Posted in Industry news,
August is meant to be the quiet month. Out-of-office replies go on, inboxes slow to a crawl and most of the business world shuts up shop for a few weeks. Everyone braces for a slower summer.
It certainly didn't feel like that from where we were sitting this year.
While permanent teams were on the beach, our freelancers were out working, covering holidays, keeping campaigns on track and making sure events and client accounts didn't miss a beat.
There’s something really important in there about how businesses now use independents. Freelancers and fractionals aren't only brought in for new projects. They are fast becoming a fundamental part of how teams plan for the whole year, including those weeks when everyone else is away.
Here’s what else stood out in Q3 - and why we think it is happening.
On the surface, things looked steady rather than spectacular. Clients are coming to us with clearer, more serious briefs. They know what they need, they know the level of experience they want and they are ready to move. That is a sign of a market that has stopped testing the water and started committing.
This was the trend that really stood out. Agencies made up almost a quarter of all our bookings in Q3
And the kind of work they’re doing has also evolved. This isn't agencies looking for an extra pair of hands on a busy account; it is senior, strategic work. In Q3, for example, agencies brought in independents to support an expansion into Europe, to cover a senior role while they recruited permanently, to build out a new advisory offering and to step in as interim MD during maternity leave.
So why is this happening now? In our view, a few things are coming together.
Agencies are lean after two hard years. PRWeek's 2026 UK Top 150 described 2025 as another difficult year, with many consultancies running to stand still. Across marketing more widely, The Drum reports that major holding groups have cut thousands of roles through restructuring, AI efficiency drives and budget freezes.
At the same time, client budgets are showing signs of recovery. UK marketing budgets were revised up for a second quarter running in Q2 2026, with PR budgets growing too. Yet business confidence remains fragile, with companies' views of their own prospects turning negative (IPA Bellwether). Agencies are winning work again but they are understandably wary of adding permanent headcount.
Independents bridge that gap brilliantly. They let agencies say yes to new markets and new offers, bring in senior leadership before a permanent role can be justified and scale back if things do change. The PRCA had already found that UK agencies grew their freelance workforce by 50% in a year (PRCA). What we saw in Q3 suggests that shift is now reaching the most senior roles.
If there is one thread running through Q3, it is this: clients increasingly want senior counsel and deep expertise, not just delivery and tactical support. That is always where the true value lies and now agencies are repositioning to offer it, with several building bespoke advisory practices and bringing in experienced independents to help do just that.
We heard the same message loud and clear at our July panel event, ‘Strategic Communications in a Fractured World’, co-hosted with Hanson Search. Four very different speakers agreed unanimously on one thing: communications can no longer be a delivery function. It needs to be in the room before decisions are made, not called in to explain them afterwards.
Two points from that morning stay with us. First, the most senior comms candidates now ask where the role reports before they will even begin to look at a brief. No seat at the table, no conversation. Second, management consultancies and law firms are moving into reputation and crisis advisory, work that used to belong exclusively to PR agencies. Rather than a threat, the panel saw this as proof of how much the work matters.
It also helps explain the agency trend above. If consultancies and law firms are competing for advisory budgets, agencies need senior, strategic people to compete. Independents are the quickest way to get them.
AI adds another layer. As we wrote in ‘Why PR Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI’, Gartner predicts businesses will double their spend on PR and earned media by 2027. AI answer-engines judge a brand by what others say about it and they lean heavily on earned media to do it. While AI can take on a lot of routine delivery, it simply cannot replace judgement and nuance: knowing what to say, when and how to say it and the power of saying nothing at all. Clients now expect their agencies to be advisers, not just executors.
The question we left the panel with feels even more relevant now: is communications in your business shaping decisions or just explaining them?
Healthcare comms and PR endured a very quiet 2024 and 2025. So it has been heartening to see real green shoots this quarter, with companies and agencies bringing in independents for their deep sector knowledge and to bridge gaps while they hire.
The quiet spell was most likely a hangover from the pandemic. Healthcare comms tracks biotech and pharma funding closely. Funding boomed during Covid, then fell away sharply - and comms budgets followed it down.
That cycle has now turned. UK biotech equity financing reached £552 million in Q1 2026, up from £466 million the quarter before, and the BioIndustry Association described the green shoots of late 2025 growing into a more sustained recovery. In the US, biotech venture funding had its strongest first half since 2022.
Demand for outside support usually follows funding with a delay and industry analysts expect this recovery to show up in demand for services during late 2026 and into 2027. Meanwhile, agencies are rebuilding their health teams too, with several big names appointing new health leads this year. If that pattern holds, Q3 may be the start of a welcome longer upturn rather than a blip.
PR and Communications continue to be our biggest markets and Events had a particularly busy quarter, too. Briefs ranged from taking an event from planning right through to delivery to specialists drafted in for one part of the process alone. That fits the wider picture: events led budget growth in the latest IPA Bellwether report.
We also saw more briefs where genuinely specialist knowledge was the deciding factor, from drone technology and defence to international brands entering the UK and needing someone who knows how domestic media works. In each case, clients wanted someone who could hit the ground running, not someone who would need months to learn the territory.
We are seeing a change in how people find us and we are not alone. Demandbase found that ChatGPT referrals to business websites rose by more than 300% year-on-year, helped by OpenAI showing clearer brand links in its answers since May. People are starting to ask an AI tool for recommendations the same way they would ask a trusted colleague.
That changes how businesses need to think about marketing and reach. In traditional search, the goal was to rank on page one and win the click. In AI search, the goal is to be the answer. And AI tools decide who to recommend based on what others say about you: press coverage, reviews, expert commentary, recommendations and a clear, consistent story across every channel. Reputation is becoming the new search ranking.
We think this will shape the skills businesses hire for. We expect growing demand for:
It also brings us back to strategic counsel. When AI can produce content at scale, the value lies in knowing what is worth saying and who needs to say it.
September has already picked up and we expect that momentum to carry into Q4. Agencies will keep turning to senior independents while confidence stays fragile. Healthcare should keep building as the funding recovery feeds through and, as AI takes on more of the burden of routine work, the value of experienced counsel will only grow.
For businesses, the message is that you can bring in exactly the experience you need, when you need it. For freelancers, it is to be clear about what you are brilliant at and back it up. Remember: clients are buying depth, not breadth.
Whether you need interim, fractional or freelance expertise for a project, to plug a gap or upskill your team, or you are exploring new opportunities as an independent consultant, The Work Crowd can help you connect to the right person.