The Death of Bold

Why Big Agencies Are Quietly Killing the Industry

In a R5 trillion industry, where some JSE-listed companies allocate billions of rands annually to their marketing budgets, you would expect groundbreaking, risky, and culture-shaping creative work from the agencies entrusted with those budgets. But too often, we get the opposite: safe, sanitized, boardroom-friendly campaigns that excite no one and shift nothing.

Why?

Because when you're a multinational agency with shareholders, pension funds, and executive bonuses on the line, you're not rewarded for rocking the boat—you’re rewarded for playing it safe.

The Risk-Averse Corporate Safety Net

Creative directors, CEOs, and holding group execs at the big agencies are often less incentivized to deliver boundary-breaking work and more rewarded for not losing the account. That's the real KPI—maintain billings, don’t scare the client, and keep those presentations polished enough for the boardroom. It’s understandable, but tragic. Because it kills the soul of the industry.

Death by Procurement

Procurement teams—bless them—have no clue how to evaluate creativity. They know pricing models, risk assessments, BEE points, and financial audits. But they don't understand culture, nuance, or the human insight that fuels great advertising. And when the biggest agencies optimize for procurement checklists, we end up with vanilla ideas that win tenders, not hearts.

The Corporate Creative Dilemma

What happens when a creative director wants to challenge a client’s brief? What happens when strategy dares to say, “You're asking the wrong question”? In smaller indie shops, that can be a moment of magic. In a multinational holding company, it might be a fireable offense. It’s easier to present five safe options, let the client choose, and move on.

But that’s not creativity. That’s compliance masquerading as strategy.

Client Complicity

Let’s be honest—many clients don’t demand better. They want safe work because safe means fewer headlines, fewer complaints, fewer internal fights. But what they forget is: safe work is forgettable work. And forgettable work is bad for business.

Creativity is a business tool. Bold ideas do build brands. Agencies exist to make people feel something, to cut through noise, to create cultural capital. Not just slide decks and brand guideline PDFs.

A Call for Bravery

The future belongs to the brave: the independent shops who still fight for ideas that matter, and the clients who remember that good marketing is supposed to be uncomfortable, emotional, and alive.

Big agencies aren’t evil. But if they don’t change, they’ll fade into irrelevance. And that would be the real tragedy.