David Ogilvy Was Asking the Same Question 40 Years Ago

I recently came across an old clip of David Ogilvy talking about the relationship between traditional advertising and direct response, and what struck me most was not how dated it felt, but how familiar the argument still sounded. Ogilvy’s point was that direct response marketers had something traditional advertising often lacked: accountability. They could see […]

I recently came across an old clip of David Ogilvy talking about the relationship between traditional advertising and direct response, and what struck me most was not how dated it felt, but how familiar the argument still sounded.

Ogilvy’s point was that direct response marketers had something traditional advertising often lacked: accountability. They could see what worked, what did not, which headlines generated a response and which messages actually resulted in someone taking action. Traditional advertising, by comparison, was much harder to measure, and Ogilvy believed that created a danger. If the commercial result became difficult to prove, creativity itself could begin to become the objective.

Nearly forty years later, the marketing industry looks very different. We now have levels of data, attribution and performance analysis that Ogilvy could never have imagined. Almost every interaction can be tracked in some form. We can monitor engagement, conversion, cost of acquisition, return on ad spend, pipeline contribution and countless other metrics across the customer journey.

In theory, that should have resolved the tension he was describing. In reality, I’m not sure it has.

If anything, we may simply have replaced one version of the problem with another. The challenge is no longer that marketing cannot be measured. The challenge is that we can measure so much that it becomes very easy to confuse what is measurable with what is meaningful.

There is, of course, enormous value in being able to demonstrate commercial impact. Marketing should be accountable. Businesses have every right to ask what they are getting for their investment and where growth is coming from. But the presence of data does not automatically create understanding.

A click tells you that somebody clicked. A conversion tells you that somebody converted. An attribution model can tell you which interaction appears to have played a role in that decision. What those numbers do not always tell you is why somebody noticed the brand in the first place, why they remembered it, why they trusted it, or why they chose it over a competitor.

Those things are harder to measure, but that does not make them less important.

This is where the conversation becomes more interesting because, in many businesses today, the risk may actually be the opposite of the one Ogilvy described. Rather than creativity escaping commercial accountability, marketing can become so focused on short-term performance that anything without an immediate and easily attributable return begins to look inefficient.

When that happens, activity naturally starts to move towards the areas that can produce the clearest numbers. Investment goes into the channels that are easiest to measure. Campaigns are optimised around immediate response. Creative work becomes more functional and more predictable because the organisation is constantly looking for evidence that something has worked quickly.

The problem is that this can create a business that becomes very good at harvesting existing demand while doing too little to create future demand.

That distinction matters because growth is rarely the result of a single interaction. Customers do not generally discover a business, understand it, trust it and buy from it in one clean, measurable journey. They are influenced over time by reputation, brand, creative work, recommendations, sales conversations, content, media, product experience and countless other signals.

The idea that one channel or one campaign can take all the credit for a commercial outcome has always been questionable. We simply now have more sophisticated systems for presenting that attribution with confidence.

That does not mean measurement is wrong. It means measurement needs context.

The strongest marketing organisations understand that creativity and performance are not competing philosophies. Creativity has a commercial role because it creates attention, memory, distinction and demand. Performance has a commercial role because it helps us understand where that attention is translating into action and where investment can be improved.

The mistake is separating the two.

You can see the same tension inside agencies. Over the years, many agencies have built broader propositions spanning brand, creative, digital, performance, media, data and technology. On paper, these capabilities are integrated. In practice, they can still operate as separate disciplines with different objectives and different definitions of success.

Creative teams want to make distinctive work. Performance teams want to improve conversion. Strategy teams want to solve the broader business problem. Client teams are often focused on delivering against the scope and maintaining the relationship.

None of those things is wrong, but if the disciplines are not connected around a shared commercial objective, the agency can end up optimising individual parts of the marketing machine without necessarily improving the whole.

This is why I think the role of leadership becomes so important.

Good agency and marketing leaders have to be able to move comfortably between creative judgement and commercial judgement. They need to understand the numbers without becoming controlled by them, and they need to value creativity without treating originality as an end in itself.

