WPP, once the world’s most dominant force in the marketing services industry, has seen about $27 billion in its market value evaporate.  This isn't just bad news; it's a warning shot to an entire industry still structured in ways as antiquated as Madison Avenue three martini lunches.

​

WPP’s share price cratered 63% this year, and Wall Street isn't being dramatic. It's being honest about a business model that's been gasping for air since 2009.

​

Here's what really happened: The big agencies were built brilliantly: a handful of senior strategic and creative minds supported by armies of junior talent to "manage relationships" and "execute the vision." It worked until it didn't. The death spiral began quietly. Senior partners who once obsessed over client challenges started spending more time managing their agencies than solving client problems. Margins became the religion. Clients fixated on exorbitant hourly rates. So agencies did what seemed logical: hire more junior people, and fewer senior ones, to do the work. Keep those blended hourly rates down.  

​

But here's the reality nobody admits: agencies are hired to grow businesses and brands. When your most experienced people stop doing the thinking work, growth stalls. When growth stalls, CFOs squeeze budgets harder. The cycle accelerates.

​

Now AI handles what junior talent used to do, faster and cheaper. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, et al, are racing to automate everything tactical.  Which leaves one question: What can't be automated?

​

The answer is staring us in the face. Deep expertise. Hard-won experience. The wisdom and pattern recognition that comes from solving real growth problems for decades. The creative instinct that knows which risks are worth taking. AI can generate options. It can't know which option will move your business forward.
 

At Metaforce, we have been building around this truth for 10 years, where only senior partners do the strategic and creative work that actually drives growth. Nothing against mid-level or junior talent, or the machines taking their place.  But the biggest barriers to client growth require the most experienced expertise and diversity of thought to address.

Going forward, as cultural, economic and political complexity intensifies, businesses will need this kind of expertise more than ever. They won't need the traditional agency scaffolding, now crumbling, that's been built around it.