From Gap Fillers to Growth Drivers: The Evolution of Freelancers

When Christine Olivas set up No Single Individual (NSI) in 2020, advertising agencies and freelance talent had a markedly different relationship to the one shared today. Founder, CEO and chief strategy officer Christine says that agencies were “married” to the idea of full-time hiring as the default, with freelance talent coming into play only when full-time employees were under strain or lacked a specific skillset for a project. 

Five years later, and it appears that a ‘divorce’ of kinds has happened. Agencies have begun to stray from traditional hiring models, and are seeing the benefits of utilising freelance talent for the good of the work, profit margins, culture, and more. 

It’s a shift that’s come about for a number of reasons. Agencies are opting for a hybrid model as a means to stabilise overworked teams, expand capabilities, and bolster company culture, and as a response to financial realities and client expectations. Taleah Mona-Lusky, NSI’s fractional head of account management, feels that the freelancer economy can serve as an “answer to uncertainty in the market,” and the freelancers with a diverse skillset and portfolio will be the ones who benefit most from this refreshed way of thinking. 

To unpack the evolution of how agencies view freelance talent in more detail, LBB’s Abi Lightfoot caught up with Christine, Taleah and NSI’s head of strategy, Abigail Olivas.

LBB> As we approach five years of No Single Individual, it’s a great time to reflect on how freelancing has evolved over the past five years. Have there been any seismic shifts or changes in attitudes in how agencies handle freelance talent?

Christine> There has absolutely been a seismic shift in how agencies view and treat freelance talent. Outside support has gone from being a stopgap or exception to being a critical, integral part of how agencies do business. This is in sharp contrast to late 2020, when I founded this business. At that time, agencies were very married to the idea that full-time hiring is the default and generally believed that freelance talent should only be leveraged if the current full time employees did not have the bandwidth and/or the skillset to tackle the work. They were also deeply concerned that clients would ‘find out’ or look down on them if they had to turn outside their four walls to staff an engagement. 

Fast forward to today, and not only do you have a profoundly broader acceptance that using freelancers can benefit the work and improve margin, but we’re also seeing agencies like X&O and Murder Hornet built entirely around a freelance-first model. 

LBB> Have there been any positive changes, and if so, what have they been, and why do you believe these have happened?

Abigail> The clearest positive shift is the growing comfort with hybrid talent models. Agencies are bringing in senior independents earlier in the work, not just when things break. They’re starting to see that curated freelance talent can stabilise overloaded teams, expand capabilities, and impact client work. That shift didn’t happen by accident. The financial reality of the last few years forced agencies to rethink long-standing assumptions about what their staffing model should look like.

LBB> On the other hand, have there been any areas that have been slow to progress? Why do you think this is? 

Taleah> While strides have been made in how agencies view freelance talent, there are still many agencies that are still thinking about freelancers as extra needed support to fill a last minute gap, as opposed to truly integrating the right freelance teams to be pro-active additives to their own business model. This mindset reduces freelancers to ‘support capacity’ instead of recognising them as strategic extensions of the agency’s capabilities.

The real opportunity is for agencies to proactively architect hybrid teams by blending internal leaders with curated freelance partners who bring niche expertise, specialised depth, and flexibility. A curated freelance model can actually allow agencies to pull talent in only when needed, diversify capabilities without permanent overhead, respond to demand with more ease, and eliminate headcount risk and redundancies down the road. 

LBB> ‘Agency culture’ is an ever-evolving term, and this year alone has seen massive shifts in the global agency landscape. In your opinion, what does ‘agency culture’ really mean, and how do freelancers fit into it? 

Taleah> Between holding company consolidation, post-M&A restructuring, senior leadership turnover, and the ongoing battle between growth expectations and budget constraints, many agencies have had to redefine culture in real time. For some large networks, culture now looks more like resilience and survival. Teams are navigating new structures, new leadership, shifting roles and frequent layoffs. People are trying to do their best while everything around them changes daily. For indie agencies, culture is more about identity and autonomy. They’re focused on protecting craft, personal relationships, entrepreneurial decision-making, and a shared belief in building something distinct from the corporate model.

Christine> I’ve always believed that great agency cultures do two things well: take care of their people and create the conditions for great work. With the proliferation of indies, agency leaders have unprecedented opportunities to make this happen, to build the culture they always wanted to be part of. But it takes effort to make something new and better. We hear from agency teams every day that being taken care of and being able to do great work means having the resources to do their jobs well. And accessing freelance talent for new skills, fresh perspectives and overly full plates is a critical resource. Agency owners who see that are building the best cultures. 

Abigail> At its core, agency culture is about how people treat each other and how they work together. It is not defined by who is on payroll and who is not. Freelancers contribute to the tone and the standard of a team the same way full time staff do. When agencies collaborate with independent talent with the same clarity, respect, and accountability they give their internal teams – and vice versa – a culture is established that results in great work and is rewarding to be a part of.

LBB> How have shrinking budgets changed the opportunities out there for freelance talent? 

Taleah> The industry talks a lot about shrinking budgets because the work is now distributed across so many players. The rise of in-house agencies means there are less bundled budgets for a single agency to own. However, the work for freelancers is still there, but finding it may require a new way of seeking it out. Start-ups, brand side, large agency networks and indie shops are all consistently hiring freelancers to support a myriad of projects and roles, as the freelance economy can become an answer to uncertainty in the market. Freelancers who diversify their own portfolio of clients across these types of companies will see more opportunities come their way.

Abigail> Client needs shift, timelines compress, priorities stack, and internal teams are constantly recalibrating across multiple accounts. That rhythm hasn’t changed. What has changed is the pressure on agencies to meet those demands with fewer fixed resources. Freelancers help bridge that gap. Independent talent gives agencies the ability to respond to those natural peaks and pivots without adding permanent headcount. This is also why we, at No Single Individual, only invoice for time worked rather than time waiting to work.

LBB> As we look to the new year, how can agencies use freelance talent to their advantage to truly gain a competitive edge and build brand / agency recognition?

Christine> With 50% of the industry going independent within the next year or so, agencies will have free-market access to some of the best talent advertising and marketing have to offer. This is a massive opportunity for agencies in-the-know to deliver impactful, award-winning work, thereby rebuilding clients’ trust in the creative potential of our industry. And the best part: they’ll be able to do this without always committing to talent full-time. With innovative models like No Single Individual, they’ll be able to have the right team for every brief or account, while maintaining margin and their reputation. Done the right way, embracing outside talent will become a real differentiator.  

LBB> Anything else you’d like to add?

Christine> Our industry has always loved to say that “great ideas come from anywhere.” With the massive shifts to independent agencies and freelance talent, I think we will see that expression come to life in very tangible ways.