They also need to be prepared to challenge the way success is defined.

If an agency is only judged on short-term lead generation, then it is inevitable that longer-term brand building will be pushed further down the priority list. Equally, if creative work is judged entirely on subjective measures of originality or awards, it becomes disconnected from the business outcome it was meant to support.

The more useful question is not whether creativity or performance matters more. It is whether the marketing is actually helping to achieve the objective the business set out to achieve.

That objective might be to create awareness in a new market, generate demand, strengthen consideration, improve conversion, increase pricing power, change customer behaviour or build a stronger sales pipeline. The answer will be different depending on the business, but the discipline should be the same. Start by being clear about what needs to change, then decide how creativity, media, data and measurement should contribute to that outcome.

Not everything needs to deliver an immediate sale. But everything should have a purpose.

That, for me, is the part of Ogilvy’s argument that remains most relevant. The industry has become considerably better at measuring marketing, but measurement by itself does not create accountability. Accountability comes from understanding what the business is trying to achieve and judging the work against that objective.

Ogilvy believed that the worlds of traditional advertising and direct response would eventually come together. In many ways they have. Creative agencies now talk about performance, performance businesses invest heavily in creative capability, and marketing leaders are expected to understand both brand and commercial growth.

Yet the underlying tension has not disappeared.

Creativity still needs commercial purpose. Performance still needs strong creative thinking. Data still needs interpretation. And businesses still need to be careful not to confuse what is easiest to measure with what is most valuable.

Nearly forty years after Ogilvy made the argument, the language may have changed and the tools certainly have, but the question underneath it is remarkably similar.

Are we creating marketing that simply produces more activity, or are we creating something that genuinely helps the business grow?

Video reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br2KSsaTzUc

Net New Business Isn’t a Tap: Why Agencies Need a More Consistent Approach to Growth

There is a growing consensus across the agency market that winning net new business has become harder. In many respects, that is undoubtedly true. Budgets are under greater scrutiny, procurement processes have become more complex, buying decisions are taking longer and the days of relatively predictable pitch pipelines feel increasingly distant. But I am not […]

There is a growing consensus across the agency market that winning net new business has become harder. In many respects, that is undoubtedly true. Budgets are under greater scrutiny, procurement processes have become more complex, buying decisions are taking longer and the days of relatively predictable pitch pipelines feel increasingly distant.

But I am not convinced the market is entirely to blame.

Over the years, one of the recurring patterns I have seen among small and mid-sized agencies is that new business is often treated as a response to a problem rather than as a permanent part of the business. When the pipeline starts to look thin, attention suddenly turns to growth. Founders reconnect with old contacts, senior client leads are asked to spend more time networking, marketing activity increases and outbound efforts are restarted.

For a while, this can work. New conversations emerge, a pitch lands, perhaps a client is won and the immediate pressure begins to ease. Then, almost inevitably, the focus shifts back to delivery. Teams become busy, clients demand attention, operational issues take priority and the urgency around new business begins to fade.

It rarely stops altogether. More often, it simply loses momentum.

Months later, when the pipeline looks uncomfortable again, the process begins all over again.

That stop-start approach has always been risky, but in a slower and more cautious market it becomes particularly exposed. The reality is that most significant client relationships do not develop quickly. They often take months, sometimes years, to mature. Budgets move, leadership teams change, procurement frameworks open and close, incumbent relationships weaken and internal priorities shift.

A relationship that looks commercially irrelevant today may become highly valuable twelve months from now. Equally, a seemingly attractive opportunity can disappear because the timing is wrong rather than because the agency failed.

The agencies that manage growth well tend to understand this. They stay close to the market even when they do not immediately need the work. They continue investing in relationships when the pipeline is healthy. They recognise that new business is not simply about finding live opportunities, but about being present long before those opportunities formally exist.

This is also why the way agencies assess senior growth talent deserves more thought.

One of the most common questions asked when hiring a senior new business leader is, “Who do they know?” It is an understandable question, but it can also be a misleading one. A candidate may have an impressive network of senior marketers and global brands, yet those relationships are only useful if they are relevant to the agency hiring them.

