July, 2026.- Independents can organize around the client’s problem. Holding companies are generally forced to organize around their own architecture. Jeremy Heilpern, Founder & CEO of Ammunition and newly appointed North American Director at WPI, believes that distinction matters more than ever.
Heilpern founded Ammunition in 2017 after a decade inside traditional agency environments. Now he is helping shape the strategic direction of WPI, a global network of more than 90 independent agencies across 50 countries. The board role requires a very different posture from running his own agency. At Ammunition, he can make a decision and implement it directly. On the board, the work is more about influence and enablement—identifying where the network can remove friction, create opportunity, or help members make better decisions.
In this interview, Heilpern discusses the specific advantages independents have right now that holding companies cannot replicate. The holding-company model was built during a period of hyper-specialization, where every discipline became a separate agency, practice, or P&L. For a while, that looked like sophistication. But clients were left to coordinate an increasingly complicated roster of companies supposedly part of the same organization. The industry is now moving in the opposite direction. AI and technology are allowing smaller, more experienced, multidimensional teams to solve a much wider range of problems. The next era will be defined by hyper-generalization: fewer partners, broader accountability, and one trusted team capable of moving across brand, creative, media, technology, and customer experience.
Heilpern also addresses what he sees as the most pressing issue facing independent agencies in North America: not AI itself, but whether agencies are willing to redesign themselves around what AI makes possible. AI is going to change the economics of the agency business, the composition of teams, the definition of entry-level work, the speed at which ideas are developed, and the breadth of what individual people can contribute. The agencies that win will be the ones who rethink how work moves, how people are trained, how value is priced, and what a high-performing agency team should look like.
This is a conversation about the future of the independent agency model, the balance between collaboration and competition, and the perspective a practicing founder brings to board decisions.
1. From Agency Founder to Board Director: You founded Ammunition in 2017 after a decade inside traditional agency environments. Now you’re helping shape WPI’s strategic direction. What’s the biggest difference between running your own agency and helping run a global network of independent agencies?
At Ammunition, our focus is Ammunition. We are responsible for making decisions in the best interest of our clients, our people, and the business we are building. We set the strategy, allocate the resources, and are directly accountable for the outcome.
The board role requires a very different posture. You are not there to run the member agencies, and you should not be. These are independent businesses with their own leaders, cultures, ambitions, and markets. The job is to zoom out and ask what conditions the network can create that allow those agencies to be more successful on their own terms.
That means finding ways to give members greater leverage: better access to global capabilities, stronger shared intelligence, more useful collaboration, clearer advocacy for the independent model, and practical support as agencies navigate issues like AI, talent, pricing, and growth.
At Ammunition, I can make a decision and implement it directly. On the board, the work is more about influence and enablement. You identify where the network can remove friction, create opportunity, or help members make better decisions, then build the systems and support that allow them to act.
The goal is not to make ninety-plus agencies operate the same way. It is to ensure each of them has more opportunities, greater capability, and more support, as part of WPI.
2. The Independent Model Leading, Not Just Keeping Pace: You said the independent model isn’t just keeping pace with holding companies—it’s leading. What specific advantage do independents have right now that holding companies cannot replicate no matter how much they reorganize?
Independents can organize around the client’s problem. Holding companies are generally forced to organize around their own architecture. That distinction matters more than ever.
The holding-company model was built during a period of hyper-specialization. Every discipline became a separate agency, practice, or P&L. For a while, that looked like sophistication. But clients were left to coordinate an increasingly complicated roster of companies supposedly part of the same organization.
We believe the industry is now moving in the opposite direction. AI and technology are allowing smaller, more experienced, more multidimensional teams to solve a much wider range of problems. The next era will be defined by hyper-generalization: fewer partners, broader accountability, and one trusted team capable of moving across brand, creative, media, technology, and the customer experience.
As indies, I think we can redesign ourselves around that reality much faster because it does not have to protect yesterday’s structure. That does not mean every independent agency will win. Independence is not a strategy in itself. But it gives us the freedom to build the right strategy, attract people who want greater ownership, and make decisions based on the client’s business rather than an internal org chart.
More importantly, it also allows us to think in years, not quarters. We can make investments that may not pay off immediately, protect an idea before it becomes profitable, and build the agency we believe the market will need next, not simply the version that produces the cleanest result for the next earnings report.
Holding companies can rename and recombine their assets. What they cannot easily replicate is genuine entrepreneurial accountability paired with that kind of long-term freedom.
3. Giving Back to the Network: You said joining the board is “a chance to give back to a network that has given so much to its members.” What has WPI given Ammunition that you couldn’t have achieved alone, and what do you owe other members in return?
WPI changed what was possible for Ammunition. No question.
It gave us trusted relationships in markets where we had no history, infrastructure, or local knowledge. When our clients needed support internationally, we were able to enter those markets with experienced partners rather than starting from zero. That helped us serve clients better, think more globally, and ultimately gave us greater confidence as we expanded Ammunition into London.
But the impact of a network like this can also show up in ways you could never plan for.
I met Renaye Edwards through WPI. Today, she is Ammunition’s Global COO and Managing Director of our UK and European business, and she has had a major impact on the company we are building. That is not the kind of outcome you can neatly capture in a capabilities deck, but it may be one of the clearest examples of the network’s value to Ammunition and me directly, anyway. The right relationship, formed in the right environment, can materially change an agency’s trajectory. Full stop.
