The Australian agency market is undergoing a **seismic structural shift** with holdcos dominating media pitches and indies dominating pitches in creative, PR, customer experience and other marcomms disciplines, according to a groundbreaking new report by TrinityP3.

Fading are the days of agency of record briefs, being replaced by a roster of specialist agencies and the rise of in-housing of certain services.

This has created a landscape where at one end of the spectrum there are big holding companies and their platform solutions that dominate media planning and buying, particularly for multinational and large domestic clients.

At the other end are highly specialised creative, PR, social media, experiential and digital agencies vying for non-media services.

“What that means for indies is that in the next 12 months, you can’t just be a good generalist agency,” TrinityP3 founder and global CEO Darren Woolley told B&T.

“You’ve got to have something that makes you stand out, because we’re literally talking about 500-plus indies competing, there’s not enough space for them to just be another advertising agency.”

A specialist agency could be one that is an expert in a specific category, or focuses on companies in the B2B sector versus B2C.

![TrinityP3 Hold-Co vs Independents](https://www.bandt.com.au/information/uploads/2026/02/TrinityP3Hold-Co-vs-Independents.png)

TrinityP3’s New Business Report analyses data from 440 pitches in 2025, identifying the agencies that had the most wins across and the most active client sectors.

It focused purely on volume of wins, not the size of the prize. That research that is already carried out by RECMA and COMvergence for media agencies. What makes the report unique is that it reveals the results of many pitches that have not been made public.

The report found food manufacturing was the most active category, followed by tourism and travel, banking, healthcare and technology.

Other trends picked up by the report is that many companies are no longer looking for ‘agency of record’ partners, and instead are shopping around for specialists.

In fact, specialist agencies heavily dominated pitch wins for a growing number of sole-service briefs in social, PR and CX, according to the report.

A high profile example of this is the Optus’ pitch roster that B&T first revealed last June. The telco supplemented holdco creative and media muscle with specialists. Accenture Song to handle media and creative (via Droga5), while also adding Apparent as its specialist B2B creative partner and BRX for production.

Woolley said that five years ago, far fewer companies appointed agencies to carry out specialist services.

“Clients are looking beyond just needing a media agency and a creative agency. It’s growth in these other specialist areas that’s different,” he said.

The rise of project work was another trend. Woolley is aware of one agency that pitched 100 times in 2025 with 70 per cent of briefs for project work.

“There’s also a lot more project work happening because clients are finding that they’re either doing some services in-house or they’re getting a one-stop shop, usually a network agency or large indie and always have to add these smaller specialists in. Smaller clients are also pitching because they’re looking for a better deal.”

![TrinityP3 Category pitches](https://www.bandt.com.au/information/uploads/2026/02/TrinityP3Category-pitches.png)

## The Top 10s

The agency that won the most pitches in 2025 was **Atomic 212°**, which notched up 31 wins. Hero won the most creative pitches and Apparent picked up the most non-media pitch wins (see lists below).

B&T caught up with the leaders of all three to find out why they believe they have been so prolific in the past year.

Atomic 212° chief executive Rory Heffernan told B&T the agency is careful in the pitches that it chooses to take on and is always transparent with the client.

“Every single pitch is bespoke to exactly what that client needs. And the reason we can do that sustainably is that we have built the capability and the team plan, to provide that human element for the client,” he said.

“The client knows up front who’s the team on the ground, what’s the technology, and whether we would need to hire or add additional resources. It’s crystal clear in terms of what they get from day one.”

Atomic 212° said it also benefits by having an ‘indie’ spirit backed by the tools and resources of Publicis Groupe, which it joined a year ago.

“Our positioning is that we can understand your business challenge and build a solution for you that’s going to give you a competitive advantage…there’s just as much of that innovation going into existing clients as there is in pitching.”

Apparent managing director Suzy Smiley said that in the past 18 months, the agency has added “expert leadership” across all disciplines, “forming a team with strong chemistry that flows throughout the business”

“Clients want to partner with an agency that understands their business and can seamlessly integrate customer-first marketing programs that deliver results,” she said..

“I believe clients are choosing us for our passion, high energy and our ability to run alongside their teams as marketing partners.”

Like Atomic 212°, creative pitch win leader Hero tries to avoid pitching where possible.

“Most of our new clients come through referrals or recent work that‘s piqued someone’s interest. Otherwise pitches themselves are very much a lottery for us and I doubt we’re any better or worse at it than anyone else,” Hero creative chairman Ben Lilley said.

