16
1964
Kansas City HQ + Chicago + Denver + New York + Austin
Full-service independent built for modern brands. We call it the Big Indie: the scale of a network with the soul of an indie.
730
Misfit
Most indies outsource media. Most networks bury it under layers of holding-company silos. We built our own — MissionOne Media — a full media, analytics, and CRM powerhouse inside an independent agency. No wall between media and creative. No bias toward one platform or partner. Just Clarity, Control, and Creativity — all under one roof.
MissionOne breaks the old rule that indies can’t scale media. We paired Adlucent’s performance roots with our proprietary tech stack — M1 Refinery™, Adlucent Index™, Deep Search™, and a custom audience platform — to deliver transparency, predictive analytics, and creativity in equal measure. The result? A model that balances tech and soul, performance and brand, and proves the “Big Indie” can out-run both boutiques and holding companies.
Around here, we talk about rockets and whiskey: the drive to launch big, ambitious ideas with the grounding of Midwestern grit and humility. It’s our shorthand for a culture that’s both audacious and real.
We call it the Midwestern School of Creativity: ideas born where honesty and hustle meet ambition. It’s why we promoted our CCO to CEO, proving culture continuity matters more than chasing “new blood.” It’s why we can host a drag show in our basement one week and run a drone show for the Chicago Sky the next.
Independent isn’t just how we’re run. It’s how we think, move, and create. Rockets and whiskey. Scale and soul. That’s the code you only find at a Big Indie.
Red Lobster trusted us fresh out of bankruptcy, and we rebuilt trust by putting their CEO front and center. Burger King trusted us in the middle of the AI hype cycle, and we turned “Have It Your Way” into 3M+ custom Whoppers. Slice trusted us to resurrect a dead soda, and we built a fax-fueled radio station. These are Big Indie ideas: stuff no network would greenlight, but culture can’t stop talking about.
Barkley was an indie in Kansas City. OKRP was an indie in Chicago. In 2024, we merged to prove the world didn’t need another holding company — it needed a new kind of independent. One big enough to win AORs like Frontier Airlines, Suja Life and Inspire Sleep. Indie enough to still drink whiskey together on Fridays.
Our biggest challenge has been proving that “independent” and “scale” can co-exist. Clients assumed you had to pick: boutique creativity or network muscle. By merging Barkley and OKRP, we had to prove you can have both. We overcame it by winning — Red Lobster out of bankruptcy, Burger King in the middle of the AI gold rush, Frontier Airlines looking for a new brand identity. Every win chips away at the old belief that indies can’t go big.
The future of independence is about proving integration is the only way forward. Media can’t live in one silo, creative in another, and data as an afterthought. That model is broken.
At BarkleyOKRP, integration is our superpower. MissionOne Media sits shoulder-to-shoulder with strategy and creative, so we’re building ideas and media plans in the same room, not stapled together at the end.
Our role in the future? To show that independence + integration is the winning formula. Scale without silos. Creativity that moves through culture and commerce seamlessly. A Big Indie blueprint for how the next generation of agencies will be built.