If an agency operates in a specialist market, has limited international reach or offers a narrower range of capabilities, then a long list of blue-chip contacts may sound impressive without offering much genuine commercial value.

The better question is whether those relationships align with the agency’s proposition, capabilities, scale and ambitions.

A strong Growth Leader does more than open doors. They understand where the business has a realistic chance of winning. They know which relationships are worth investing in, which prospects are unlikely to convert and how to build credibility over time without constantly trying to force a sale.

That judgement is often underestimated.

Good new business people spend much of their time operating in the space before an opportunity exists. They understand how to maintain relationships, how to stay relevant, how to recognise the early signs of a buying cycle and how to position an agency in a way that feels useful rather than intrusive.

That is a specialist skill. Yet many agencies still treat it as something that can be absorbed by someone who already has another full-time role.

Founders are often expected to carry much of the burden because they are usually natural advocates for the business. They know the agency better than anyone, they have credibility with clients and they are often very good at winning work. But running an agency and systematically building a future pipeline are not the same job.

The same is true of client leaders, strategists and marketing teams. All of them should contribute to growth, but contribution is different from ownership. A client lead may be excellent at expanding an existing account while having little time to build new relationships from scratch. A marketing team can improve visibility and strengthen the agency’s reputation, but greater awareness does not automatically translate into qualified commercial conversations.

This is where agencies sometimes confuse activity with infrastructure.

Posting more frequently on LinkedIn, attending more events or increasing outbound activity may all be useful, but none of those things creates a growth function on its own. Sustainable growth usually comes from the combination of clear positioning, consistent marketing, disciplined relationship building and someone having genuine ownership of the commercial pipeline.

The founder remains important. The leadership team remains important. Marketing remains important. But the responsibility cannot keep moving around the business depending on who has spare capacity.

There is another issue too, and that is expectation.

Agencies can hire a senior Growth Leader with a strong reputation and then become impatient when significant revenue does not appear within a few months. In some cases, that frustration is justified. Not every senior hire works. But there is also a danger in expecting somebody to solve a long-term growth problem on a short-term timetable.

A new Growth Leader still needs to understand the agency properly. They need to learn where the proposition is strongest, where the business can compete, which parts of the market are genuinely attractive and which relationships are worth pursuing. Existing contacts need to be re-engaged in the context of a different business. New relationships need to be built. Opportunities need to move through their natural cycles.

That takes time.

The answer is not to remove accountability. Quite the opposite. Strong growth functions should be measured carefully. There should be clear expectations around activity, quality of conversations, pipeline development and commercial progression.

But measuring success purely by how much revenue appears in the first few months can create the wrong incentives. It encourages people to chase whatever looks closest to a deal rather than build the right pipeline for the agency.

That distinction matters because not all growth is good growth.

Agencies can become extremely busy doing work that does little for margin, positioning or long-term enterprise value. A full pipeline can be just as dangerous as an empty one if the wrong opportunities are filling it.

This is why growth needs to sit closer to strategy than many agencies allow.

The strongest businesses tend to be clear about the type of clients they want, the work they are best placed to win and the markets where they can compete credibly. Their growth activity follows that logic. Their marketing supports it. Their leadership team reinforces it. Their new business effort is focused rather than reactive.

Most importantly, it continues when the agency is busy.

That is perhaps the hardest habit to build, because success itself can create the conditions for future weakness. When teams are fully occupied and revenue looks healthy, new business naturally feels less urgent. Yet the work being delivered today is usually the result of relationships and conversations that began many months earlier.

The pipeline being built now will determine how healthy the agency feels next year.

So yes, the market is harder. Clients are cautious, competition is strong and new business cycles are slower.

But that only strengthens the case for treating growth as a permanent capability rather than something that is switched on when the pipeline becomes uncomfortable.

The problem with the tap analogy is not that agencies need to turn it on harder.

It is that they keep turning it off.

