Most marketing agencies are already dead. They just haven’t admitted it yet.
The culprit? The slow, painful, and entirely predictable death of the £15,000 monthly retainer. That comfortable, recurring revenue stream that has propped up mediocre agencies for decades is evaporating. And I, for one, am glad to see it go.
As the founder of an AI-first marketing agency and the builder of agentic AI products, I see the rot from both sides. The agency world is clinging to a broken model, charging for hours and busywork that software can now execute for a fraction of the cost. The time-for-money equation is fundamentally broken. The future doesn’t belong to the agency with the biggest headcount; it belongs to the agency with the best-trained agents.