The Middle of the Agency Is Disappearing

WPP cut 7,500 jobs last year. This year they're going bigger. Elevate28, the company's restructuring plan, folds Ogilvy, VML, and AKQA into a single creative arm and targets 500 million pounds in savings. Most of that number is headcount. Not technology. Not real estate. People.

But not all people. The cuts land in a specific zone: the middle.

Who's Safe, Who's Not

Creative directors still have desks. So do strategists. Client leads aren't going anywhere. The people writing six-figure pitch decks and building brand platforms? They're fine.

The graphic designer resizing banner ads for 14 markets? Less fine. The content writer producing 40 product descriptions a week from a brief? The video editor assembling cutdowns from a hero spot? Those roles are the target. This isn't random cost-cutting. It's a structural bet.

The Hourglass Agency

Agencies used to look like pyramids. A few senior leaders at the top, a thick middle layer of producers and executors, and a base of juniors learning the craft. That shape is changing.

The new agency looks more like an hourglass. Senior talent at the top. AI and automation tools in the middle. A smaller cohort of junior talent at the bottom, but now their job isn't execution. It's learning to direct the machines that handle execution. The middle layer, where most of the billable hours lived, is collapsing.

The Real Risk Nobody Talks About

Here's the part that should worry agency leaders. If you hollow out the middle, where do your future creative directors come from? The traditional path was clear. You started as a junior, you spent years in the middle doing execution work, you learned craft, you developed taste, you got promoted. That pipeline is breaking.

The agencies that solve this problem will own the next decade. The ones that don't will find themselves with brilliant AI tools and nobody who knows how to point them in the right direction.