The essential truths of the business that no agency can avoid. (Perspective).(Editorial)

I always enjoy those moments when I'm reminded that beneath an adman's liberal, creative exterior beats the heart of a ruthless businessman. One such moment came this week when Marc Sands, Nigel Bogle, Toby Hoare, Peter I Mead and Robin Wight agreed to write 350 words apiece on their ideas for rebuilding HHCL & Partners (p24).

There are various ideas offered and some are more do-able than others. Sands, identifying the crucial point where HHCL's creed related more to itself than to its clients, suggests the agency creates a new advertising aesthetic. This demands innovation of the type the agency seems disinclined to follow; its recent statements on putting client service first and relaxing its once pioneering policies on the working environment suggest safety first is the order of the day.

Bogle, incisive as ever, sees opportunities for HHCL in a new vision, a move from "advertising via interruption" toward "new concepts of brand engagement". Hoare offers practical ideas: a new name, measures to boost staff morale, a relaunch of the brand, a return to basics. Mead writes that HHCL's positioning as a mature enfant terrible needs redefining. Wight makes a universal point in suggesting that HHCL is suffering from that well-known WCRS disease: founder starvation.

It needs saying here that Wight is an exception. From almost every other agency proprietor one picks up a sense of bursting achievement at the outset, which becomes distinctly more limited as time ...