Why are so many clients 'quiet-quitting' their agencies?

Over the past year, I've given some freelance creative direction/consultation on several briefs for large multinationals. These briefs didn't come through their big network AORs, but from small non-roster, non-traditional agencies who have persuaded clients to give them a try.

While global Fortune 500 clients have always looked to creative hot shops for special projects or an injection of new creative thinking - this feels different.

The briefs were all routine projects. The day-to-day, bread and butter, unglamorous work that has always gone to the roster agency as a matter of course.

When I asked the owners of these small shops what had sparked normally loyal brand and marketing managers to come to them for creative solutions, the answer was always the same: Frustration.

As mid-level cogs in the corporate machine, many clients feel trapped in an unenviable Catch-22 situation. They can't fire the network agency, but their careers depend on getting work out, new SKUs launched, and building market share.

But they feel frustrated at every turn.

Frustrated that valuable time is eaten up in research and briefing, only for the resulting work to come back bearing little or no resemblance to the strategic input.

Frustrated that rounds of rework fail to address fundamental issues with the creative while the agency seems prepared to die in a ditch over every executional detail.

Frustrated that the creative team they've been given is junior, inexperienced, and ideates in an awards-bait-focussed, contextual vacuum devoid of any relevant connection to the brand, category or consumer insight.

Frustrated that their agency has become complacent and just 'doesn't seem to get it'.

With immovable deadlines approaching, they are quietly stepping outside the confines of the AOR model and briefing small independent outfits without the need for a pitch or putting the existing team on notice.

Where once it was out of curiosity, it is now out of necessity. More and more big clients are looking for an experience that is less precious, more productive. Less combative, more collaborative. Less account people, more people that are accountable.

They want a partner that can deliver on time, on budget, and, most of all, on brief.

No one is suggesting that this signals the imminent demise of the big client/big agency network model. Both sides have too much invested for that to happen in my lifetime.

Clients are pressuring their existing behemoth agencies to change. And, to be fair, agencies know they have to change. They promise they will be more agile, more efficient, and more responsive but, while they continue to rely on incremental process tinkering instead of substantial cultural change, meaningful progress remains years away.

That leaves the door open for more and more hungry creative start-ups, collectives and, in my case, one-man-bands, to not just grab scraps from the table, but to eat the big boys' lunch on an increasingly regular basis.

Strict NDAs and an understandable unwillingness amongst clients to go public mean this particular revolution definitely won't be televised. Some agency C-Suites may be unaware that their own clients are already doing it.

It may be happening off the radar, behind the scenes, way down on the qt - but it's definitely happening.

Cliff Francis provides brand strategy and creative direction direct to clients and agencies through his company Blue Memo Inc. www.bluememo.com