I’ve been grappling with this unsettling feeling since the merger news dropped. Trying to figure out why it’s hitting me so differently.
DDB. FCB Global. MullenLowe Global. Gone. Ten thousand people walking out the door. “Efficiency”, “streamlining”, “potential”, “synergies”. All the usual fluff that doesn’t mean anything. The LinkedIn hot takes and eulogies. The same post over and over and over and over.
I’m not here to write that post. Because my relationship with this industry is kinda complicated.
Both my parents are creatives. A designer and an art director. I grew up inside the walls of these places before I ever worked in them. D&AD annuals on the coffee table. Communication Arts instead of magazines. Work from Fallon, BBH London , Wieden + Kennedy and more on the walls.
Ugly truth
I fell in love with this industry before I even really knew what it was. There was a wit, charm, a real respect for the people on the other end. The ones being interrupted.
Then I got in. BBDO. TBWA. FCB. BBH. The holding companies. The networks. The custom built agency teams. And I never found the thing I fell in love with. There were flashes, but honestly it was never there. Not what I had imagined at least.
Maybe that’s what the actual painful part of this is. Not that the industry “died” today. But that I’m not sure the version I romanticised ever really existed. Not in my lifetime anyway. And I think the ugly truth that today brought to life is that this industry has been cosplaying for a long time. Learning the language. Copying the references. Showing up to Cannes and confusing attendance with talent.
Conform or else
Never once feeling the fire, the spark, that is actually the whole point. Conform or else. That’s been the real operating system for the last few decades.
And slowly, one safe, rational decision at a time, the industry hollowed itself out. Until there was nothing left for the suits to do but finish the job. Cut. Flatten. Optimise. File the death certificate.
So here we are. A fork in the road. Accept it. Let efficiency win. Mourn what’s gone and move on. Keep churning away adding to the sea of forgettable work that pollutes everyone’s attention and no one remembers. Business as usual. I mean it’s just a job, right?
Or is this the moment those of us who actually give a shit stand up and show what’s possible?
Yes the walls are crashing down around us. But those are the same walls that protected mediocrity for decades. The politics. The layers. The brilliant people forced to spend half their energy dragging dead weight across every finish line. That is the system that is collapsing.
Not AI’s fault
No it’s not AI’s fault. AI isn’t replacing creativity. It’s actually here to remove the bottlenecks that used to kill it. The slow timelines, the lazy executions, the lack of budget, the unwillingness to do anything a bit differently. The twelve rounds of approval from people who’ve never made anything good but somehow got the power to decide what gets made.
If you are the 3%, and you know who you are, you don’t need the 97% anymore. You don’t need their permission. Their timelines. Their “feedback”. What’s happening isn’t a threat. It’s liberation.
To all my friends still inside what’s left, I want you to prove me, and the pundits, wrong about this. Prove the structures don’t have to kill the work. That politics doesn’t always win. That somewhere inside those walls there are still people making the thing that breaks the mould. Work that rewrites the category. That makes a client’s business never look the same.
It happens, ever more rarely, and against stupid odds. Usually because a handful of people refused to let the machine grind them down into a palatable pulp. Be those people. Because if you can pull it off in there, really pull it off, then maybe the industry has a shot.
Landfill of forgettable communication
And to the clients watching this unfold. If you don’t want the risk of building a powerful brand, and you’re happy adding to the landfill of forgettable communication, stick with the holding companies. They’ll keep you safe. They’ll give you your typical advertising. No one will get fired.
But if you want work that moves people, that gets your product heard and remembered, that builds something meaningful around something worth buying, find the people who still give a fuck. Hire them. Let them loose.
That’s what I want to do. Help businesses build powerful brands behind products that deserve them. Get what they’re building into people’s hands. That’s the craft I fell in love with as a kid. One that respected people’s attention, intellect, and time.
The holding company era is over. It’s time for the people who actually care to take charge again.