The Atlantic is getting smaller for B2B agencies

I’ve spent a lot of my career working with B2B agencies, particularly across the UK and US, and over the last couple of years I’ve noticed the relationship between those two markets beginning to change. There has always been traffic across the Atlantic, of course. British agencies have been opening offices in New York for […]

I’ve spent a lot of my career working with B2B agencies, particularly across the UK and US, and over the last couple of years I’ve noticed the relationship between those two markets beginning to change.

There has always been traffic across the Atlantic, of course. British agencies have been opening offices in New York for decades, often with varying degrees of success, and US agencies have long looked at London as their natural gateway into Europe.

But this feels slightly different.

I’m increasingly speaking to agency leaders who don’t really see the UK and US as two separate markets anymore. They might have been founded in London, Leeds or Manchester, but a significant proportion of their clients and revenues are now coming from North America. At the same time, I’m having more conversations with US agencies thinking seriously about the UK, whether that’s through hiring, acquisition, partnership or putting people on the ground.

You can see it happening across the market.

Fox Agency has been building its US presence through New York and Denver. ArmstrongB2B recently established a North American operation after US clients grew to more than 40% of its revenue. Transmission’s acquisition of Earnest created another significant B2B agency business spanning London and New York.

There are plenty of others, but the individual examples aren’t really the interesting bit. What’s more interesting is why this seems to be happening now.

Part of it, I suspect, is simply that B2B clients have become global faster than many of the agencies serving them.

A technology company might be headquartered in Boston, have its marketing leadership in London, sales teams across Europe and North America and customers scattered around the world. From the client’s perspective, the idea of having completely separate agency relationships in each geography increasingly makes less sense.

That creates a pretty interesting opportunity for independent agencies.

Not that long ago, international reach was one of the great advantages of the big agency networks. If you were an independent agency of 80 or 100 people in the UK, there was a ceiling on the kind of global brief you could credibly pitch for.

I’m not sure that ceiling exists in quite the same way anymore.

Technology has obviously played a part, as has the normalisation of distributed teams, but we’re also seeing a generation of agency leaders who are much more comfortable operating internationally. A relatively small independent agency can now have people in London, New York and perhaps somewhere on the West Coast, servicing clients across several continents without needing the infrastructure of a traditional global network.

Of course, putting a few people in New York or London doesn’t suddenly make you an international agency.

I’ve seen enough overseas expansion over the years to know that opening the office is usually the easy bit. Building the leadership team, transferring the culture, winning enough local business and creating one genuinely integrated company across two very different markets is much harder.

And that’s perhaps where this gets particularly interesting.

As B2B agencies become more international, the leadership challenge changes too. The person who successfully built a £10m UK agency isn’t automatically the person who can turn it into a £30m transatlantic business. Different markets, different commercial cultures, different expectations and increasingly different ways of attracting and retaining senior talent.

For some agencies the answer will be organic growth. Others will acquire. Some will find partners on the other side of the Atlantic and eventually come together. And I suspect we’ll see considerably more movement in both directions over the next few years.

What I’m less convinced about is whether we’ll continue talking about these businesses as “UK agencies expanding into America” or “US agencies entering Europe”.

We may simply be watching the emergence of a genuinely transatlantic B2B agency market.

If that’s where we’re heading, it could create one of the most interesting periods the sector has seen for some time. 

The Business Wasn’t Broken. The Founder Was.

The Business Wasn’t Broken. The Founder Was. There is a moment in the life of almost every founder when the business begins to feel heavier than it used to. It rarely arrives overnight. More often, it creeps in quietly after months of difficult decisions, disappointing quarters and the relentless pressure of carrying responsibility for clients, […]

The Business Wasn’t Broken. The Founder Was.

There is a moment in the life of almost every founder when the business begins to feel heavier than it used to.

It rarely arrives overnight. More often, it creeps in quietly after months of difficult decisions, disappointing quarters and the relentless pressure of carrying responsibility for clients, employees and the future of the company. Gradually, the enthusiasm that once fuelled the business is replaced by something altogether different: exhaustion.

From the outside, it’s easy to mistake that exhaustion for commercial failure.

From the inside, the two can feel almost indistinguishable.