One of the other things I have come to appreciate is how consistent this business is, regardless of market size. The specifics may change, but from the largest agencies in the biggest markets to the smallest agencies in emerging ones, we are all dealing with many of the same fundamental challenges: talent, growth, margin, culture, client pressure, M&A, succession, and how to keep evolving without losing what made the agency successful in the first place.
There is real value in navigating those challenges alongside people who understand them firsthand. And more importantly, alongside people you genuinely trust. It is often much easier to see someone else’s problem clearly than it is to see your own. Having a trusted group of peers who can challenge your assumptions, reflect back on what you may be missing, and help you see your own business more objectively is invaluable. The camaraderie matters, but so does the candor.
What I owe the network is active participation in its future.
That means making sure what we have learned at Ammunition, from AI adoption and talent development to global expansion and new operating models, is available to other members. It also means listening, because agencies throughout the network have solved problems we have not encountered yet.
The best version of WPI is not simply a collection of logos around the world. It is a platform where the experience, capabilities, relationships, and intelligence of every member can make every other member stronger.
4. North American Director’s Mandate: As North American Director, what is the single most pressing issue facing independent agencies in North America that you will bring to the board’s attention in your first meeting?
The most pressing issue is not AI itself. It is whether agencies are willing to redesign themselves around what AI makes possible.
Our industry has a habit of treating technological change as either a tool conversation or an existential threat. I think both views are too limited. AI is going to change the economics of the agency business, the composition of our teams, the definition of entry-level work, the speed at which ideas are developed, and the breadth of what individual people can contribute.
The agencies that win will not simply be the ones with the most licenses or the loudest AI positioning. They will be the ones who rethink how work moves, how people are trained, how value is priced, and what a high-performing agency team should look like.
At Ammunition, we have been working through that from the bottom up. We have a dedicated innovation leader, but the transformation does not belong to one person or committee. Teams identify friction in their own work and determine where technology can create greater capacity, speed, or quality. We are then responsible for turning those individual improvements into institutional capability.
The results are beginning to change our agency math. We have been able to add meaningful revenue without adding headcount at the same historical rate. At the same time, we have not eliminated a single position because of AI. That matters to me. The opportunity is not simply to make agencies smaller. It is to make talented people more capable, give them access to work they previously could not perform, and build more valuable careers around them.
That also requires us to rethink the talent pipeline. The traditional entry-level agency job was often built around administrative work that technology can now perform. We cannot pretend that it has not changed. But we also cannot stop creating opportunities for young people to learn the business.
That is one reason we created the Ammunition Agency Innovation Lab at the University of Georgia. It is a dedicated agency environment where students can work across disciplines, experiment with new technology, and learn how modern agencies actually operate. We need to close the gap between how the industry is changing and how the next generation is being prepared for it.
WPI has an opportunity to do something far larger than any individual member could accomplish: gather what is working across more than ninety independent agencies, identify the strongest models, and help the entire network move forward faster and more responsibly.
5. The Board’s Role in a Fragmented Industry: WPI represents more than 90 agencies across 50 countries. In an industry where independent agencies often compete against each other, how does the board balance collective advocacy with individual member interests?
By understanding that collaboration and competition are not opposites.
Every WPI member should remain ambitious. They should want to win. They should have a distinctive point of view, protect their client relationships, and build the company they believe should exist. A network that tried to neutralize that ambition would also neutralize what makes independent agencies valuable.
The board’s responsibility is to identify where collective action creates an advantage without compromising individual agency independence.
There are obvious areas in which our interests align. We all benefit when clients better understand the value of independent agencies. We all benefit from stronger global connectivity, better access to shared learning, modern talent programs, and a clearer understanding of how the network can compete against much larger organizations. We all benefit when WPI becomes a recognized destination for the world’s best independent agencies.
The goal should not be to make ninety agencies behave like one agency. That would recreate the very model independence that allows us to escape.
The goal is to make ninety independent agencies more capable by having them choose to belong to the same network.
6. Practitioners in the Boardroom: John Harris emphasized having “people who are still in the work” on the board. What perspective does a practicing agency founder bring to board decisions that a full-time professional board member or retired executive cannot?
Proximity to consequence.
It’s one thing to have a point of view. It’s an entirely other thing to execute it successfully and take the knocks along the way. A practicing founder is not simply observing industry changes. We are making decisions against them every day. We are deciding which capabilities to build, which roles to hire, how to price work, where to invest, how quickly to change, and how much disruption an organization can responsibly absorb.
When we discuss AI, I am not approaching it as a future trend. We are implementing it across Ammunition now. When we discuss globalization, I am not looking back on an expansion completed ten years ago. We are building our London operation now. When we discuss the changing talent model, we are actively redesigning roles and investing in a university lab to prepare the next generation now.
That immediacy is important because the industry is moving too quickly for governance to rely primarily on what worked in the previous era.
I also think founders bring a particular sense of responsibility. When you have built a company from nothing, strategy is never purely academic. Every decision affects clients, employees, families, and the future of something you have spent years creating. You learn to balance ambition with consequence.
That is the perspective I hope to bring to WPI: a belief in where the independent model can go, combined with a very practical understanding of what it takes to move an organization there.
