The problem
The constraint disappeared
For a century the hard part was production. Cameras, crews, printing, media space. That’s where the money went and that’s where agencies made their name.
It’s gone. Anyone can make anything, in any quantity, tomorrow morning.
The client drowned in it
More channels than people to run them. Five suppliers, five conversations, five slightly different versions of the strategy. The week goes on coordination rather than decisions. Budgets flat, volume up, and nobody able to say which part worked.
They’re not short of content. They’re short of someone who sees the whole thing.
The industry made it worse
Specialisation was our answer to complexity. It became the cause of it. Every specialist optimises their own piece and nobody owns the sum — and the more suppliers there are, the less any one of them knows about the business.
Fragmentation didn’t just cost money. It cost the idea.
What got cheap
What got scarce
The hole
Value moved to the two ends. When making is nearly free, the advantage sits in the judgement at the front and the coherence at the back.
Volume is table stakes. Anyone can flood a market. What’s scarce is a problem correctly identified, an idea nobody expected, a brand that stays recognisable, and something worth stopping for.
The floor came up for everybody at once. Which makes the only interesting question what happens above it — and that is a question about people, not software.
agreed what winning was
Work judged on how it looks and whether it shipped on time. The number that matters is set afterwards, if at all — and by then it’s a story, not a target.
was in the room together
Strategy in one building, creative in another, production in a third. The thinking gets thinner at every handover, and the people who could have saved it weren’t there.
spent the new tools on anything but speed
The biggest change in thirty years, used to do the same things faster and cheaper. The floor came up for everyone. The ceiling hasn’t moved an inch.
is holding the brand together
Everyone is making content — agencies, creators, clients, machines. No one is answerable for whether it still looks like the same company at the end of the year.
made it worth stopping for
Craft was the first thing cut when the brief turned into a content calendar. Fifty assets, none made properly. Cheap work doesn’t fail for being off-brand. It fails because nobody looked.
The answer
Decide what winning is before the work starts — then go back and look
Not a report afterwards. A number agreed at the front, with the client, and checked at the end honestly — including when it says something nobody wants to hear.
And the test isn’t this quarter. It’s whether it’s still working in three years. Campaigns finish. Results shouldn’t.
Put everyone on the problem at once, before the first idea exists
Different starting points in one room — a strategist, a creative, a producer, someone who’s lived somewhere else — arguing early, building on each other instead of taking turns presenting.
Not deciding by committee. Getting to answers none of them would have reached alone.
Spend the new tools on the ceiling, not the floor
Everyone gets the floor now, free. The tools only get interesting where an idea survives that would have died on budget, and where craft goes back into work that had it cut out.
Production value stopped being a money question. It became a question of standard.
Make somebody answerable for whether it still looks like the same company
Not a guideline document. A person, with the authority to change the work or change the concept, and the nerve to say when something breaks it — including our own output.
Recognition is what buys the second second.
Not one of those four survives being split between five suppliers. A number agreed at the front means nothing if the people who make the work weren’t there when it was set. Everyone in the room is impossible when the room is in four buildings. Craft dies at the handover. And nobody holds a brand together part-time, on somebody else’s brief.
They aren’t four initiatives. They’re one structure, or they’re nothing.
Ambitious companies don’t need five agencies.
They need one.
Five agencies have five conversations.
We have one, with everyone in it.
The more we handle, the more we know.
The more we know, the better the work gets.
Which means the only thing anyone is paying us for is the difference. That’s the deal, and we’re happy with it.
Prove
Undivided.
Right now it’s a promise. In two years it should be something we can show any client, with the evidence behind it.
How much of our income comes from clients who buy three or more things from us. If most of our work is one discipline at a time, we haven’t proved anything.
Five goals
that prove it.
Read down
Collective
Creativity
The best ideas come from unexpected places. Find out what makes that happen, then do more of it.
- Every discipline in the room before the first idea.
- Whether anyone changed their mind.
- Whether the job ended up somewhere the first thought didn’t point.
Imagination,
Unlimited
Make things we couldn’t have made. Move the limit, then go and find it again.
- Jobs that put out something we couldn’t have made a year ago.
- How often “we can’t make that” turned out to be wrong.
- How much of what we learn reaches real client work.
Results, Not
Decoration
Every job has a number attached before we start. If we never said what winning looked like, we can’t say we won.
- Jobs with a number agreed with the client before we start.
- How many of those we went back and checked.
- How many moved — and were still working a year later.
Concept, Brand,
Identity
Nothing goes out unfiltered. Anyone can make content. Making it recognisably theirs is the job.
- How much of what we send out got checked first.
- How many cues each client has. Seven and people know.
- How many clients we made stronger on purpose.
Culture
Six out of seven on every value.
Everyone says how well they think we live up to each value, one to seven. Not whether they like the words. Whether we’re doing it. Anonymous, same questions, every six months.
The two years,
read across.
Count everything. Baselines, first culture survey, numbers agreed on new jobs. Nothing to hit yet.
First session on what’s newly possible. Has any of it reached a client?
First comparison. Find the pattern in the jobs that went well. Set the first targets.
Are we hitting them? Trend or one good quarter? Does the work look like everyone else’s?
The awkward ones. The jobs where nothing moved. The weeks nobody was watching.
Can we show it to a client — including the one who doesn’t believe us?
Read it downwards: the one goal at the top is what we’re trying to prove. The four working principles below are how we prove it — one goal each, so no principle gets to be a poster. Culture sits under all four because none of them happen in a room that doesn’t work. Read it across the bottom and you get the calendar: early dates go to the goals that would otherwise wait.
