Toppling of Titans: A Pre-Mortem of the Agency Model

In 2005, when I joined the media agency world, agency leaders would have laughed at the idea of their empires crumbling. In just 20 years, it’s no longer a joke— it’s a near-term reality. Once hailed as the masterminds behind brand success, agencies now find themselves staring down the barrel of irrelevance. Bloated structures, sluggish decision-making, and the inertia preventing evolution have turned industry titans into (what I believe are) ticking time bombs.

This isn’t a cautionary tale; it’s a pre-mortem. The cracks are already there. 谷歌 , Meta and any platform worth its salt has already bitten away from agency prowess. With Web3, AI and the blockchain already in play, platforms like RankAI have started dismantling the pillars of what agencies once monopolized— communications design, media buying, planning, strategy and even production. And while some groups like Publicis and Omnicom boast of innovations like Marcel and Omni, these attempts at transformation are hampered by the very structures they aim to disrupt.

Here’s why the agency model is collapsing—and why (what I call) the Asymmetrical Agency might be its only hope.

1. Bloated Hierarchies

Traditional agencies were built for scale, not speed... to serve multiple large clients at once. The sprawling hierarchies that once symbolized global dominance are now their greatest liability. Decisions take weeks (even months) to filter through layers of leadership, and the costs of maintaining these structures are passed on to clients. Add to that,

• many multitudes more small clients which keep popping up which agencies cant even identify fast enough and
• more suppliers (Google, Meta, Tiktok) which enable direct ways of working (from creative to media buying).

The Evidence: Publicis Groupe ambitious Marcel AI platform was meant to streamline workflows and foster collaboration across its 100,000 employees. While the vision was bold, execution has been bogged down by internal bureaucracy and the platform has been re-envisioned atleast twice in the past 5 years. A tool designed to empower staff has instead been hindered by the very hierarchy it sought to simplify.

I myself have worked (as a client and as a supplier) for months to get agency leads to understand the need to make decisions faster.

• As a client, I had to bear atleast 30-40 hours of meetings with our agency at the time to understand that they have a contractual obligation to hire staff to man the business... only for them to hide behind a global hiring ban (during COVID). This not only made them give 雀巢 half the fee back but also ended up eroding trust in the relationship which led them to losing the business the next year.
• As a supplier, an agency lead took over 8 months to respond to a highly generous offer which by then wasnt interesting to my business - a classic case of lost potentials.

The Asymmetrical Approach:

i) Flatten the organization. Replace cumbersome hierarchies with agile pods that combine strategy, creative, tech, and data. These cross-functional teams can make decisions in real time, ensuring clients get answers and results faster.

ii) Instead of investing tons of money top down (like Publicis Groupe $326m investment into building Marcel), enable your ground troops with existing AI tools. Incentivize them to build GPTs on their own for their work. Move fast, fail fast, learn fast.

2. Control, complexity and leakages

Agencies use data as their trump card—hoarded, hidden, and controlled by a select few. Clients, employees and partners were frustrated by opaque reporting and the lack of transparency. Omnicom Media Group UK Omni Assist AI boast impressive capabilities for data integration and audience insights. Yet clients often struggle to see how these insights translate into actionable transparency. This comes from a need-to-know culture bred into agency leadership and trading teams, the layered firewalls created seemingly to protect client information and trade secrets.

The Evidence: Every few years for the past 2 decades, there's been a major breach of trust reported about agencies. Most recently, it was from China in 2022... before that it was from Australia. I have been exposed to several such sensitivities with both agencies on an enterprise level, and with their personnel in Pakistan. I have seen this on the client side both top down and bottom up in an organization I worked for and I have had the displeasure of being on the agency side as clients pushed money into specific undeserving pockets.

The Asymmetrical Approach:

iii) Democratize data. Create real- or near-time dashboards with easy access for clients and employees. Enable decision-making, disabling stall tactics.

iv) Pioneer transparency. Its not a buzzword, it’s the cornerstone of trust. Dont EVER make money by muddying the water!

v) Automate. Hundreds of the agency processes are just waiting to be automated. There is absolutely NO need for human interface in 2/3rds of the work.

