• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, May 16, 2025

In today's advertising landscape, where data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence reign supreme, I fear that the industry is less and less designed for, or interested in, developing strong creative ideas. Marketers seem to forget that a strong creative backbone can set a brand apart and seed it into the minds of its target audience.

Marketing consultant and author Michael Farmer has written extensively about how the current agency holding company business models are not designed for the creation of big ideas. Most agency holding companies make money with a myriad of media placement tactics and tools, managed by a crop of young, vertically specialized operators. These employees cost a lot less than a brilliant brand strategist or creative director, are easier to manage or replace -- and you need fewer and fewer of them as automation takes on more and more of the delivery funnel.

We all know that a compelling creative idea can lay the foundation upon which unforgettable advertising campaigns are built. It is the spark that engages emotions and seeds a brand in our subconscious memory banks. The Geiko gecko is 25 years old this year. And when I type “pa-da-da-da-daaah, I’m lovin’ it” you know who that is, because the tagline has been with us since 2003.

I was thinking about this issue after hearing about how another once-great ad agency brand is now downsized and merged. I am of course talking about Grey Advertising’s placement under the Ogilvy umbrella. Sure, WPP says the brand will remain intact and stand for its own set of values. Which is of course a very business-savvy way to ensure Ogilvy’s leadership can manage non-compete issues.

The advertising ecosystem today is designed for quick instead of deep. Volume over quality. Efficiency over resonance. There are as many departments and business titles as there is fragmentation of touch points.

I wonder how any of the junior or mid-level specialists with very different titles such as ad operations specialist, search account coordinator, community manager, or experiential marketing coordinator will find their way up the career and experience ladder, gaining a broader understanding of how it all works.

What path is there for these niche specialists to grow into brand strategist or creative directors? How and when will they gain the experience to start building brands instead of optimizing impressions? 

There’s literally volumes of data and research papers that speak about the importance of not just pursuing clicks, shopping baskets or engagement, important as these metrics are. But we, as an industry, are mostly ignoring this skill set.

Agencies and now even platforms like Meta will tell you that “there is an AI for that” when we talk about storytelling and content creation. We focus on churning out large amounts of “stuff,” while often ignoring the importance of anchoring all that stuff in a compelling big idea.

And for those who say “But there is no money in ideas” or “the agency business has evolved,” let me remind you that when commercial TV came onto the scene on July 1, 1941, Leo Burnett (a copywriter) had launched his agency in 1935, and David Ogilvy (also a copywriter) came onto the scene in 1948. Walt Disney (an artist) had launched his company with his brother in 1923.

There is money in ideas. You just need to figure out how to monetize them.