Apparently, Piers showed this post during his breakout thing and generated a ripple of applause, so I guess I wasn't alone in being disappointed with the usual platitudes from the CDs and the usual deference from the moderators.
But it led us to a good few conversations about the way the various relationships within creative businesses will need to evolve, and it struck me that we're probably not far from a world where the distinction between planner, creative and account person will be as useful as the distinction between art director and copywriter in the average creative team. ie occasionally useful when talking about particular craft skills but increasingly mostly meaningless.
Agency 3.1 will be a loose collection of creative generalists where there'll be no particular reason where the one who can draw a bit will make the creative decisions, just as there'll be no reason where the one who's good at doing focus groups will make all the strategic decisions.
As digital agencies (and other sorts) get bigger they're tending to reproduce the mistakes of their advertising predecessors - creating specific creative departments, plonking a creative director at the top and surrounding them with all sorts of service groups. This is a smart way to get big, but it's also a quick way to get dumb. I suspect they'll realise that soon and move on, but who knows?
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