There was a time, not so long ago, when advertising agencies regarded entertainment companies with the mild condescension that surgeons reserve for general practitioners. The entertainment people made shows; the advertising people made the commercials that interrupted them. The hierarchy was clear, and so were the fees.
Now, in one of those reversals that Madison Avenue has always found simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, a growing number of agencies have decided they would rather be in the interruption business no longer. They want to make the shows.
Ralph, the London-based creative shop led by Chris Hassell, has gone further down this road than most. The agency is developing a magazine, a television channel, a podcast with Time Out and something Mr. Hassell describes, with the careful vagueness that suggests lawyers are involved, as the revival of "one of the most recognizable kids' brands around." There is also, apparently, a cartoon in production for a television network.
"If your business model is still aiming to be fee-based," Mr. Hassell said, "you're not really approaching it wholeheartedly."
He is not alone in the diagnosis. Elvis, another London agency, recently hired Claire Prince as head of entertainment — a title that would have seemed peculiar in an advertising agency a decade ago. Ms. Prince, who came up through television development before stints at BBH and WPP's media operations, was brought in because the agency had reached a conclusion that would have been heresy in an earlier era: "Staying as a traditional advertising agency means you're just going to get smaller."
(This is not, it should be noted, the kind of thing agencies used to say out loud.)
The production partner rosters are changing accordingly. Banijay and Fremantle — companies that make television programs — are replacing the production houses that once made commercials. The implications ripple through how briefs get written, what strategists actually do and how much of the creative leadership comes from inside the building.
Small World, a shop founded in 2021 by Dan Salkey and Harvey Austin, has been testing the approach with what it calls entertainment-first creativity. For Hot Topic, the American retailer that had lost its footing with Generation Z, that meant assembling a writers' room with a showrunner and producing a social-first sitcom. It has been commissioned for five more seasons.
"It's not that this is a new thing," Mr. Salkey said. "It's just that it's more important."
The oldest question in advertising — how do you make something people actually want to spend time with? — has a way of reasserting itself whenever the industry runs out of other things to optimize. For a decade, the answer was volume, then targeting, then whatever the platforms were selling that quarter. Now, having made itself cheaper and more efficient, the industry finds itself contemplating what, exactly, it is for.
The answer, apparently, is television.
Original story published in Digiday: "Future of Marketing Briefing: How agencies are betting on entertainment to survive"