Several years ago, a founder of a successful marketing agency reached exactly that point. The previous eighteen months had been exceptionally difficult. Revenue had slowed, confidence had taken a hit and every decision seemed to carry more weight than the last. After months of questioning whether the business could recover, he had reached what felt like the only logical conclusion.

The business should be sold.

The meeting had been arranged for a practical reason. The objective wasn’t to seek strategic advice or explore alternative options. It was to package the business, identify potential buyers and secure the best valuation possible before circumstances deteriorated further.

On paper, the instruction made perfect sense.

The business still possessed a respected client base, an experienced team and a reputation that retained value in the market. Finding a buyer wasn’t likely to be the difficult part.

Yet something about the conversation didn’t quite fit.

The financial challenges were real, but they didn’t resemble the challenges of a business beyond recovery. Instead, they reflected something altogether more familiar. Over time, responsibility had gradually accumulated around one individual. Every significant decision, whether operational, commercial or strategic, had found its way back to the founder’s desk. The organisation hadn’t simply become difficult to lead.

It had become exhausting to carry.

The business wasn’t broken.

The founder was.

Recognising the difference changed the direction of the conversation completely.

Instead of focusing on potential buyers, attention shifted towards leadership. Where had accountability become blurred? Which decisions genuinely required founder involvement? Had the organisation evolved while its leadership structure remained largely unchanged? More importantly, was selling the business genuinely the best strategic decision, or simply the fastest way to escape the pressure that had built over time?

Rather than committing to a sale immediately, two parallel strategies emerged.

The first was straightforward. Potential buyers would be identified so that an opportunity existed if selling ultimately proved to be the right decision.

The second required considerably more patience.

For six months, the business would be approached as though it wasn’t being sold at all.

Attention turned towards rebuilding leadership capacity rather than preparing information memoranda. Responsibilities were redistributed. Accountability became clearer. Discussions around succession planning began. The role of the founder evolved, allowing greater focus on clients, commercial growth and the long-term direction of the business rather than becoming consumed by day-to-day operational demands.

Before leaving that first meeting, one prediction was made.

If the underlying leadership challenges could be addressed properly, the desire to sell might disappear altogether.

At the time, it sounded optimistic.

Perhaps even unrealistic.

Six months later, offers arrived.

Every one of them was declined.

Not because the offers lacked value, but because the business had regained something considerably more important than valuation.

It had regained momentum.

Several years have now passed.

The agency has more than doubled in size. Its leadership team is stronger, the business is healthier and the founder recently reopened the conversation about selling.

This time, however, the motivation couldn’t have been more different.

The discussion was no longer driven by fatigue or uncertainty.

It was driven by opportunity.

The business is now expected to command a valuation several times greater than it would have achieved had the original transaction proceeded.

Looking back, the story offers a useful reminder of how easily symptoms can be mistaken for causes.

Businesses are often sold because growth has slowed, profitability has declined or confidence has disappeared. Yet those outcomes frequently originate much earlier, in leadership decisions that were delayed, avoided or simply never recognised for what they were.

Recruitment, restructuring and even acquisitions are often viewed as the defining moments in a company’s journey.

In reality, they are usually consequences.

The defining moments happen earlier, when leaders are prepared to question their assumptions before committing themselves to irreversible decisions.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson.

The greatest value an advisor can create isn’t helping a client execute the decision they’ve already made.

It’s creating the space, perspective and challenge for a better decision to emerge in the first place.

For businesses navigating periods of uncertainty, that distinction can prove to be transformational.

The Decisions That Shape Businesses

Spend enough time in business and you begin to notice an interesting pattern. Every industry has its own explanation for success. Marketing leaders will tell you that the strongest brands win. Technology businesses naturally place innovation at the centre of every conversation. Investors often talk about capital allocation, while management consultants understandably focus on strategy, […]

Spend enough time in business and you begin to notice an interesting pattern.

Every industry has its own explanation for success.

Marketing leaders will tell you that the strongest brands win. Technology businesses naturally place innovation at the centre of every conversation. Investors often talk about capital allocation, while management consultants understandably focus on strategy, operating models and execution.

