The classic full-service advertising agency is dead, long live the new, holistically structured full-service media agency.

At the moment, everyone in our industry is surprised that there are disruptions in the economy and therefore also in the advertising world. Of course, some agency structures are too encrusted and then it is difficult for global players to adapt to new situations. Smaller, more nimble, organizations have an easier time anticipating the future.

I have often asked myself what the biggest changes in the 21st century have been. Was it the two world wars, the atomic bomb, the rise of Japan and China as global economic powers, the great technological innovations, the invention of the computer and the associated information revolution, the demographic upheavals, the ecological changes leading to climate change in many places? And I have found an answer. It was the qualitative changes in our society that brought all this about. It is the human being who has evolved from a dependent, manual worker to an increasingly free knowledge worker who, supported by digital communication technologies and forms of energy, acts in a globally networked manner and has thus mutated into a "global brain". The fact that this development has also affected the advertising market is only a logical consequence.

The truth lies in the whole.
In recent years, the agency scene has changed tremendously. The model of the classic full-service advertising agency seemed to have become a discontinued model. The agency world split into creative agencies and media agencies. And this did not always happen for the benefit of the customers. Multiple contacts, loss of the holistic view, increased, albeit not always transparent, costs were the result.

Today, after the classic analog media world has grown together with the new digital media and social interaction has additionally revitalized the communities, large, international media agency groups are now thinking aloud that it might make sense to bring creatives and specialists for digital communication and social interaction into the media agencies after all and thus, as before, be able to offer clients the services of a full-service advertising agency again.

The classic full-service advertising agency is dead, long live the new, holistic full-service media agency. This may sound sexy to some, but to me this development is really just confirmation that an agency can only really do good things for its clients if it thinks holistically and can demonstrate expertise in the areas of strategy, creation and project management. It is clear that this also requires a certain proximity to the market.

The media agency of the future employs strategists, creatives and project managers; it thinks holistically and is at home in the world of classic, digital and also social media.

The classic full-service advertising agency celebrates its resurrection in the form of the new full-service media agency. The only question that remains is what the agency multinationals plan to do with their old creative agencies? There will no longer be a market for these slimmed-down agency types in the medium term.