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Work Life

When Creators Influence Agencies More Than Agencies Influence Creators

Ad Tribe Editorial2 min read
Two arrows in terracotta and dusty blue crossing, the larger one pointing back towards a studio shape

For most of advertising's history the traffic ran one way, and creators adapted to agencies rather than the reverse. Agencies decided what a piece of communication looked like, and everyone else, including the people who made things for the internet, adapted to it. Sit in a creative review this year and the direction has plainly reversed.

The evidence is in the vocabulary. Hook, retention, first three seconds, comment bait, format. None of that came out of an agency. It came out of people making things alone, testing constantly, and learning faster than any review cycle allows.

What creators actually changed

Not the aesthetics, though that is what gets noticed. They changed the unit of work. An agency idea was historically a campaign that could be adapted downward into formats. A creator idea is a format that can be repeated until it stops working, then abandoned without ceremony.

That is a different relationship with an idea, and it is unsettling for a craft built on the single definitive execution. It is also, on the evidence of what travels, frequently more effective.

Agencies taught the industry how to make one thing beautifully. Creators taught it how to make forty things and find out.

What agencies still hold

The counterargument is worth stating properly, because it is strong. Creators optimise for attention within a platform's rules. Agencies are supposed to build something that persists when the platform changes, which requires a view of a brand over years rather than weeks. Very few creators are asked to do that, and it is a genuinely different skill.

What it means for a career

The useful position is neither imitation nor disdain. The people doing best are the ones who can work at creator speed and still hold a brand argument, which is an unusual pairing and is what the IPA's Agency Census 2025 gestures at when it reports 88.3% of agencies saying technology has considerably changed how they work.

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