None of those perspectives are wrong. In fact, they are all important. Yet after more than twenty years working alongside founders, CEOs and leadership teams, I’ve become increasingly convinced that they are often describing the symptoms rather than the underlying cause.

When I look back at the organisations that have genuinely changed the trajectory of their business, I rarely remember them because they discovered a revolutionary strategy or deployed a piece of technology before everyone else. I remember them because they made a series of difficult leadership decisions at exactly the right time.

That observation has stayed with me throughout my career because, on the surface, many businesses are remarkably similar. They compete in the same sectors, target the same customers, recruit from the same talent pools and, increasingly, have access to the same technology. Yet one organisation builds momentum year after year while another gradually loses its way.

I’ve come to believe the explanation lies less in what those businesses do and far more in who is making the decisions.

One conversation in particular has repeated itself more times than I can remember. A founder or CEO explains that growth has slowed. Revenue has plateaued, margins are under pressure or a previously successful strategy no longer seems to deliver the same results. Naturally, the first instinct is to examine the obvious variables. Marketing spend is reviewed, sales performance is scrutinised, product roadmaps are reassessed and operational efficiencies are explored. All sensible places to start.

What rarely happens at the beginning of that conversation is an honest discussion about whether the leadership team has evolved at the same pace as the business itself.

That isn’t because leaders avoid difficult conversations. More often, it’s because leadership change is deeply personal. The people who helped build a business are often the same people who have earned the trust, loyalty and friendship of the founder. Challenging that dynamic requires a different kind of courage to changing a pricing model or investing in new technology.

Yet businesses evolve whether we are ready for them to or not.

The capabilities required to launch a business are not necessarily the capabilities required to scale one. Likewise, the leadership team that successfully guides an organisation through one phase of growth may not be the team best equipped for the next. Recognising that reality isn’t a criticism of individuals. It’s an acknowledgement that businesses, markets and customer expectations are constantly changing.

Looking back, I’ve realised that the most successful organisations don’t simply invest in better products or better processes. They invest time in asking uncomfortable questions about leadership before circumstances force those questions upon them.

Who do we need to become over the next three years?

Does our current leadership team reflect that ambition?

Where are our blind spots?

Who challenges our thinking?

What capabilities will become critical as the business grows?

They’re deceptively simple questions, but they shape almost every important decision that follows.

This is one of the reasons I’ve gradually changed the way I think about executive search. Early in my career, I saw recruitment as the beginning of the process. Today, I see it as one possible outcome of a much broader leadership conversation.

Recruitment should never begin with a job description. It should begin with a deep understanding of where the organisation is trying to go and whether its leadership capability is aligned with that ambition. Without that context, even exceptional executives can struggle because they’re being asked to solve the wrong problems.

I’ve seen highly respected leaders fail in businesses that weren’t ready for them. Equally, I’ve seen relatively unknown individuals transform organisations because their strengths matched precisely what the business needed at that moment in time. The lesson wasn’t about recruitment. It was about judgement.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape every industry, conversations about the future of executive hiring have become increasingly polarised. Some believe technology will eventually replace much of the judgement traditionally associated with leadership appointments. I suspect the opposite may prove true.

AI will undoubtedly improve research, analysis and efficiency. It will help us access information faster than ever before. Those are all significant advances.

But leadership has never suffered from a shortage of information.

It has always suffered from a shortage of judgement.

The most important decisions in business are rarely made with complete certainty. They’re made when the information is incomplete, the stakes are high and the consequences are significant. Technology can improve the quality of the information available, but it cannot remove the responsibility of deciding what to do next.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve become increasingly convinced that judgement will become one of the most valuable commercial assets any leadership team possesses.

When I reflect on the businesses that have genuinely impressed me over the last two decades, I don’t remember them because they had perfect strategies. I remember them because they were willing to make difficult leadership decisions before circumstances made those decisions for them. They recognised that leadership isn’t another function within the organisation. It’s the force that shapes every other function.

Eventually, I realised there was one sentence that captured almost everything I’d observed.

Businesses rarely outperform the quality of their leadership decisions.

Everything else, from strategy and culture to growth and execution, is influenced by that single idea.

