, deliver, invoice, repeat — while the world around it changed beyond recognition. AI didn't create that problem. It just made it impossible to ignore.

Most people in this industry know the model is broken. Very few are saying it out loud. That's why I started The Independent Advantage.

What I've built

Lunar Group comprises four businesses — strategy, creative, digital and AI — working with independent agencies and growth brands across the UK. We've worked with businesses that became household names and businesses that should have. I've sat in enough boardrooms, been through enough pitches and had enough honest conversations with CMOs to know where the bodies are buried on both sides of the table.

I'm also the co-founder of Relavvy — an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform built for agencies who want to stop guessing and start knowing.

Why I write TIA

Not to build a personal brand. Not to sell you something in the third email.

Because the conversation that needs to happen in this industry isn't happening loudly enough. Agencies are dying slowly and mistaking it for a rough patch. CMOs are buying the same broken model and wondering why the results aren't there.

Someone needs to say it plainly. That's what TIA is for.

I write it every week. No ghostwriter. No content team. Just me, what I'm seeing, and what I actually think about it.

If you want to work together

I work with a small number of people at any one time. Agency owners who want an honest read on where their business is exposed. CMOs who want an independent perspective on how they're using agencies and whether it's working.

I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear. But I will tell you what I actually think — and after twenty years in this industry that's usually worth something.

If that sounds useful, get in touch.

robert@theindependentadvantage.co.uk