The Big Story

An AD Agency Industry in Pain: Broken Retainers, Shrinking Budgets and the Fight for Value vs Ethics Uganda’s advertising industry still runs on talent, hustle and a stubborn love for the work, but the old fuel is gone. This chapter dives into shrinking retainers, brutal cashflow, bruised ethics and restless new generations, tracing how resilience collides with procurement pressure and DIY clients. It is a sober, sometimes painful look at an industry deciding whether to keep complaining, or rebuild its business on discipline and courage.

Uganda’s advertising veterans sit at familiar desks, but the industry around them has transformed. Once fuelled by fat retainers and overflowing media commissions, agencies now battle thin scopes, shrinking budgets, and relentless pressure to do more for less. Amid late payments, eroded ethics, and generational tension, leaders fight to protect creativity, integrity, and value. This is the quiet, stubborn struggle to keep an old machine alive on fading fuel.
Uganda’s advertising veterans sit at familiar desks, but the industry around them has transformed. Once fuelled by fat retainers and overflowing media commissions, agencies now battle thin scopes, shrinking budgets, and relentless pressure to do more for less. Amid late payments, eroded ethics, and generational tension, leaders fight to protect creativity, integrity, and value. This is the quiet, stubborn struggle to keep an old machine alive on fading fuel.

If part one of MadMen, Dreamers and Deal-Makers was about how Uganda’s advertising giants stumbled into the industry, this part, which is precisely part two, reminds you of what happened after they got in, and what it feels like to keep the machine running now that the fuel is running out. There was a time when this business felt almost decadent. Retainers were thick. Media commissions flowed. A small set of agencies handled a small set of giant brands, and the money felt endless. Today, many of those same people sit behind the same desks, staring at three-page scopes and…

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