Lilley believes that Hero’s promise to ‘turn brand into Heros’ is resonating and AI has been a “game changer” with work including Mastercard Transit Tales, Toyota C-HR Diamond Collection and Fujifilm Mindography.

“Right now, being independent is of course a major advantage too. I think more than ever, clients want direct access to their agency’s decision‑makers and to have senior people working on their business,” he added. “Our model is deliberately streamlined to offer just that: senior access, strategic rigour and creative innovation, backed by real-world impact and results.”

## Top 10 (in alphabetical order)

- Atomic 212°
- Apparent
- Sparro by Brainlabs
- Emotive
- Havas
- Hatched
- Hero
- Initiative
- Nunn Media
- Today The Brave.

## Top 10 Media Agencies by Tenders Won (alphabetical order)

- Atomic 212°
- Sparro by Brainlabs
- Havas
- Hatched
- Initiative
- Mediahub
- Mindshare
- Nunn Media
- PHD
- UM.

## Top 10 Creative Agencies by Tenders Won (alphabetical order)

- 72andSunny
- Apparent
- BMF
- Born
- DDB
- Droga5
- Emotive
- Hero
- Special
- Today The Brave.

To obtain the full TrinityP3 2025 New Business Report, including detailed breakdowns across more than 440 individual pitches, [visit the TrinityP3 website](https://www.trinityp3.com/agency-new-business-report/).

B&T's picture editors working overtime to pull together this masterpiece of a lead image.

Holdcos Dominate Media, Indies Rule Everything Else: The Shifting Landscape of Agency Pitches

The recent Pepsi Super Bowl ad has sparked outrage on LinkedIn, but the backlash reveals a bigger problem. As marketers fixate on **distinctive brand assets (DBAs)**, we risk stripping advertising of **emotion, showmanship, and profit-driving power**.

This year's Super Bowl spot from Pepsi uses imaginative repetition to extend 'The Pepsi Challenge' into 2026. However, it has chosen to hijack the Coca-Cola polar bear and send him to therapy after it discovers it, in fact, prefers Pepsi Max over Coca-Cola Zero. Marketers have collectively lost their minds over a brand featuring its main competitor in such a huge ad moment.

We've come a long way as an industry that was once obsessed with brand image and brand love to fully understanding how brands work through a series of memory networks, with purchase occasions bringing brands to mind via DBAs. Byron Sharp lays claim to such a swing of this pendulum, as he shared very eloquently (and unusually humbly) on his LinkedIn.

I'm here to tell you the pendulum has swung too far and advertising is being simplified to the point where it can't reasonably do its job. And because my mobile number is at the bottom of my email and my address is clearly visible on my Strava, I've brought new evidence to placate the inevitable distinctiveness mob.

![Pepsi Super Bowl Ad Image](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-user-assets-prod/s3/images/original/1-1770038422.jpg?width=1020&fit=crop&crop=faces,edges&auto=format&q=100&dpr=2)

The main pushback around Pepsi's new spot, which System1 has tested, is that using Coca-Cola's DBAs in the ad will weaken the creative by building fewer memories for Pepsi and more for Coke. Or, as the more eloquent LinkedIn posts put it, 'It's a Coke ad!'

This should cause marketers great concern and keep creatives up at night. Could the use of competitor DBAs not add more creative strength than take away? Say through attention, fame, emotion, memory formation? Of course, to answer that question, marketers would have to believe there's more to advertising than distinctive asset use. Which anyone holding this POV clearly doesn't.

We've become distinctiveness-obsessed, at the cost of any other view of creativity.

## New Research Proving It

I've just released a [new book](https://system1group.com/the-creative-dividend) after researching the US and European markets, representing $140bn in market share from the Effie Insights database. Connecting all the campaigns to System1's creative testing. B2B, B2C, challenger brands, category leaders, you name it... It's a modern handbook on advertising effectiveness. And, unsurprisingly, we didn't discover that distinctiveness was the only output of creativity that mattered. It's 100% part of it, but it plays a role alongside three other key indicators of advertising effectiveness.

