‘We keep talking redundancies but not the fallout’: Agency leaders’ 2026 outlook

So, few in the agency world are feeling bullish right now. But beyond the unavoidable stories that dominate conversation, what’s dominating their thinking right now? For this edition of Agency Advice, we asked leading marketers which agency stories have been flying under the radar (but may dominate the year ahead).

Niki Chana, programmatic strategy director, SBS: “The story that hasn’t had enough attention is the sheer number of people out of work across marketing and advertising, and what we’re doing about it as an industry. We hear headline numbers about redundancies, but not the human impact. In the past 18 months, major holding groups have cut thousands of roles globally, while marketing functions have been hit particularly hard by restructuring, AI-led efficiency drives and budget freezes. In the UK alone, advertising and marketing employment has fallen noticeably year-on-year, with junior and mid-level talent disproportionately affected. What’s missing is a collective response. We talk endlessly about AI, automation and the future of work, but far less about retraining, redeploying or supporting the people being displaced. If we don’t actively invest in talent pathways, mentorship and reskilling now, we risk hollowing out the very industry we’re trying to future-proof.”

Ben Essen, global chief strategy officer, Iris: “It’s become so unfashionable that it’s almost hard to remember how central Net Zero was to our industry just three years ago, before AI took over the conversation. But when attention moves on, that’s often when the real work gets done. The team behind Purpose Disruptors’ Advertised Emissions program has made serious progress, with meaningful engagement from SBTi and an approach now influencing sectors like consulting and law. Ahead of Cop30, their report Beyond the Chaos, Ahead of the Curve shows how agencies are navigating political uncertainty, technological disruption and climate breakdown at the same time. As the 2030 deadlines loom and China’s lead in clean technology sparks genuine fomo in the west, I expect we’ll see radical ambition return. It will be advertising’s first movers who benefit. It’s deeply uncool right now, but soon we’ll remember that so is the planet.”

Jo Hayes, executive strategy director, Barbarian: “In the chaos and grief of mergers, layoffs, and agency consolidation, DEI roles and commitments are overtly being defunded or reversed – even as brands that roll back DEI face boycotts, reputational damage, and lost revenue. At the same time, marketing teams are rapidly standardizing on a small set of AI tools trained on narrow, English- and US-centric data, which flattens perspective and encodes existing bias into briefs, creative and media decisions. The industry is treating DEI as a cost center and AI as an efficiency play, when the real story is that without diverse people in the room and in the data, AI will hard‑code our blind spots into the future of our industry, creating a feedback loop of irresponsible (mis)representation to audiences.”

Josh Golden, chief marketing officer, Quad: “The 2025 story that didn’t get enough attention was the quiet loss of optimism. As someone who naturally leans optimistic, I found myself feeling an unfamiliar sense of despair. Not because life suddenly became harder, but because the steady drumbeat of challenging news made it increasingly difficult to see the silver lining. When optimism erodes, joy often follows. And that loss doesn’t show up in headlines, but it shows up in how we live, work, and connect. Life has always been complicated. What feels different is how rarely we allow ourselves to believe that progress is still possible. Optimism isn’t denial or naïveté. It’s a choice to believe that effort matters, that setbacks are temporary, and that tomorrow can be better than today. When we reclaim that mindset and do it every day, it doesn’t just change our outlook. It changes our experience of life itself.”

Nitin Sinha, head of media planning, Noble People: “How will all these restructures, acquisitions and AI integration affect the lives of everyday consumers? How did consumer needs factor into all of these massive shifts? As an industry, we talk a lot about putting the customer at the center of everything we do, but this year the customer is missing from the headlines. Shareholder expectations, cost savings, labor supply and demand and tech advances are hogging the spotlight. It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten why we do this, mistaking technological progress and cost savings as being the end goal. With no clear link between consumer needs and industry shifts, what we’re calling ‘progress’ is just motion. More attention to the customer can change the way the industry (or an individual brand) is perceived and disrupt the growing narrative that we’ve forgotten the humans at the heart of this.”