It’s a belief that continues to shape my own thinking and one I’ll return to often, because I suspect the organisations that thrive over the next decade won’t necessarily be those with access to the best technology or the biggest budgets.

They’ll be the ones that consistently make better leadership decisions than everyone else.

The Death of the “Like-for-Like” Hire

For years, recruitment followed a relatively predictable formula. A Managing Director leaves, you hire another Managing Director. A Head of Marketing exits, you replace them with someone carrying the same title from a similar business. The assumption was simple: replicate the role, preserve the structure, maintain continuity. But that model is quietly disappearing. Today, the […]

For years, recruitment followed a relatively predictable formula.

A Managing Director leaves, you hire another Managing Director. A Head of Marketing exits, you replace them with someone carrying the same title from a similar business. The assumption was simple: replicate the role, preserve the structure, maintain continuity.

But that model is quietly disappearing.

Today, the most forward-thinking businesses are no longer hiring for job titles alone. They are hiring for capabilities, commercial outcomes, and transformation needs. And increasingly, they are building leadership teams around complementary strengths rather than mirrored organisational charts.

This shift is changing the way companies think about talent entirely.

Businesses Are Solving Problems, Not Replacing People

Historically, recruitment was often reactive.

Someone resigned. A replacement brief was written. The search focused heavily on industry background, title alignment, and years of experience in an equivalent role.

But modern businesses are operating in a far more volatile environment.

AI is reshaping workflows.
Growth expectations are changing.
International expansion is accelerating.
Client expectations are evolving faster than organisational structures can keep up.

As a result, leadership hiring has become less about maintaining stability and more about solving strategic problems.

Instead of asking:

“Who has done this exact job before?”

Businesses are increasingly asking:

“What capability do we actually need to unlock the next stage of growth?”

Those are very different conversations.

The Rise of Capability-Based Hiring

We are now seeing companies hire individuals whose backgrounds look unconventional on paper but make perfect sense strategically.

A traditional “Head of Marketing” brief may evolve into a hybrid commercial growth role combining brand, demand generation, AI integration, and operational leadership.

A business looking for a Managing Director may actually need a transformation specialist capable of rebuilding culture, restructuring teams, and improving profitability.

A client services leader may be hired not because they have the identical title, but because they possess the emotional intelligence, commercial acumen, and operational discipline required to scale client relationships internationally.

The title becomes secondary.

The capability becomes everything.

The Best Leadership Teams Are Built Like Sports Teams

The smartest businesses no longer hire in isolation. They hire in context.

They look at the existing leadership team and identify where the gaps actually sit.

Does the business already have strategic thinkers but lack operational execution?
Do they have strong sales leadership but weak delivery infrastructure?
Are they commercially successful but culturally fragmented?
Do they understand AI strategically but lack practical implementation capability?

This is why like-for-like hiring increasingly fails.

Replicating the outgoing individual often replicates the same limitations that already existed within the business.

High-performing organisations instead build leadership teams the same way elite sports teams are assembled, balancing strengths, personalities, experiences, and specialist capabilities.

The goal is not uniformity.
It is balance.

Why Traditional Recruitment Models Are Struggling

Many recruitment processes are still heavily anchored in outdated thinking.

Too much emphasis remains on:

The problem is that transformative leaders rarely look perfect on paper.

Some of the strongest hires come from adjacent sectors.
Some have unconventional career journeys.
Some have never held the exact title being advertised.

But they possess the one thing modern businesses desperately need:

Adaptability.

In an economy being reshaped by technology, automation, AI, and changing consumer behaviour, adaptability has become one of the most valuable leadership traits in the market.

AI Is Accelerating This Shift

Artificial intelligence is only pushing this trend further.

As repetitive and process-driven tasks become increasingly automated, businesses are placing greater value on human capabilities that cannot easily be replicated:

Ironically, AI is making recruitment more human again.

Because when technical processes become commoditised, the differentiator becomes perspective, decision-making, and the ability to lead through ambiguity.

Recruitment Should Be a Strategic Conversation

This is where executive search and strategic hiring become fundamentally different from transactional recruitment.

