I’m honestly getting a little tired of it. The shouting. “Influencers deliver in 24 hours what an agency creates in six weeks.” And dozens of statements just like it.

The moment an agency in our industry goes under (this week, sadly, KesselsKramer) a business model starts to crack, or an iconic name disappears, like DDB, the commentators on the sidelines suddenly appear. Within hours, the analyses start pouring in. Well-worded, sure. Perfectly crafted for LinkedIn, full of approving nods in the comments. Everyone warmly agrees with each other.

But there is a tone in it that really bothers me. A kind of eager self-satisfaction. As if reality has finally aligned with what they have been saying for years. See? The market has spoken. The agency world didn’t listen. Creativity without data is dead. Anyone still calling themselves a creative agency has missed the boat. The agency model is dead.

I’m exaggerating a little, but not much.

Of course, I understand where it comes from. A lot is happening. The old sense of certainty is gone. Budgets are under pressure, procurement is calling the shots, and AI is shaking things up in a major way. A skilled creator can produce, alone in one afternoon, what a traditional agency spends three weeks discussing in meetings. The market wants speed, proof and scalability.

All of that is true. And still, it is far too easy to turn every bankruptcy into some grand, all-explaining industry lesson. Truth becomes dangerous when it turns into judgment too quickly. A bankruptcy is not a manifesto. Sometimes it is simply tempting to stand safely on the “right side of history”, while the reality on the work floor is far messier, more human and more ordinary.

It feels like we have lost the nuance.

Sometimes a fallen agency is simply… a company that failed
An agency can collapse because its business model no longer works. But more often, things fall apart because two major pitches just happen to go the wrong way. Because the agency was too dependent on one huge client. Because cash flow came at the wrong time, or because overheads simply weighed too heavily on a thin quarter. Or because of the after-effects of Covid-related debt.

That is painful, but it is not a symbol of the “death of creativity”. It is a hard reminder that creative agencies are also just businesses. With margins, pipelines and working capital.

The interesting question here is not whether the creative agency is dead. The real question is: why don’t we treat our own business model with the same imagination and sharpness with which we build our clients’ brands?

That is the conversation I would rather have. Not because it is softer, but because it is more honest. We do not need to reinvent ourselves for the hundredth time in some trendy manifesto. We need to build companies that are economically stronger. Companies that are less vulnerable to changing market winds. That requires less finger-pointing and more entrepreneurship, along with a sharper financial view of the business. Unfortunately, that is exactly where things too often start to hurt. Creativity and finance are anything but yin and yang.

Speed is nice, but where are you going?
Agencies are also constantly being compared to influencers these days. “That creator delivers in 24 hours what you do in six weeks.” True. And that speed painfully exposes how slow and sticky some agency processes have become.

But we are massively confusing output with value. A post is not positioning. A video is not a brand. A prompt is not a strategy. And speed is fairly useless if you do not know which direction you are running in.

Clients hate slowness, but they are still looking for something that lasts longer than a day: direction, distinctiveness and internal support. Because what clients buy from an agency is not hours or content. They buy a reduction of uncertainty. They want to lower the risk that a million-euro decision gets killed internally. They buy the feeling of: this makes sense, I can defend this in the boardroom.

You do not get that from speed alone. In fact, speed without judgment often only creates more noise. Of course we need to become smarter, faster and more digital. But in a world where everyone can create more with the push of a button, “making” in itself becomes worthless. The real value shifts to seeing, choosing and, above all, giving meaning.

Data as a shield for cowardice
The same goes for the holy grail called data. Yes, agencies have spent too long pretending that “taste and reputation” were enough. That time is over, thankfully. But data can strengthen creativity, or it can organize cowardice.

If we only steer by short-term response and click behavior, we reduce marketing to an optimization machine. Anything that creates friction, stands out or carries cultural weight quickly starts to look “inefficient”. But brands do not grow by becoming only more efficient. They grow by building preference and earning trust.

Creativity without proof is vulnerable. But proof without imagination is pure poverty.

Creativity that exists only to please the dashboard loses its greatest power: the ability to surprise. We should not return to the romance of the old agency world, where magic mattered more than margin. But we should also not move towards a soulless machine in which everything is measurable, average and therefore completely safe.

The danger of “good enough”
What also stands out to me in all these discussions about efficiency is how often “good enough” has become the new standard.

Good enough for social.
Good enough for performance.
Good enough because it is cheap and can go live this afternoon.

But the question we skip is: good enough for what?

Is it good enough to turn a category upside down? To withstand price pressure? To make employees proud?

Without those questions, “good enough” becomes a silent killer for your brand. You gradually optimize yourself into the grey middle. More content, less meaning.

And that is not just an agency problem. It is just as much a client problem. Many clients say they want to build a strong brand, but organize their decision-making as if marketing were a procurement category. They want transformation, but brief individual deliverables. And then they get exactly what they reward: more variations, less direction.

The real crisis is not with agencies. The crisis lies in the value contract between client and agency. What are we actually buying and selling from each other anymore?

Fewer prophets, more builders
So this is the conclusion of my reflection. In the end, an industry does not improve through cynicism from the sidelines. Advertising legend David Ogilvy once said: “Look for people who are aiming for the remarkable, who don’t settle for the routine.” That inspires me.

We work in an incredible profession, but we need to stop writing our own obituaries. Especially now, in all this chaos, creativity is being reinvented. The nostalgia is over, the fatigue with the machine is setting in, and what remains is the pure necessity of human imagination.

Creativity will come back stronger than ever: more mature, sharper and more business-minded.

Not every bankruptcy is proof that you were right. Sometimes it is mainly an invitation to shut up, leave the sidelines, and help build the best version of our industry so far.