Advertising is at a crossroads. Brands don’t need more suppliers to churn out campaigns; they need partners who can move the growth needle. Yet too many agencies are still competing on cost, chasing vanity metrics, and accepting their relegation to ‘order takers’. That path only leads to irrelevance.
If agencies want a seat at the table, they need to earn it - by speaking the language of business, being accountable for commercial outcomes, and proving that creativity is not just art, but a driver of enterprise value. Because the choice is clear: stop taking orders, or risk being written out of the story altogether.
Marketing must speak the language of CFOs
Despite today’s sophisticated tech stacks and dashboards, marketing is still too often seen as a cost centre rather than a growth lever. CEOs and CFOs think in terms of revenue, profit margins, shareholder value, and risk. Marketing, meanwhile, too often speaks of impressions, engagement, and ‘brand love’, metrics that sound like jargon outside our own circles.
This mismatch creates a credibility gap. When CMOs cannot translate brand equity into business equity, their seat at the table is at risk. Gartner reports that nearly 60% of CMOs struggle to demonstrate the financial impact of their work. That leaves a dangerous vacuum: budgets get cut, agencies lose influence, and marketing drifts further from the boardroom conversation.
If we want to be heard by CEOs and CFOs, we must show how brand investment supports pricing power, drives acquisition, and creates long-term enterprise value. Without this translation, agencies remain suppliers of ads, not partners in growth.
How agencies lost their influence
It wasn’t always this way. Agencies once provided direct guidance on brand strategy, positioning, and even market entry. But over time, a mix of forces pushed them to the margins:
Commoditisation of creativity: A crowded landscape of platforms, freelancers, and in-house studios made creativity feel interchangeable.
Procurement pressure: When value is judged solely on cost efficiency, agencies are pushed into transactional work.
Short-termism: Digital metrics created a bias toward quick wins and clicks, sidelining the long-term brand building that sustains growth.
Internal silos: CMOs themselves became isolated from finance and operations, making it harder to elevate the marketing conversation beyond campaign outputs.
The result? Agencies briefed late, measured narrowly, and were stripped of strategic authority. The “brief in, brief out” cycle became the default.
Accountability is non-negotiable
To reclaim relevance, agencies must prove that creativity drives commerce. That means redefining what success looks like:
From impressions to impact: Prove contributions to pipeline, share, and lifetime value.
From campaigns to capabilities: Help clients build systems, not just one-offs.
From brand love to brand value: Treat brand equity as a financial asset tied to P&L performance.
This isn’t about reducing creativity to spreadsheets. It’s about showing that ideas build businesses — sustainably and measurably. The data backs it up: Les Binet and Peter Field’s research shows that long-term brand building is the most reliable growth path.
The Brave way: from suppliers to partners
At Brave Group, we believe the future of agencies lies in the courage to challenge, not just comply. True partnership means asking uncomfortable questions: What is this campaign really trying to achieve? How does it ladder up to revenue? Is this the right long-term investment?
It also means embedding ourselves in our clients’ businesses, not just their marketing teams. By understanding financial levers, growth priorities, and investor pressures, agencies earn the right to sit alongside CEOs and CFOs as trusted advisors.
The agencies that thrive will be those that connect creativity, commerce, and culture. Not only helping businesses be seen, but also valued. Not only heard, but trusted. Not only liked, but chosen.
Agencies can continue down the well-trodden path of order taking — competing on cost, executing briefs, and fading into irrelevance. Or they can reclaim their place as true growth partners.
The choice is clear.
