Stacy Thal

Hiring a designer can be rough. Ask yourself these four questions, and it will make the task a little easier.

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What is really happening with the big advertising networks? We have all seen the headlines and leadership changes, but those shifts only hint at something deeper about how agencies were built and who they were built for. Many blamed the situation on size, legacy structures, or leadership missteps. But I saw it differently. What really hollowed the system was when the people who once bought ideas began to decide how those ideas should be made. The creative partnership that once defined agencies turned into a managed service model, shaped more by control than collaboration. This is not a critique but an observation of a system many of us helped build. I have seen this from both sides of the table, as a creator and as a partner within the machine. Many of us have worked in systems like this, where process replaces purpose. When boards fill with former client side leaders, the instinct is to protect business, not to be ambitious about the work. The focus shifts from invention to reassurance. The system becomes safe, structured, and slow. Maybe that is not wrong. Maybe it is just what it was designed to do. But it also raises a question worth asking. 1. What happens to creativity when the people who once bought ideas are now the ones dictating how they are made? 2. What happens to progress when the agency’s core instinct becomes protection rather than creation? This is not about one company. It reflects a generation of agencies built on service rather than imagination. When the client’s mindset becomes the agency’s operating system, innovation becomes a luxury instead of a language. The chart I have shared below is not a playbook. It is perspective, a lens to see how agencies and brands define each other. For clients, this is not about who wins the next pitch. It is about which kind of agency will help you stay relevant in a changing world. For founders, it is about what kind of company you are really building. I am sure we all have a view on what makes an agency future ready. I would love to hear how you see it and what you believe a future ready agency should look like. What happens next will depend on who still believes creativity can lead business. #BrandStrategy #CreativeLeadership #AgencyLife #MarketingTransformation #FutureOfWork #DesignThinking #CreativityMatters

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At some point, agencies convinced themselves that more stakeholders equal better outcomes. More feedback. More reviews. More opinions. What actually happens is dilution. Every extra layer introduces interpretation. Every added voice pushes the work toward the middle. Clarity gets replaced by consensus. The best work I’ve seen came from small teams with clear authority and trust in the people doing the work. More eyes don’t improve creative. Clear ownership does.

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Does the brand still live in the owner’s head while the team guesses the script? 🧐 If onboarding stalls, approvals stack up, and every department sounds a little different, this is the read you do not skip. In a Brainz Magazine Q&A, Brand Studio Creative’s Katie Smetherman Holmes shows how coaching emerging leaders becomes real strategy. She builds a shared language so the team speaks with one voice, grows confident decision makers who keep momentum, and turns values into everyday actions clients can feel. Want fewer rewrites, faster yeses, and a brand that runs strong even when you are not in the room? Continue the story in the full article. Click the link in the comment section to keep reading. ✨ #brandconsulting #brandstrategist #brandpositioning #corporatedesign #businessbranding #womenentrepreneur

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From the Coalition Technologies design team testing of Figma and Google "big" AI design updates.... Failing grades. Make and Stitch don't pass muster for what they claimed to be. "Figma Make struggled mostly with visual quality and following direction. It ignored the theme in the initial output and still didn’t get close after re-prompting, defaulting to a generic template look. Imagery was poor, branding was barely applied, and text contrast failed accessibility despite being clearly specified as a requirement. That said, it handled site structure (based on our sitemaps) better. Google Stitch looked more visually interesting overall, but was also far less reliable. Desktop and mobile versions never matched at all, with different layouts and content being generated. This happened whether you generated them at the same time, or desktop first then asked it to make a mobile of that desktop. Re-prompts didn’t fix this and sometimes made it worse. It also had major layout issues, like overlapping sections, and even skipped required sections entirely." Apparently their best current utility is just for some iterative design inspiration and little else.

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Disposable thoughts are the ideas you have at the beginning of a project, when you only have a surface-level understanding of a company. A lot of creative teams are briefed with a 30-minute meeting and a sheet of paper… we’re building blueprints. I’ve worked with Lindsay Poulton at a couple different agencies now, her ability to lean into the details and stitch them into CX maps and blueprints is inspiring. It offers a framework to elevate all aspects of a company, not just the parts customers see on the outside.

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A brand refresh doesn’t start with color palettes or typography. It starts when teams can no longer execute consistently. When the website, proposals, internal decks, and digital products stop lining up, the brand isn’t dated. It’s misaligned. I wrote about the operational signals leaders should pay attention to before that misalignment becomes expensive to fix. Link 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYMzwAT4 #ForbesCouncils #ForbesAgencyCouncil #Branding #BrandRefresh

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⏱️ Bye-Bye Billable Hours❓ S4 Bets Big on Output in the Age of AI In his latest earnings call, Sir Martin Sorrell outlined how AI is shifting agency economics - and it starts with pricing. With marketers under pressure to cut production costs, S4 is testing hybrid models that trade hourly billing for output-based deals. Clients are asking: if AI cuts 20% of execution time, do fees follow? Sorrell says not necessarily - fewer hours, more assets. And early results with brands like Puma show faster, high-quality work is possible. The big bet? That AI will enable agencies to scale content and revenue, not shrink it. Output over hours isn’t just a pricing tweak — it’s a structural shift. Smaller, AI-powered teams. Faster turnaround.  The industry isn’t all in yet, but the experiments are well underway. #Advertising #AgencyModel #GenerativeAI #MarketingStrategy #CMO Read more at Digiday (https://lnkd.in/ggDjtnHp) or see other stories of agencies reinventing work with AI at wine.tech 👇 https://lnkd.in/gi3YyPJb

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