Don’t Blame the Strategist for a System You Refuse to Change.

The planner didn’t kill the agency. But this kind of shallow nostalgia might.

I finally read “Did the Strategic Planner Just Kill the Advertising Agency?”

Yes, it’s technically old news in the zeitgeist. But I still feel compelled to comment, not to join the noise, but to offer something a little... more mature. Because while I understand the provocation, I also think we need to stop taking cheap shots at the wrong things, and start doing the harder work of asking better questions.

First, full disclosure: I know Adam and Gerry. I’ve worked with them both, many moons ago. I know their style. I know they enjoy a bit of intellectual antagonism. Stirring the pot is part of their brand. This piece is no different; it’s a poke, a prod, a contrarian take built for debate. And while I’m not taking it particularly seriously, I do think it warrants a rebuttal, and not for the sake of my own ego, but because I care deeply about the role of strategy, and what it could become.

And while this may be framed as a one-off provocation, it echoes something far more familiar, something I’ve seen play out again and again across the industry:

When agencies stagnate, someone always looks for a scapegoat. And nine times out of ten, the finger lands squarely on strategy.

So here’s my take.

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This Isn’t About Planning. It’s About Power.

The piece paints planners as bureaucratic blockers, hovering between clients and creatives, issuing briefs like commandments from Mount Olympus. But that’s a caricature of bad planning, not a critique of the discipline.

The best strategists I know don’t brief. They build.
They’re not the bottleneck; they’re the bridge.
Between chaos and clarity. Between cultural noise and creative signal.

When done right, strategy doesn’t slow things down. It speeds up the right things. It protects against aimless sprints and meaningless outputs. It holds the why steady when everything else is spinning.

If the planners in your agency are just writing briefs and walking away, that’s not a strategy problem. That’s a leadership one.

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Second: Creatives Aren’t Fragile. But Systems Are.

This idea that strategists "infantilise creatives" by framing the problem, defining the insight, and handing it over like homework - please.

The real infantilisation happens when agencies wall off departments, treat creativity like a vending machine, and then wonder why the magic isn’t showing up anymore.

We’re not supposed to be running a relay race. We’re supposed to be co-creating from day zero. Strategists, creatives, technologists, cultural outsiders, fans, even chaos agents, you throw them all into the room early and often. That’s where the breakthroughs live.

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Third: Romanticising the “Golden Age” Isn’t Useful

There’s a nostalgia in this piece about the ‘days gone by’ of empowered account handlers. And I get it, there was a time when account leads were true partners, not just project shepherds.

But pitting account teams against planners today is just lazy thinking. We don’t need fewer strategists, we need more strategy-literate people across the business. Account leads who understand ecosystems, creatives who can interrogate context, planners who aren’t precious about “owning” the thinking.

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Fourth: Strategy Isn’t Intangible. It’s Infrastructure.

Saying the planner’s output is “intangible” is like saying a compass is useless because it doesn’t get you to the destination on its own.

Strategy is the orientation system. It’s the story scaffold. The problem reframed. The edge unearthed. The ‘why now’ that cracks open cultural energy.

Those things might not show up on a timesheet or a cost estimate, but they’re the difference between a campaign that pops and one that passes unnoticed.

If your client can’t see the value of your strategic work, maybe the problem isn’t the work, but in how you’re telling the story of that value.

And clients still want strategy. They're just not always getting it from agencies anymore. They're finding it in product, in community, in innovation. The demand didn’t disappear, it migrated. The function didn’t die. It outgrew its container.

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Fifth: The Piece Lacks Vision

My real gripe with this piece is that it doesn’t offer a future.

It critiques a role without reimagining the system.
It wants strategy to “get out of the way,” when it should be showing how strategy could light the way.

The world is getting messier, faster, and harder to parse.
The cultural signal is noisy. The consumer journey is a tangled loop.
AI is fracturing creation at the root. Trust is unstable. Identity is fluid. Meaning is collapsing.

In that context, the strategist isn’t a relic.
They’re a necessity.

But only if we let the role evolve.
Less slide deck. More sense-making.
Less ivory tower. More cultural immersion.
Less control. More co-creation.

Think cartographer. Not commander.
Think conduit. Not gatekeeper.

And let’s just say this next part out loud: there’s an entire generation of planners right now who are wedged between legacy process and diminishing influence, still fighting to keep strategy meaningful while the scaffolding collapses around them. I’m not defending the role as it is. I’m defending the people trying to evolve it from the inside, often without the permission, power, or platform to do it properly. So when seasoned voices choose to punch down rather than build forward, I notice. And I expect more.

Because despite all of it; the dysfunction, the detachment, the decline. I still believe in what strategy could become. That’s the shift I’ve been working on - quietly, carefully - not to defend strategy, but to redesign its function entirely. As connective tissue across culture, creation and consequence. It’s not ready yet. But it’s close.

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So no, I don’t think the planner killed the agency.
But I do think some agencies let their own outdated models commit slow-motion suicide.

If we want to rebuild, we don’t need fewer strategists.
We need better ones. Braver ones.
Ones who stop trying to own the thinking, and start designing the conditions where new thinking can thrive.

And if you want a villain, then try the old operating system.
The quarterly pitch treadmill.
The hierarchy of silos.
The rinse-repeat process.

But don’t blame the planner.
We’re just trying to redraw the map.

And in a world that’s lost its bearings, we need more mapmakers than ever.