Agencies, our world is being eaten
16 Apr 2026
We’re in a moment of change
What’s not reported in the top agency lists are the other industries eating our world. The companies that don’t appear on our pitch lists, PR releases, and LinkedIn feeds. The ones that have bypassed the rules and status quo of the so-called ‘Adland’. The ones that have no idea or care that we have Cannes to celebrate ourselves.
The need to change, transform, and be reborn again is here. Because the writing is on the wall.
01. Advertising is one of the least trusted professions in the UK
02. Ad agencies in the UK had their biggest annual exodus of staff last year, led by younger workers and the impact of AI
IPA via Guardian
03. Madison Avenue has seen a 75% price reduction in its fees over 33 years
There was a time when agency bosses, think David Ogilvy, were invited onto the likes of Late Night with David Letterman. Can you imagine an agency leader being asked today?
This isn’t a nostalgic lookback but a reality of our increasing irrelevance.
The world is eating our lunch
I recently stumbled upon the VC firm a16z podcast. Set up by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, famously early investors in the likes of Facebook, Slack, Airbnb, and many others.
VCs like a16z have the capital, connections, and experience of growing some of the most powerful companies and brands in the world. They’re now bolting on a start to exit marketing machine that increases the chance of startups lifting off. Driven by what they call the world of ‘new media’ (see our newsletter about this).
New media is fed by the 24/7 news cycle, Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, and the hungry content machines of the social platforms. Reels, TikTok, memes. Long-form explainers and how-tos. Three-hour sprawling podcasts. Niche hot takes on Substack. Pithy one-liners on X. All clipped, cross-posted, and seeded out. Does it lift off in the first 12 hours or get laid to rest? All focused on one thing. How do you manufacture virality? Constantly in search of the next big thing. More clicks, more views, and more hits. And more money being made.
Part of me wants to see the marketing effectiveness mafia of LinkedIn go toe to toe with the a16z types. In some kind of WWE-style podcast smackdown. Both from different schools of thought and different entry points. But both focused on delivering value to businesses and ultimately, growing them.
In reality, it doesn’t matter. Because when we’re sipping rose in 80-degree heat, they’re eating our lunch.
And to them, it’s only the canapés.
Wait… haven’t the management consultants already eaten our lunch?
They’ve eaten agencies’ lunches for the last decade, but it hasn’t necessarily changed the game. It’s just made, especially the HoldCos, mirror them. Walk across the floors of a large agency nowadays, and it looks and sounds like a new breed of accountants, not the cutting room floor of a creative studio.
The old agency world is expensive, bloated, and slightly lost. Desperately trying to push their ‘magic’ or build their own proprietary ‘cutting edge’ tools to gain some sort of edge. For large global brands, it’s safe. It’s deemed rational. The large central offices, hefty retainers, big titles, and generous expense accounts. Even though procurement has tried its best to hack away at this stuff, it still exists.
How the HoldCo’s and management consultants differ is that the consultants understand how to navigate the C-Suite. All you have to look at is the comparison in fees. They’re seen as a serious partner and one that is delivering a business outcome, not presenting a 30” script and some screenshots.
They’re not waiting weeks to get a meeting with the CEO; fingers crossed, hoping to get the nod, the CEO is embedded in the process from start to finish. They’re leading the relationship, not following along.
The house of in-housing is getting bigger
“We don’t work with agencies” is becoming more common. They have a strong, talented, and slick in-house team that can do what an agency can do. One that is cheaper, integrated, and committed to the business. What you might lose from an outsider perspective and the renegade talents that agencies say they house, you gain in a consistent team that can churn out work and won’t turn around and increase their fees because they haven’t met their yearly targets.
Eye rolling AI
I’ve noticed, in meetings, conferences, or on LinkedIn, the kind of eye-rolling when someone mutters the words AI.
What, the biggest technological advancement since the internet or the mobile phone?
In its infancy, when everyone is trying to figure out how to get the most value out of it, we should be talking about it a lot.
This doesn’t mean the fundamentals of marketing should be thrown out the window, that creativity is dead, or that our industry is doomed. We should, though, face up to the reality of how it is changing. We’re in the world of over-hyping the short-term whilst under-hyping the long-term impact of it all.
It’s created two camps in our industry. The ones that say they’ve single-handedly brought down the industry with a swarm of AI agents and neatly packaged it up in a PDF that you can get if you follow, like, and comment “Death to all agencies’’.
The other, usually some industry big dog spouting that AI is a load of rubbish, and it can never do what they do. Harking back to the good old days of swash-buckling creativity on the mighty seas of big ideas and big egos.
What it has created is this weird, murky middle ground of change. We know something is changing. We just don’t know how, yet. And people deal with change differently, see the above.
My view, which may be slightly too strait-laced and boring for the two camps, is to proceed with energetic optimism but with a healthy pinch of caution. Play the long-ball game. AI will fundamentally change how we run agencies, operate, and deliver value to our clients. In the short-term, what that looks like, no one knows. It’s something that hasn’t yet found its place in the world… but it will soon, and we should help shape our new reality with thought and consideration. Because how businesses adapt to change is how they compete.
What does this all mean for agencies?
For a long time, agencies haven’t had to think about ripping up their entire business model and spending time thinking about what value they actually bring. But now we’re in a moment of change, and we do.
Here are the 10 things that every agency leader should be thinking about how their model works within:
01. People don’t trust the advertising industry.
02. People are leaving because they are either fed up with it, impacted by a reduction in headcount, or their role is being displaced by AI.
03. Agency fees continue to decline; each scope has more to deliver, but with lower fees.
04. The media diet has fundamentally changed.
05. VCs, consultants, brands, and an 18-year-old kid with the right subscriptions are taking work that might have traditionally gone to an agency.
06. The barrier to create is getting cheaper and cheaper.
07. Businesses are struggling to unlock new growth, hampered by geopolitics, stagflation, and the need to perform whilst transforming.
08. Businesses need more flexibility and fewer high-cost commitments.
09. Retainers are becoming few and far between.
10. For the first time in history, you don’t have to continuously increase headcount to manage revenue increases.