Agency Of The Future?

Bud Caddell wrote an thought provoking post recently about the future of the agency model. A great counter-intuitive twist lies at the heart of his thesis, which is as follows:

Advertising agency of the future sounds a bit like horse drawn carriage of the future.

I’m not saying for certain that there won’t be agencies in the future, only that the future doesn’t necessarily need agencies. Just like the future doesn’t need printed news but it needs journalism; the future needs commercial communications, but who creates them, the agency or the brand or someone else, is unwritten.

Equally impressive are the number of comments and the contributors who are adding to the conversation. Well worth joining the conversation. It’s early yet to see how this will all play out, but the winning hypothesis in the post revolves around a symbiosis between the idea makers and the executors.  Interestingly, Bud posits a third way, that of the platform builders:

We’ll also begin to see a new species of agency evolve, the platform builders, that reverse the power dynamic between brand and agency by creating remarkable, attention earning, systems for human interaction.

Who are the platform builders? From technologists like Foursquare to entertainers like Katalyst or on to other players in the space like agencies traditionally focused on PR or digital production, the possibilities, for now at least, are open.

What Consumes Me: “Who Says The Future Needs An Advertising Agency?”