Ciclope 2025: Indie forever.

7 October 2025

Ciclope brought Steve Davies (Advertising Producers Association), Florence Jacob (Caviar Paris), Matt Miller (Association of Independent Commercial Producers) and Clarisse Lacarrau (Fix the Future) together to discuss brands working directly with independent production companies.

Three months and change after Ciclope cut ties with then-sponsors Publicis Productions and Coffee & TV—owned by holding companies Publicis Groupe and Omnicom, respectively—the festival brought Steve Davies (APA), Florence Jacob (Caviar Paris), Matt Miller (AICP) and Clarisse Lacarrau (Fix the Future) together to discuss brands working directly with independent production companies.

Chaired by Advertising Production Resources founder Jillian Gibbs, who plugged her book nice and early, the talk came to life when Davies shared a metaphor for integrated production—if the agency is a taxi, in-house is when the driver says, "I'll take you to my brother's restaurant—it's only twenty miles away." The APA chief executive, who launched Production Unplugged earlier this year, perhaps realised that bar charts and data splashes perhaps weren't the best way to get the audience's juices flowing… especially as bottles of Fritz-kola were banned from the auditorium.

Caviar Paris's Managing Executive Producer and Partner Jacob then spoke of the need for production companies to "put our fucking egos aside and work together" (she's also President of the European Producers Association).

Miller's language, meanwhile, was far more conciliatory. The AICP chief said there are no "evil-doers" in this new advertising content landscape—"no one is at fault" and "laying blame" helps no one. Instead, Miller (who gave socks a miss today) wants to help marketers understand "what we do". The more brands grasp the craft, the more independent production companies get to deliver the goods.

Given the personnel on the stage, it was perhaps inevitable that the conversation centred more on the ongoing spat around in-house production than its stated objective of discussing how independent production can adapt to the challenge of working directly with clients.

While such business relationships are not a new idea, the importance of this kind of work is growing in a market where demand for traditional above-the-line TVCs is diminishing, something that threatens the viability of companies from every part of the industry.

Perhaps it is in addressing this danger that Florence Jacob's plaintive exhortation for everyone to set aside their egos and work together becomes particularly important, but it's high time that appeal was across the board, rather than being part of an internecine struggle between agency networks and independent production.