![Research Data Image](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-user-assets-prod/s3/images/original/2-1770038434.jpg?width=1020&fit=crop&crop=faces,edges&auto=format&q=100&dpr=2)

We found that distinctiveness is very much the hygiene factor of effectiveness. You need the ad's effort to be attributed to you. Crucially, we measure consumer brand recognition in the new research, rather than 'I reckon the use of that bear means this ad isn't distinctive for Pepsi.' However, we found that **emotion** (and its role in building more favorable memory structures), **showmanship** (and how it creates attention, trust and fame) and **consistency** (and its role in supercharging strategy) all build on top of distinctiveness to deliver profit in their own ways.

My favorite insight comes from [linking creative measurement to Effie's data.](https://system1group.com/the-creative-dividend) Distinctiveness is so very important; it means increasing your media spend leads to a higher likelihood of revenue. But revenue is table stakes (77% of campaigns report revenue increase), it's profit that matters. Distinctiveness alone struggles to increase the likelihood of profit without emotion. Distinctiveness turns media spend into revenue, but emotion turns revenue into profit.

Maybe this entertaining, culturally relevant, creative idea that uses Coca-Cola's assets increases the emotional appeal to the ad while still managing high distinctiveness? But, of course, we can't think like this with our singular blinkered view of distinctiveness on.

![Creative Effectiveness Image](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-user-assets-prod/s3/images/original/3-1770038453.jpg?width=1020&fit=crop&crop=faces,edges&auto=format&q=100&dpr=2)

Now, you may think I'm being too harsh on some well-meaning marketing thinking, but I don't think marketers have become distinctiveness-obsessed because of a few mean tweets after I [posted in favor of the Pepsi](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-tindall_is-this-accidenlty-an-ad-for-coca-cola-or-activity-7422993965152374784-LQVz?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAzLmmwB4l_E4aVIXmRv2I-tLLAUytLhSsw) team's new ad. The data in this new colossal research sadly demonstrates how many marketers are being led down the DBA garden path, without a care for a broader view on creativity.

When you combine these four views of creativity with media spend, **Excess Share of Creativity (ESOC)** emerges. This is the creative advantage that actually manages to enter the market. It beautifully captures not only whether a marketer has managed to create a better ad, but also whether they've noticed this and fought to get more budget behind that better ad so it can do the work it deserves. ESOC significantly predicts share growth and exponentially predicts profit growth.

![ESOC Data Image](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-user-assets-prod/s3/images/original/4-1770038464.jpg?width=1020&fit=crop&crop=faces,edges&auto=format&q=100&dpr=2)

You can see whether marketers are any good at planning creative and media together like this through the Advertising Planning Matrix, which I stupidly shoved at the back of this new book. 38% of campaigns in this huge new research dataset are 'Busy Work' and only 17% are growth drivers. We are rather terrible at recognizing creativity and backing it with media to achieve ESOC.

![Advertising Planning Matrix Image](https://thedrum-media.imgix.net/thedrum-user-assets-prod/s3/images/original/5-1770038474.jpg?width=1020&fit=crop&crop=faces,edges&auto=format&q=100&dpr=2)

But what's more revealing is what creatively holds the 21% of campaigns in 'Paid Noise' back from achieving their true potential. Only 30% of campaigns are below their category for distinctiveness, 73% are below the average emotional response and 69% fall behind on showmanship (the use of character, story, humor, etc). These campaigns with the largest media spend are nailing their DBA use, but the rest is missing. A lack of emotion and entertainment is holding them back. The creative lights are on, but no one's home.

So, from the data, the most impactful way we can dramatically increase the chance of share and profit growth is to get these huge campaigns that are falling behind creatively but smashing distinctiveness to focus on making ads that also make consumers feel something. Distinctiveness is the perfect foundation on which to build all of this.

Which leads us to the Pepsi Super Bowl ad... [We've tested it](https://testyourad.system1group.com/report/493f9fab-3d56-43d9-91a1-18e875713422?advertCategoryId=2003) using the same research in this huge new research (System1's Test Your Ad) and not only is it more distinctive than the category, but it has more showmanship and, most importantly, it's one of the most emotional Super Bowl ads we've tested. And the brilliant Pepsi team isn't just saving it for game day. They have realized they have creative gold and they are backing it to properly achieve an Excess Share of Creativity.

I think this is marketing excellence and a great example of the benefits of judging advertising beyond just distinctiveness. Distinctiveness is very, very important, but let's not lose sight of everything else that is.

The spot has sparked outrage on LinkedIn, but the backlash reveals a bigger problem. As marketers fixate on distinctive brand assets, we risk stripping advertising of emotion, showmanship and profit-driving power.

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