Thinking
Analysis, frameworks, and perspective on the forces reshaping agency strategy.
Strategy & Positioning
Why Strategy Can’t Be Commoditised
Something remarkable is happening to the creative industries. The tools that once defined agency value — design, video production, copywriting — are being democratised at extraordinary speed. As Tom Salmon put it on The Space Betweenpodcast: “Design used to be defensible. Now a junior can use Figma. Video used to be defensible. Now you can use Sora.” Midjourney generates visual concepts in seconds. AI writes passable copy in milliseconds. The execution layer that agencies have sold for decades is collapsing in price towards zero.
This should terrify any agency that bills primarily for making things. But it should embolden any agency that bills for thinking. The structural shift is clear: execution is being commoditised, but strategy — the ability to read a room, understand a business, connect marketing activity to commercial outcomes — remains stubbornly human. Aaron Hutchinson, a specialist in agency positioning and pricing, identifies the core problem: agencies systematically undervalue strategy by bundling it into execution fees or giving it away for free. They frame themselves as suppliers when they should be framing themselves as specialists. The result is a race to the bottom on the very work that AI is about to do faster and cheaper than any human team.
Roy Murphy, who works at the intersection of agencies and AI, put it more bluntly: “Agencies will be dead in 18 months” — not all agencies, but those that refuse to reposition around strategic value. This is not a cyclical dip. It is a structural collapse for execution-led businesses. The agencies that survive will be the ones that decouple strategy from tactics, price it as a standalone product, and demonstrate its value with rigour. They will move from selling hours to selling outcomes.
This is precisely why MSQ exists. Our nine-pillar framework makes strategy explicit, repeatable, and defensible. It transforms strategic thinking from a vague phase that precedes the “real work” into the real work itself — a structured methodology that agencies can deliver with confidence, clients can see the value in, and boards can sign off on. When execution becomes a commodity, the only moat left is the quality of thinking that directs it.
Data & Insight
The Alignment Gap
Across more than 5,000 business assessments, MSQ has observed a pattern so consistent it has become one of our foundational insights: there is a persistent, measurable gap between what the C-suite intends and what marketing actually delivers. CEOs articulate ambitious strategic visions. CMOs translate those visions into marketing plans. Agencies execute those plans into campaigns. At each handoff, meaning is lost. Assumptions go unquestioned. Context evaporates. By the time strategy reaches the market, it has been diluted into tactics — activity that looks productive but lacks strategic coherence.
We call this the space between— the gap between what is said and what is meant, between what is briefed and what is needed, between what agencies claim to deliver and what they actually produce. Remeny Armitage, a strategic advisor who appeared on our podcast, articulated it precisely: agencies miss the space between what is asked and what is really needed. Clients write briefs without fully explaining their true pain points. Agencies read those briefs without questioning them. The misalignment compounds silently until it surfaces as disappointing results, eroded trust, and shortened client tenure.
Marc Holland, a senior marketing leader who has worked with Lego, O2, and Shark Ninja, offered the antidote from the client side: “Don’t spend half an hour re-reading the brief we gave you. Ask questions instead. Be curious.” The agencies he values most are the ones that treat a brief not as a specification to execute but as a conversation to begin. When agencies are brought in early — before the brief is polished, before the budget is locked — execution improves dramatically because the agency was part of developing the thinking, not just delivering someone else’s.
The MSQ Index was built to close this gap. By surveying every member of the C-suite across nine strategic pillars, we surface the misalignments that no one is talking about — the unstated assumptions, the conflicting priorities, the strategic blind spots. The result is not a report that gathers dust. It is the raw material for the strategic conversations that should have been happening all along, and the foundation for work that connects marketing activity to the outcomes the business actually needs.
Market & Opportunity
The Independent Advantage
The holding company model that dominated advertising for thirty years is unravelling in real time. WPP formally abandoned the holding company structure in February 2026, restructuring into four integrated units after a 5.4% revenue decline and an S&P negative rating. The Omnicom-IPG merger eliminated iconic brands — FCB, MullenLowe, DDB — and cut roughly 10,000 jobs. These are not temporary setbacks. The Big Six has become the Big Four, and it is still shrinking. The networks that remain are consolidating around AI-powered execution: faster production, cheaper media buying, automated output at scale.
This creates a structural opportunity for independent agencies — but only for those that recognise the trap. Roy Murphy warned that mid-sized agencies, those in the two to ten million pound revenue band, are the most exposed. Big networks own execution at scale. Solo practitioners own agility and low overheads. The middle has no moat — unless it owns strategy. Chris Devlin, a founding partner at talent firm Pivotal, has observed agencies actively trying to move upstream in client organisations, getting into the room before the brief is written, before the budget is set. But aspiration is not enough. You cannot simply tell execution-oriented people to start thinking strategically.
What independents do have is something the holding companies have lost: the ability to be nimble, specialist, and relational. They can build genuine partnerships rather than managing accounts through layers of bureaucracy. They can own a sector, develop deep expertise, and become the advisor a client trusts at board level. With 85% of brands planning media agency reviews in 2026 and senior strategic talent flooding the market from collapsed holding company structures, the window of opportunity for well-positioned independents has never been wider.
MSQ enables independent agencies to seize this moment. Our methodology gives independents the same strategic rigour that big networks claim but increasingly cannot deliver. It provides a repeatable framework for assessing businesses, identifying strategic gaps, aligning C-suite stakeholders, and delivering recommendations that connect to commercial outcomes. It turns strategy from an instinct into a process — one that agencies can sell, staff can deliver, and clients can see working. The holding company era is ending. The independent era is beginning. The question is which independents will be ready.