Changing marketing

Advertising is a crappy business. Margins shrink, talent leaves, clients churn, and the standard response is to cut costs and pitch harder. We looked at that treadmill in 2004 and decided the problem was not effort. It was the model.

An industry paid for activity will optimise for activity. More campaigns, more decks, more billable scope. An industry paid for results would look very different, and the essays below are about what that industry would do differently: fewer, better campaigns; measurement that survives scrutiny; and teams that stay because the work compounds.

We have run on that alternative model since 2004, from Mumbai, Dubai and Noordwijk. It works. That is the argument.