Preaching to the choir

The agency world that so loves to preach innovation hasn’t applied that same energy to its own business model in over 50 years. There have been experiments at the fringes of course, but nothing that comes across Martin Sorrel’s desk that makes him re-think what he’s been doing all along

.A few years back, all the rage among agency types was that they should be incubators of their own products, platforms and services, essentially saying they could spin up a thousand Y Combinators over night. It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense from a talent standpoint (developers, designers and strategists abound), and practically no sense from a business model standpoint (agencies make their money almost solely from billable hours).

The new initiative sounds great until the pitch team needs help/the foundation client needs extra attention/the CFO takes a look at what the agency will actually need to invest in order for it to work. These companies aren’t structured to produce their own IP, nor is management incentivized to find a way to make it work. Google’s 20% time was openly praised as a standard to work towards, all the while knowing that if staff really were consistently free 20% of the time, eyebrows would be raised by the accountants.

Creative industry types love to preach innovation to clients from atop the highest horse they can find, convinced they know better. They arrive with apps, products and services developed under the guise of helping the client sell more of their existing apps, products and services. Create demand for the marketing as a means of driving sales for the product? Oh of course — won’t you please continue?!?