For an industry that has spent the last few decades re-defining its structure, the pace of change over the last few years in particular has been extraordinary. Economic pressure, AI, the rise of creators, and increasingly sophisticated clients are all changing what brands expect from their agency partners.
The traditional agency model wasn’t designed for the world we now operate in.
Large networks are consolidating, attempting to simplify complicated structures while still managing legacy ways of working. Talent is becoming harder to attract and retain, with the IPA reporting one of the most significant declines in agency staffing since 2004.
For Agencies, the client environment surrounding us is changing. Clients have more capability in-house, technology is making decision making faster, media is fragmented and agencies have wider competition along with their agency peers.
The way agencies create value for clients is changing
Unsurprisingly, what clients want from agencies has changed too. The smartest marketers are looking for partners who can deeply understand their business, identify the most transformational growth opportunities, make great decisions really fast and to be accountable for the outcomes.
Clients are ultimately buying the outcome of growth. This will increasingly come from connected systems.
The rise of creators and demands on creative volume are prime examples of this. We see so often that brands may be investing in the right areas, but it’s disconnected…with creator campaigns not taken full funnel, creative learnings not fed back into strategy and investment decisions not connected to proper measurement. The result of this is inefficiency.
The brands that win today won’t be the ones creating the most content, they’ll be the ones creating thoughtful, differentiated content, informed by data, distributed intelligently and continuously optimised. We call this Smart Volume and it requires a fundamentally different way of working.
Execution still matters, but it is no longer the differentiator
Agentic AI and automation are removing friction between decision and execution. Processes that once took days can now happen in near real-time. So the value changes from simply executing tasks to designing intelligent systems that execute them.
Creative, media, creators, and measurement often operate in separate places, with multiple teams or partners responsible. But there is a HUGE opportunity in integration, bringing creative strategy, media activation, creators and measurement into one single Growth System.
What does Agency 2.0 look like?
So, if the old agency model is under pressure, then what replaces it? Our view is that clients are looking for agencies that create growth systems. We define a growth system as:
Strategy as the core product identifying the right problems to solve, connected to commercial objectives
Measurement-led creating faster feedback loops that improve performance over time
An Integrated model connecting creative, media, creators and data into a single system
AI-enabled using automation to remove friction and increase speed but with huge importance on the human judgement calls and trust
Creator native taking creator relationships full funnel, from paid content to long term brand building
So, is “Agency” even the right word to describe this anymore? Maybe not. But the driving need hasn’t gone away, clients still need partners who understand their business, make better decisions and drive growth. The difference is how this is delivered, not through services but through growth systems.
