RGA's Long Road Back to Independence

RGA has been here before. Founded in 1977 as R. Greenberg Associates, the agency started life as an independent production company, best known for the title sequences on films like Superman and Alien. It was sold to True North Communications in 1995 to fund its transition into a digital agency. IPG acquired True North in 2001, and RGA came with it. Then, after 23 years inside the holding company, it left.

Before IPG was acquired by Omnicom, IPG had moved to sell some of its agencies. RGA was among them. The agency returned to independence last year, this time under private equity firm Truelink Capital. According to global CEO Robin Forbes, the sale process took around nine months and concluded in March 2025.

The numbers since have been hard to argue with. Revenue in the second half of 2025 grew more than 30% compared to the first half. Six of the agency's top ten clients collectively grew 40% year on year from 2024 to 2025. Q1 2026 revenue is up 25% on Q1 2025.

Forbes is candid about why the holding company structure never quite fit. "R/GA has always been an outlier inside a holding company," he told Campaign. "The holding company model has often focused on slotting agencies into specific silos." Chair and global CCO Tiffany Rolfe put it more colourfully: "I always say we slipped, Indiana Jones-style, under the wall."

The exit was not entirely clean. When news of IPG's plans to sell RGA leaked, RGA's own leadership had no idea. They had already begun their own sale process, and clients were caught off guard. The concern from clients was practical: talent, capabilities, conflicts. Rolfe and Forbes say they managed it through transparency, communicating openly with both teams and clients throughout.

The choice of PE partner came with its own hesitations. There was initial reluctance about partnering with a private equity firm, given the industry's perception of PE as purely financial rather than operationally invested. What changed the calculation was Truelink's approach. The firm had done its homework on the advertising and marketing industry, and invited RGA's global leadership to co-invest as part of a partial management buyout. Forbes said the team took up the offer.

There was also, by Rolfe's account, a more personal signal. When she and Forbes met with Truelink's partners, she discovered that one of them was also from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had attended the same grade school, and graduated high school the same year. The partner later sent her a photo of the yearbook, with both of their fifth-grade portraits on the same page.

Sometimes the universe points you in the right direction.