The Old Model Is Running Out Of Road

For most of my career, a creative or advisory business was built around one thing: a handful of talented people who could win a room and keep a client happy for a decade. That model still works in pockets. But it is not what clients are asking for anymore.

Boards and founders now want proof that an idea can survive contact with a balance sheet. They want to know how a campaign or a piece of brand work moves a number that matters to the business, not just a number that matters to a marketing department. That is a real change, and it changes who gets hired to lead.

What Clients Are Actually Asking For Now

I sit in a lot of rooms where the brief has shifted before anyone says so out loud. A few years ago, the first question was usually “what is the big idea?” Now it is closer to “how does this hold up in a downturn?” or “what happens to this when the leadership changes?”

That is not a smaller question. It is a harder one. It asks a creative or advisory leader to think like an operator, not just a storyteller. I have spent a lot of my working life on both sides of that line, first at Wunderman, then leading marketing across multiple consumer brands in China and ASEAN, and later building an advisory group from scratch. Each of those roles asked me to justify creative work in commercial terms, and each time the bar for that justification got higher.

Three Shifts I Am Watching Closely

Clients want fewer, deeper relationships. They are tired of managing five vendors for one brand problem. They want one team that can move between strategy, creative work, and execution without a handoff that loses momentum. That means the businesses that win are the ones built to work across disciplines from day one, not the ones that bolt disciplines together after the fact.

Leadership teams need to think in more than one market at a time. A brand decision made for one region rarely travels cleanly to another. I learned this leading marketing across eight brand portfolios in China and ASEAN, where a message that worked in one country needed real rework, not translation, to work in the next. Businesses that assume one playbook fits every market are the ones that stall when they try to grow.

Founders are expected to build for a future they will not run. Investors and boards want to see a company that can survive a change in leadership without losing its shape. That was part of my own thinking when I transitioned MTM Choice to new leadership after a decade of building it. A business built around one person’s instincts is fragile. A business built around a clear model and a strong team is not.

What I Am Doing Differently Because Of This

I now spend more time early in an engagement asking about the commercial model before I ask about the creative ambition. Not because the creative ambition matters less, but because it only survives if the model underneath it can carry the weight.

I also push leadership teams to name, in plain terms, what happens to the work if the key person on it leaves. If nobody has an answer, that is the first thing to fix, not the last.

And I spend more time than I used to on succession, even in businesses far from any actual transition. Most founders think about who replaces them only when they are forced to. I think it is one of the more useful questions to ask early, because the answer tells you a lot about how healthy the business actually is right now.

The Part That Has Not Changed

None of this means the work itself matters less. Good creative and strategic thinking is still the reason clients call in the first place. What has changed is the expectation that sits around it: that the thinking can be defended in commercial terms, that it can travel across markets without losing its point, and that it can outlast any one person in the room.

That is a higher bar than the one I started my career against. I think it is the right one.