So, what went wrong?
In a word: bloat. As agencies grew, they added layers the way bad renovators slap wallpaper over cracks. More titles. More departments. More meetings filled with people who couldn’t tell you the difference between a CPM and a CTR.
The suits started to outnumber the doers. Suddenly your media plan had to pass through five approval chains, none of which involved the person who would actually push the buttons. Performance took a back seat to politics. The senior name you met in the pitch deck? Vanished after the contract was signed.
Even the agencies that promise to be “different” mostly deliver the same tired model. A new coat of paint. A sprinkle of AI buzzwords. A “collective of strategists” spread across time zones, splitting their attention between your brand and five others.