Opinion: On the Campaign Couch ... with JB.(Column)

Q: Jeremy, how do you explain the statistic - recently featured in Campaign - that 15 out of the top 18 ad agencies have changed CEO in the past two years? And what can we do about it?

A: I expect someone at Campaign could tell us exactly how many of the top 18 media agencies have changed CEOs in the past two years. I bet it's a lot less than 15; and maybe that's the beginning of the explanation you're looking for. The last 15 or 20 years have been turbulent times for the traditional ad agency - not least because the traditional ad agency ceased to exist during that time, though not all of them noticed.

Looking back, we can see that the full-service agency was once a stately vessel. Yes, of course, there were good years and bad years; triumphant wins and devastating losses; breakaways and mergers and start-ups with improbable founders' names linked together like Dickensian solicitors. (Stephen King's inspired creation was Beagle, Bargle, D'Annunzio, Twigg & Privet.)

There was always something for Campaign to write about. But compared to the storms that were brewing up beyond the horizon, sailing conditions were benign and predictable. Much the same ships sailed sedately on, offering much the same services to much the same clients. And it was, of course, during this time, that today's CEOs joined the business as graduate trainees and conscientiously trained themselves for a future that never materialised.

The moment that media went, so did scale. And the moment scale goes, authority is threatened. Size, for obvious reasons, has always favoured media companies but does little if anything for creative companies. Fragmentation, specialisation and disintermediation - unknown words in 1990 - all whittled away at the full-service agency, which no longer had a reserved seat at the client's top table. Lulled into a false sense of security by the bursting of the first internet bubble, agencies were quite unprepared for the second internet bubble, which turned out not to be one. Their life raft was The Great Reel, to which they clung tenaciously; at exactly the time that the world's most persuasive and powerful medium was increasingly portrayed as conservative, didactic, poor value for money and deeply uncool.

Are you still surprised that 15 out of the top 18 ad agencies have changed CEO in the past two years?

Q: Dear Jeremy, I am great mates with another creative ...