Agencies, we're high off admin

27 Jan 2025

Agencies, we’ve lost our heads. We’re high off admin. Getting messed up on a potent concoction of timesheets, 100-page decks and MANDATORY meetings.

Smoking operational joints, downing corporate Kool-Aid and getting our daily dopamine hit off Slack notifications.

We’re that scene from Wall-E. The one where humans are ferried around on chairs, glued to a screen and hooked on the artificial. Whilst robots are busying away doing the doing.

In the process eroding our ability to think. Becoming unable to see the wood from the trees. Losing our why. Distracted by the smoke and mirrors of our Soho House membership, Tom Dixon lighting and Gucci Loafers.

It’s time to wake up. Because if you hadn't realised, we’ve been made a commodity.

Right from under our noses, in plain sight. By the Silicon Valley tech bros, the shiny suits of consultancies and the jingle jangle of growth at all costs.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI boss is right, 95% of what brands pay us to do will be done by AI for little to no cost.

TOO RIGHT, SAMUEL! Because a lot of what we do isn’t what we should be doing anyway.

Throwing bodies at problems. Chaining clients to unaccountable inflated retainers. Selling big chunks of time. With the rolling hills of ad land pinging to the sound of “HavE YoU DONe YouR TiMeSheeTs?

A land where rate cards are 20% of actual talent and 80% simply the charge of doing business… covering big offices, big salaries and big egos. It’s the cost of BIG. It’s the cost of busyness.

No wonder procurement laugh us out of the room. They’ve lifted the lid on agencies and don’t like what they see. The pipes steaming full of hot air.

So it’s time to get your hands dirty. Pull up your sleeves and get in and amongst it all. It’s time to create. It’s what makes us fundamentally human. It is what makes us unique. It’s why you’re in the industry you are.

Creating. Work. Like actual work that is highly valuable. You know the stuff we’re paid to do.

A lot of leadership is about making decisions. Making more good decisions than bad.

BUT… it’s also about creating. It’s about setting the vision, strategy and house style. Then creating off the back of it. Yet we’ve somehow ended up being led by processes and operations…

Talking about things instead of creating the actual thing. This is where our value lies. Because when operational growth dries up. What happens next?

Just look at what Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple in 1996. He created their future, through creating an environment that put creation at the heart of it. And Apple was prolific at it.

A far cry from the sterile numbness of back-to-back meetings, all day ‘workshops’ and all company URGENT emails.

No wonder all the best are moving to do their own thing, creating their own future or simply changing industries entirely. It’s soul sapping.

When we centre our agencies around creating. It makes people actually feel proud of walking in through the doors. Logging on in the morning. Proud to tell their friends and family.

Do you think the ones that do this need to have MANDATORY in their policies?

Our industry is one of the most exciting places to work. We’re in an exciting moment of change. But we need to go back to our why.

A move back to creating. Creating value. Being prolific and not too precious about it all.

It’s about putting people first. It’s letting them unleash their creativity . It’s letting them be them.

Because really, that’s all we have…

Image credit: Tony Davis