Surprisingly often, killing the most attractive notion on the table is an act of liberation. It allows a problem or challenge to be completely reframed. In the immediate present, breaking free from conventional constraints and institutional thinking has never been more critical to business success. Unconventional conditions demand unconventional responses.

The traditional agency model is undergoing significant stress and restructure. Commentators describe this as an “implosion”. Driven by technology and fast-changing client demands, agencies are consolidating services, retiring long-established brands and dispensing with staff.

Gone are groups such as DDB and FCB. Omnicom Advertising Group (OAG) is focused on “efficiency” and AI investment. The network landscape is unrecognisable from a few months ago. Revered institutions have toppled. Long pursued advertising business practice is disappearing in body bags.

The agents of this shift are the CMOs, CEOs and procurement teams. In other words, the clients who helped build up the agencies are in the process of dismantling them. And all for sound commercial reasons.

Changing media landscape

The way that companies now buy creative marketing has changed seismically. Digital media has spawned disciplines within disciplines and splintered, shattered and diluted budgets to the point where some companies spend as much on teenage influencers and Google search marketing as they do on Super Bowl adverts and posters. Frequently, it can be more. Digital advertising accounts for over 80% of total UK ad spend according to the latest 2025 data. The UK is now one of the most digitally mature markets in the world.

“Marketing” obviously no longer refers to the nuclear family of TV, radio, posters, print and public relations. It now embraces multitudes of specialisms. E-commerce; streaming; retail media; social media; pod and vodcasts; sponsorship; the application of Artificial intelligence tools. The list is too great for one single agency to process, let alone service. Prospective client businesses are buying from a ‘stack’ of marketing services, mixing and matching according to the challenges of the moment.

The age of average

By trying to do everything, one achieves nothing. The truth is that generalists almost always produce generic, ineffectual work. Today’s sophisticated consumers see straight through it.

As economies of scale reduce the price of back-office, web and e-commerce software and hardware, buying the right solutions for a business hands the procurement team freedom to choose, creating their own, bespoke solution, to suit their precise needs. Like a hand of cards, the right selection will deliver the right result if founded on sound analysis and recognition of the correct play to address the challenge.

As an example, a possible marketing ‘stack’ might include the following functions:

•  Web site Developer

•  Ecommerce developer

• Visibility consultancy (search, AI etc)

• Research 

• Creative

• Design

• Strategy 

• Content

• Branding

• Media buying

• Sponsorship

• Event planning

• Advertising

• Public Relations

• Influencer marketing

• Social media

Instead of under-one-roof, multidisciplinary solutions, each discipline is increasingly purchased directly, on its own merits. The marketing stack presents a remarkable breadth of specialist services, from film production (which also covers AI generated moving image creation) to PR, creative expression, content and long-form, branded ‘info-tainment’. Whilst managing multiple contacts can be taxing, companies from start-ups to established corporations are relishing the freedom to buy and build their own, agile marketing function as a cluster of deliverables. A senior, global Amex marketer said recently, “I don’t want integrated agencies. I want the best specialist services working smartly together, in an integrated way.” 

Work that works

Of course, the trend isn’t driven purely by the need to cut costs. At its heart, most marketers know that to succeed in this ‘age of average’, they have to create impact. The winning play way to achieve that is through outstanding creativity.

Back in 2014, a consultant at Data2Decisions named Paul Dyson identified that creative execution was the most important element of advertising under a marketer’s direct control when considering return on investment (after size of the brand). The inventive, memorable, personality-led and impactful idea that stems from the central proposition drives all elements within the marketing stack.

Creativity is the soul of all marketing effort because spend, quantity, frequency and repetition can never replace quality. A bad idea costs the same – and frequently more – than a good one. Stand-out creative messaging is the most effective way to catapult a brand into the mind of the consumer. Some of the most successful advertising campaigns in the world only ever ran a handful of times. Apple’s famous 1984 ‘Big Brother’ ad to launch the Macintosh ran just once. The power of disproportionately effective communication is in its ability to live rent-free in the minds of the audience over long periods.

Going to the talent

The pick-and-mix marketing stack model is midwifing the emergence of countless, specialist creative consultancies. Beyond the ‘hotshops’, many of the best creative people now work directly with clients, by-passing agencies altogether. This sidesteps significant mark-ups on their creative time (typically 20-40%, sometimes higher) common to typical agency billing.

A standout example is the recently launched SuperTalent Creative (supertalentcreative.com). Distancing itself from agencies, positioning itself as ‘The Creative Intervention Company’, its dozen, stellar creatives are supported by two exceptional strategists and two experienced business leads. That’s it. No offices, no overheads, no layers of men in suits, just the promise of working directly with the best creative talent to a tight brief. The appeal to under-pressure marketers is obvious.

As SuperTalent co-founder Simon Derungs comments, “This is not about clients wanting to spend less, it’s about reassuring them that their money is being spent on the work, not on meetings and meeting rooms. So we offer the world’s greatest creative department, focused on producing game-changing creative work for brands that want to stand out. We’re like an advertising agency stripped back to its raw talent, with everything that adds time or cost or compromise removed.”

What’s in it for me?

The agency model of the future needs to embrace the Marketing Stack, the multi-disciplinary assemblies that client companies prefer over one-stop-shop relationships.

For the marketing departments of today, that mentality affords their business a hundred different modules and more, each tailored for their specific needs. Sitting at the heart of marketing stack is the silver bullet that’s driven advertising since the day the peddler first sang: creativity.

It’s not a difficult challenge. It should appeal to today’s sophisticated CMO and corporate leaders. In return, one might ask how many agencies in the 2020s are prepared to murder their darlings and embrace a future of specialism and expertise?

Credits:

Simon Derungs & Keith Smith - for words

Will Awdry - for turning words into English

Martin Galton - for pictures

The Creative Intervention Company