What if the next great agency was built for a dry cleaner?
Opinion
The ad industry keeps obsessing over whales, but the krill are paying the bills. It’s time someone built an agency for the rest.
“I don’t think the solution at this point is further research. I think the solution is trying to get agencies and clients to act on that research.”
World Media Group CEO Jamie Credland recently said this during a conversation about why advertisers might be under-investing in “quality” media. My previous column sought to remind the very publishers that make up the WMG’s membership that you need to keep earning that reputation of quality, no matter what really drives “clicks” in practice.
Then last week the venerable Peter Field produced “Five charts to end the TV debate”. Is there really still a debate about TV effectiveness? If there is, the naysayers might be the worst debaters since a lunatic ran for US president and claimed Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats. Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?
Anyway, it’s come to the point all over this industry that it doesn’t have a research problem. Media has become pretty good at measuring reality.
I just worry it has a tough time accepting reality.
Agencies are built for whales… but the money’s in the krill
In reality, this is no longer an industry of big advertisers, big agencies and big ideas.
The traditional agency model is designed to chase big clients. Big retainers. Big awards. Next month, it will be big Cannes yachts and four-hour lunches.
But that model is creaking.
Look at WPP. It’s collapsing GroupM into a single entity — WPP Media — and streamlining leadership across Mindshare, EssenceMediacom and Wavemaker. Grey has been pulled into Ogilvy (they say the brands will remain distinct but, seriously, for how long?).
The AI and data spin is loud, but the numbers are clear: in its latest earnings, WPP’s organic revenue fell 2.7%, with GroupM declining too.
Leaving aside WPP’s own issues, the reality is that advertising growth isn’t coming from the whales any more. It’s coming from the krill — millions of small and medium-sized businesses pouring billions into Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok.
They’re not briefed by strategists. They’re not serviced by suits. They’re not targeted by holding companies.
They’re self-serve. And, as much as it pains me to say this as a solo freelancer, doing things on your own makes you more vulnerable to making mistakes.
SME advertisers need more help, whether they know it or not. But who will help them?
Stop sneering at growth
We should be celebrating a sector that’s growing because of new entrants.
Too much of this industry still talks in the language of big agency brands and big advertisers — as if anything outside that ecosystem is less serious. As if a dry cleaner spending a few grand a month on Google isn’t real advertising. We talk about small businesses buying “online shop fronts” as if it’s rent, not marketing.
But consumers vote with their smartphones. Google and Meta may not behave like legacy media — but they’re not pretending to be. Can you really blame monopolies for acting like monopolies?
The real issue is that we — the people who supposedly understand advertising — aren’t doing enough to give small businesses better options.
This seems rather mad, much like hearing a man scream about cat-munching Haitians and concluding that he should control the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Because many things that made full-service inaccessible — strategy time, media planning, creative production — are now automatable. We can now do this, guys!
You don’t need a team of planners poring over proprietary reports. You don’t need endless creative rebriefs. You just need one smart person and a properly integrated AI stack.
Brand strategy? Synthetic qual, category scrape, generative-AI insight packs. Creative? AI-generated assets that are already good enough for Google PMax.Media? Templated plans by sector, localised by default. Measurement? Truthful, not performative.
It’s not perfect. But it’s miles better than the current DIY mess we’re leaving the long tail to wade through alone.
Why no-one’s built this yet
Because no-one’s incentivised to.
The holding companies are consolidating. They appear to be busy protecting Ebitda (whatever that means), not rethinking their client base. They’ll build an AI tool for Unilever before building a platform for the local dry cleaner.
Indies? They’re doing brilliant work — but they’re not structurally set up to scale this way. Most are hanging on by their fingernails, building great case studies while running on fumes.
The result? Tens of thousands of UK agencies. Millions of advertisers. Almost zero infrastructure to serve them well.
If someone builds a shared service platform for thousands of small advertisers, they don’t just unlock a new tier of service. They gain:
• Benchmarks and performance insight across sectors
• Negotiating leverage with platforms
• The power to tell SMEs what’s really working
You’re not just building an agency. You’re building an ecosystem. One that could rival the holdcos in value — even if it never wins a single big pitch.
The red line is trust
But value must come from being a trusted partner.
Not just someone who optimises for what “feels right” to a boardroom. Not someone who says yes to every client impulse. Not another mouthpiece for the algorithm.
Mark Zuckerberg deserves every ounce of derision for assuming advertisers will “trust the numbers we spit out”. But are agencies really offering something better when they bend to a chief financial officer who just wants a return on advertising spend number or a marketing lead who insists on more YouTube because they “see it everywhere”?
If you’re just validating someone else’s bias with a dashboard and a shrug, you’re not a trusted advisor. You’re Zuckerberg with better hair.
We’re not talking about a startup with a unicorn valuation. Or a legacy advertiser with 18 layers of procurement.
A dry cleaner. A challenger gin brand. A boutique hotel. A regional plumbing business — the kinds of clients that have been left behind by our industry’s obsession with scale, prestige and polish.
That’s where the growth is, but also where the real value is.
It won’t be easy. But it’ll be honest. And useful. And probably far more fun than pitching Volkswagen for the 15th time this decade.
We don’t need another agency to serve the whales. We need one built for the krill.
Now go do some research and prove this is true.
Omar Oakes was founding editor of The Media Leader and continues to write a column as a freelance journalist and communications consultant for advertising and media companies. He has reported on advertising and media for 10 years and was previously media and tech editor of Campaign. His column on The Media Leader was nominated for the BSME’s B2B Column of the Year in 2024.