Barney Worfolk-Smith, chief growth officer, Daivid: “We keep talking about redundancies, but not about the fallout. If 10% of the estimated 600,000 people who work in advertising/marketing in just London have lost/will lose their jobs, that’s 60,000 people. What are all these people supposed to do next? There are already more life coaches than the market can sustain, consulting is brutally competitive and not everyone – particularly older workers – has the entrepreneurial spark. I think there will be a lot of people coerced into career changes and we don’t seem to be talking about this.”

Gregor Hollerin, founder, Story Shop: “Media outlets are under increasing pressure, with growing internal demands to monetize content, while stories that do not align with an outlet’s commercial priorities are simply, and understandably, harder to land. All this means it is far more difficult to secure straight consumer coverage, such as bog-standard new product announcements. PRs have to work harder than ever to be genuinely newsworthy, digging for real Trojan horses to earn coverage. Meanwhile, clients are thinking differently about budgets, with search and paid having less impact and attention shifting towards how brands show up as answers in LLMs. So, while the bar for coverage is higher than ever, PR is also in greater demand. It’s already changing the game for PR, forcing a reset away from volume and activity towards working closely with journalists to uncover stories that are impossible not to cover.”

Cat Davis, group CMO, Atomic London: “One of the least talked-about stories this year has been the quiet proving-out of independent agencies. Yes, it’s been mentioned, but certainly not loudly enough. While headlines stayed fixed on holding-company mergers, restructuring and AI experimentation, independents kept winning pitches, retaining clients for longer and delivering work that actually moved the needle – helped by the fact that more clients are prioritizing senior attention, speed and effectiveness over scale for scale’s sake. It’s not flashy, but it’s real. Sure, I would say this, given I’m the CMO of an independent creative company – but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? The interesting shift isn’t independence as a badge – it’s how indies are deliberately developing differentiated models without losing what made them valuable in the first place.”

Mat Zucker, CMO, Prophet: “While AI and performance marketing dominated the headlines, Brand had a big year. Several influential organizations and people did landmark work to elevate the foundation of marketing. Warc introduced the Multiplier Effect, a new model that quantifies the exponential effect of brand marketing on business performance. MMA Global’s Movable Middles research proved that targeting mid-tier (versus heavy) consumers of a product boosts return on ad spend by 50%. The ANA launched a brand practice that will focus the world’s largest advertisers on proving the value of brand in a demand-oriented business climate. And Aaker on Branding, the bestseller from David Aaker, dubbed the father of modern branding, released an updated version to similar acclaim.”

Tim Ringel, global CEO, Meet The People: “The biggest untold story of 2025 is the rise of mid-size independent agency groups. Everyone has been focused on the mega merger, layoffs, sunsetting of legacy agency brands and declining hold-co businesses while the mid-market newcomer Groups are striving. Independent shops have combined forces, posting double-digit growth rates while holdcos are in steep decline on agency fees and business models. To my count, there are 30+ mid-market mini-holdcos in Europe and North America in 2025 that range from 300 to 3,000 employees.”

Fred Schuster, CEO, InnerGroup: “In 2025, in-house grew in creativity, scale, sophistication and impact. Several of the world’s largest marketers grew their internal operations to larger than most agencies, while putting out world-class creative and advancing the art and science of analytics. In-house treats change as opportunity rather than threat, so many have seized on AI to sharpen and speed up systems.”

Jody Osman, chief growth officer, Propeller Group: “One of the most under-discussed shifts in B2B marketing this year has been the move away from chasing leads and towards building communities. As channels get noisier and trust becomes harder to earn, the brands making real progress aren’t shouting louder; they’re creating spaces people genuinely want to belong to. In a year defined by uncertainty, the most effective B2B marketing is more human. Brands focused on building relationships with their communities, not just selling to them.”