The Real Enemy Of Agency Creativity Is Money

Forbes

25-06-2025

Ellis Verdi, president of DeVito/Verdi.
Ad agencies always ask their clients what keeps them up at night. But if you ask an ad agency the same question, my answer would be the rapid decline of creativity. Too many of us have given up the thing we do best—think creatively—in the race to chase performance marketing dollars.
As chief marketing officers eagerly embraced performance marketing approaches to advertising, many agencies saw the opportunity to jump aboard this money train and throw creativity overboard. Overnight, agencies of all stripes became more like media companies and data-driven consultants who were richly rewarded for emphasizing metrics over the creative product.
There was money to be made, but what so many ad agencies have banked on may be the cause of their ultimate demise. Furthermore, the industry is losing its most valuable asset: talented people. It was recently reported that employment in advertising, public relations and related services in the U.S. has fallen for six consecutive months. While chasing performance marketing dollars, many agencies have dissed and dismissed the creative quotient in this numbers-focused approach to advertising.
Let me be clear: I'm not anti-performance marketing, as it clearly has a huge role in brand marketing. But we need to balance that role with creativity and branding.
A 2023 Harvard Business Review article called for a revamping and rebalancing of brand metrics (registration required), stating, 'Pitting brand building and performance marketing against each other in a competition for budget unnecessarily damages the effectiveness of both.' A balance is what's needed, not a trade-off.
How Did We Sideline Creativity?
What's happened is that many clients—and their agencies—were convinced to let data dictate their decisions. Trusting your judgment or gut on a possible campaign is no longer a metric. What your ad says or shows is no longer primary. In fact, it really isn't that important, according to those running the numbers now. I guess that's one way to keep chief financial officers from putting a match to ad budgets.
And once those most invested in pushing performance marketing—big data companies—had clients completely sold on going all-in on performance marketing, many began to wonder whether we even need ad agencies anymore. AI can do it easier, faster and much cheaper, they say. Agencies now have only one thing to fall back on: creative. But many agencies sacrificed that long ago at the altar of performance marketing. Remember, they told their clients that creative is overrated.
This seems to be what the big data companies planned all along: convince brands to emphasize metrics over creativity. Once done, data companies will ice out agencies on the performance and swoop in to take care of the creative that machines can easily spit out. Case in point: Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly trying to make Meta the creative engine that puts agencies out of business.
Chasing Money Over Creativity And Values
You can't blame big data companies for coming after us. It was too easy. The problem, as I see it, is that too many agencies are chasing money at the expense of their values—true values. We can't compete against the Metas, Googles or Trade Desks of the world in terms of process. But we can compete on creativity.
What has always made us special and valuable is our thinking and our ideas that help businesses. The problem is that money gets in the way every time. If you just talk about creativity in the absence of dollars, you are discussing a different objective, such as personal expression or artistic endeavors. But the advertising business is exactly that: a business. And if you're playing for the short term, which most of the industry is (public company perspective), you chase the dollars. So went the industry—chasing performance marketing dollars. Clients were asking, and agencies responded. Keep in mind that the most expensive part of the ad business is creative. So if that becomes less important, the agency businesspeople have no problem with that result.
With creativity sidelined, though, we've seen returns on investment (ROIs) shrink with greater spending. Ironically, data has shown that a reliance on performance alone leads to a decline in brand saliency. I'll be the first to say that performance marketing—working alongside brand building—is incredibly valuable, especially for startups. It delivers measurable results, unique insights, scalability and a way to react and pivot in real time. It's when the scales become tilted that the problem arises.
A meaningful, creative campaign is what moves something from the back of the brain to the front. It's what creates top-of-mind awareness, which leads to all the good things advertising delivers: loyalty, affinity, purchase, repeat purchases and more. A 2018 study of car purchases by Nielsen found that top-of-mind brand awareness drives 90% of purchase intent.
But instead of brand building, we're seeing way too many ephemeral gimmicks and creative workarounds from agencies. These are stunts and one-offs that fail to achieve any long-term saliency for a brand. And while the industry was meeting for fancy afternoon meals in the sun during the Cannes Lions festival recently, Meta and others have been looking to eat their lunch.
How Can We Course Correct?
I believe we need to get back to what makes us so vital. Let's get back to learning the classic tenets of advertising. Let's look at what's been successful in the past and understand how emotion and intelligence can guide effective advertising. Go out and get a mentor and learn. And we all need to explore different media. Maybe TV spots are new to you, or radio or TikTok, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't apply your talents to them. This is how we make the entire industry better.
Yes, many of us pursued performance marketing dollars and threw creativity under the bus. But let's get back to rebalancing the branding scales and elevate creativity once again.
We need to learn something about a weakness agencies have exhibited since well before the Mad Men days: Chasing money at the expense of the core reason for your existence will eventually leave you without any money.
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