After more than a decade at WPP, where he ran GroupM in the UK and EMEA, and two years as president of the IPA, Josh Krichefski made a move few expected. He joined PMG, an independent agency, as its EMEA president. PMG has spent the last few years acquiring businesses and hiring senior talent to take on the holding groups, and around a third of its people are engineers.

In this session Josh talks about why he made the jump and what he thinks an independent can offer clients right now. What does PMG’s pitch on transparency, consultancy and data look like in practice? Why build an agency with so many engineers? With consolidation reshaping the big groups and AI changing how agency work gets done, what does the agency model need to look like next, and where do independents fit into it?