3. Specialization Silos: Experts Without Integration

Specialization was once a badge of honor in agencies. Media buying teams didn’t mingle with creative strategists, and digital planners had little to do with traditional advertisers. This worked when media channels were fewer and less fragmented. Today, it’s a recipe for chaos.

The Evidence: Even as clients demand integrated strategies, agencies still struggle to break down silos. Campaigns often feel piecemeal, with disjointed messaging across platforms. The focus on specialized teams creates inefficiencies and inconsistent results.

The Asymmetrical Approach:

vi) Communications Consultants: Build consultancy pods - professionals who understand the communications ecosystem—traditional, digital, OOH, and new media. These consultants focus on communication outcomes and result, not volumes and outputs. Think 麦肯锡 ... for marketing.

4. Embrace Product Thinking

G2 lists 579 platforms in the search for "Media Planning" and 2,549 for "Creative Services" search. Y Combinator just took on Rankai (YC Backed) which looks to replace marketing agencies with AI agents. Bring these two seemingly disaparate points together and you have space for a major play to replace agency workloads with AI agents. These tools would be faster, cheaper, and increasingly smarter.

In 2009, whilst working on an annual landscape presentation, I found about 50 new players had entered the TV ads market. At the end of 2022, the same report showed that 850+ new players had advertised in that year on TV alone... I imagine 3x would have advertised on digital. Agencies arent built to be able to discover, pitch and win new business with this kind of magnitude of advertisers entering the ecosystem.

The Evidence:

• RankAI’s ability to optimize SEO using AI leaves no room for the slow, manual processes.
• Meta has a highly advanced DCO system built-in to its ad-suite. Google launched hundreds of AI enablers within its latest Ads 360 offering.
• Platforms like Canva and HubSpot have grown by serving SMEs that agencies ignored.

The Asymmetrical Approach: Agencies must stop positioning themselves as gatekeepers of communications. They need to get out of their service-provider comfort zone (as I did) and think about how they can create value via products, then scale it.

vii) Product and disruption mindset: imagine, iterate and launch SaaS products aimed at SME advertising use cases, then scale to enterprise. Build with Web3, AI, whatever... just as long as it solves a real problem, true disruption!

5. Revenue models and leadership

The current agency revenue model—fees, rebates, and commissions—makes little sense in a world that seeks value and accountability. And yet, agencies are still stuck trying to drum up volumes to buy.

As agencies face the crunch, they are choosing the people who were running the most profitable part of the businesss. This would usually be the head of investment or a specialist division. While this would be the smartest move for a CFO, an accountant or a management consultant from the outside... it is the funniest joke to any industry insider.

Why? Because, their part of the P&L was squeeky green as the rest of the company suffered. Did they do the selling... no! Did they run the business, face clients, lead pitches, innovate... no! They were just sitting at the place where everyone's profitability was cumulated, by design.

The Evidence: Even today, most agency structures are based on people and volumes or some combination thereof (volume of media bought or volume of creatives and their iterations produced). Increasing number of media CEOs from investment, trading of specialist functions who got the spot based on an accountant's view of the business.

An interesting evidence to this effect is...

The Asymmetrical Approach:

viii) Shift to value-based pricing. Tie agency earnings directly to client success metrics like sales growth, lead generation or brand lift. Ask for more transparent partnerships.

ix) Modular pricing models: offer customizable services where clients pay only for what they need, ensuring flexibility, transparency, and better alignment with outcomes. Let's call this a "Service" as a Service model *wink*

x) Leadership investment: invest behind the right business leaders based on their vision. With the mushroom cloud looming ahead of the ecosystem, it will be the leaders with an alternative view and vision that can lead agencies into an Asymmetrical future.

Conclusion: Evolution or Extinction

The writing is on the wall. Agencies are the fly on the wall. Add cliche of your choice here and it will likely apply.

The Asymmetrical model is an evolution of the agency model. Its a drastic and dramatic one at that. But will this evolution prevent extinction? With all my years in the ecosystem, I honestly can not predict... I have gone back and forth for what seems like forever.

The Titans are toppling... and the clock is ticking.