ADWEEK - 'The legendary ad blogger on Instagram creatives, brands riding the Reddit wave, and how agencies can save themselves'

So Fast Chat: Åsk Wäppling
The legendary ad blogger on Instagram creatives, brands riding the Reddit wave, and how agencies can save themselves. Oh my, the words "legendary" and "renowned" have me suffering from "gigantic head". It'll pass.

Let's talk about agencies. Are we looking at the last days of the traditional agency? Are creatives going to stop making ads and start making products? And if so, should they get out of the ad business entirely?

This is kind of doomsday, but I've been talking to a lot of different ad agencies for a while now about things one can do in the future. They're very, very slow moving. They still are moving like dinosaurs. And they're losing great creative minds to tech. You can see this especially on the West Coast. In San Francisco, everybody's going to tech. Iain Tait went to Google. Because tech isn't moving that slow. Tech is ready to jump into new media and new ideas and try things out.

But it's also because advertising agencies have had one fundamental problem since the beginning—using the 15 percent charge for media instead of charging for the idea, which is what we create. They're doing the same thing again. When they create these cute little apps and stuff, they're just giving the app away. This is something they should have rights to. This is the code that created this app. They could be selling it somewhere else. They could be making money off the stuff they're creating. And they're still not doing it. They're bleeding themselves dry.

Are they in too deep, or is there time to turn this around?

They can turn it around, but they've gotta do it yesterday. They're probably going to have meetings for another six months to discuss what I just said.