What If You Could Double Your Agency’s Capabilities Without Increasing Overhead?

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Independent agencies have long faced a familiar tension: stay small and agile, or grow and gain scale. What if that trade-off is false?

When Pedro Barbosa, CEO at Wise Pirates, boarded flights to Cologne and Cardiff after the ICOM EMEA Regional Meeting in Gozo last November, he wasn’t chasing a vague sense of connection. He was testing a hypothesis: that three complementary agencies, working with genuine intent, could offer clients something none of them could deliver alone.

“A meeting like Gozo is not the endpoint — it’s the starting point. The real value comes when those conversations continue, when teams spend time in the same room, and when ideas begin to turn into something practical,” said Pedro.

The results are already tangible.

Three Agencies. One Expanded Capability Set.

Wise Pirates (Portugal), BrandGalaxy Group (Germany), and Golley Slater (UK) are each strong in their own right, and all three are ICOM member agencies. But what emerged from Pedro’s visits to Leon Dominitz, Managing Partner at BrandGalaxy Group, and David Longden, CEO at Golley Slater, wasn’t just goodwill — it was a map of complementary strengths.

BrandGalaxy specialises in activating brands across retail, events, social content and digital platforms – delivering consistent campaigns that translate into measurable sales impact. Golley Slater is a multiple IPA Effectiveness Award-winning integrated agency, delivering measurable outcomes across content, media, and paid, owned and earned channels for clients in consumer brands, leisure, travel, and B2B.

Together, they cover more ground, serve more complex briefs, and bring more to international clients than any one of them could pitch independently.

“Gozo created the connection, but Cologne gave us the space to explore what collaboration could really look like — not in theory, but in practice, across teams, capabilities, and markets,” said Leon.

“What became clear very quickly is how complementary we are,” added David. “We don’t need to merge to achieve that. We just need to collaborate with real intent. That shift in mindset has already influenced how we’re thinking about our future — and our belief in what is possible as a result.”

From Conversation to Commercial Outcome

The clearest proof of what this partnership can produce is already in motion.

Wise Pirates’ WAndrome, a proprietary AI system that predicts campaign performance before a single euro of media budget is spent, is currently optimised for the Portuguese market. But following Pedro’s visits to BrandGalaxy and Golley Slater, digital twins for the German and UK markets are now in active development.

A technology built in Porto is being extended into two new markets as a direct result of three agency leaders sitting in the same room and asking the right questions. That is what expanded capability looks like without expanded overhead.

The Independent Advantage

In a world where holding companies promise scale, independent agencies deliver something just as powerful: agility with intent. Collaboration without ego. Partnership without politics.

What this story reminds us is that we don’t wait for an opportunity to be assigned. We create it.

We talk often about connection. But what this story demonstrates is that connection only creates value when it’s followed by action. Pedro didn’t wait for the right brief or the perfect moment. He showed up — and what began as a regional meeting in Gozo has become the foundation of a cross-market partnership with genuine commercial momentum.

“We’re all navigating a moment of real transformation in our industry,” said Pedro. “If independent agencies can learn faster as a network, build solutions collaboratively, and share that progress, it creates a stronger and more sustainable path for everyone.”

At ICOM, our purpose is clear: TO CONNECT TO GROW – to create opportunities for the growth of our members. Sometimes that opportunity begins in a meeting room in Gozo. And sometimes it continues with a plane ticket and an open calendar.

When independents connect, and then take action, growth stops being a possibility and starts becoming a plan.