The best hiring conversations today are not centred around:
“Who matches the job description?”

They are centred around:
“What does this business need to become over the next three to five years?”

That requires a deeper level of partnership.

It requires understanding organisational design, leadership dynamics, succession planning, commercial strategy, and market direction, not simply matching keywords on a CV.

The companies that understand this are building stronger, more resilient leadership teams.

The ones that do not risk hiring for yesterday’s structure while trying to compete in tomorrow’s market.

Final Thought

The future of recruitment is not about replacing people.

It is about identifying the capabilities that unlock growth, transformation, and competitive advantage.

The businesses that continue hiring like-for-like will maintain the status quo.

The businesses that hire for capability will shape what comes next.

From Pyramids to T‑Shapes: How AI and Consultancy Culture Are Reshaping Agencies

For decades, agencies were built like pyramids: a wide base of juniors and graduates, a narrowing middle of managers, and a small group of senior leaders at the top. This model made sense when work was manual, processes were linear, and clients expected armies of people on their account. It created a clear pathway of […]

For decades, agencies were built like pyramids: a wide base of juniors and graduates, a narrowing middle of managers, and a small group of senior leaders at the top. This model made sense when work was manual, processes were linear, and clients expected armies of people on their account. It created a clear pathway of progression, but it also relied on constant intake of entry‑level talent and tolerated a lot of operational inefficiency.


In the last five years, that pyramid has morphed into more of a diamond. Many agencies quietly shrank their graduate and junior intake, relying instead on a strong mid‑level layer of account managers, strategists, and specialists who could “hit the ground running.” The middle of the organisation grew broader and more experienced, while the base narrowed as fewer people came in at the start. On the surface, this felt leaner and more commercial; in reality, it created a bottleneck for future leadership and made it harder to grow the next generation of senior talent.


Now, a new shape is emerging: the T‑shaped agency. AI and automation are taking care of many of the repeatable, operational tasks that used to require layers of juniors and coordinators. Senior practitioners can sit closer to the work, supported by a small number of highly capable generalists and specialists who collaborate horizontally rather than through rigid hierarchy. Teams become flatter and more agile, with expertise distributed across a broader leadership group rather than concentrated in a single “top tier” protected by layers of management.


This shift is colliding with a second trend: the rise of consultancy‑style thinking inside agencies. Clients no longer just want output; they want partners who can challenge their thinking, shape strategy, and plug into their leadership conversations. That pushes agencies to prioritise critical thinking, commercial acumen, and the ability to work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with CMOs and CEOs. It naturally favours smaller, more senior‑heavy teams and creates fertile ground for independent and mid‑sized consultancies to take centre stage.


The upside of T‑shaped, consultative teams is clear: faster decisions, less bureaucracy, and work that is closer to the client’s real problems. For many brands, this combination of AI‑enabled efficiency and senior‑level thinking is exactly what they have been asking for. It explains why we’re seeing more briefs go to agile independents and specialist consultancies who can offer direct access to experienced people rather than a traditional pyramid staffed heavily at the bottom.


But there is a real risk if we do not address what has happened at the base of the structure. Fewer entry‑level roles today means fewer leaders five to ten years from now. Without deliberate investment in graduate and early‑career programmes, the industry will wake up to a missing generation of talent just as many current leaders are thinking about their own succession. Agencies that have quietly reduced junior hiring over the past decade will find their succession plans under real pressure.


The agencies and consultancies that win the next five years will be those that embrace the T‑shaped model without abandoning their responsibility to develop future leaders. They will use AI to strip out low‑value work, build broader leadership teams that can plug directly into client strategy, and at the same time rebuild intentional pathways for graduates and early‑career talent. In doing so, they will create organisations that are not only more efficient and consultative today but also sustainable and succession‑ready tomorrow.


Our view is that the future of agencies is bright – just different in shape. The pyramid era is over, the diamond is already peaking, and the T‑shaped, consultancy‑led model is now firmly in view. The question for leaders is whether they will design for that future intentionally, or arrive there by accident with a missing layer of talent.