Abstract:
According to industry articles (Moteshegwa, 2019; Lee, 2019 and Bianchi 2019), the
advertising agency’s model is ‘broken’. This qualitative study’s aim was to understand the
perceptions of the ‘broken’ business model and determine whether ad agencies need to
adopt disruption or change to their business model practices to be more competitive. This
paper sought to understand if the ad agency model is truly ‘broken’ and the factors allowing
ad agencies to differentiate themselves and be more competitive in the industry. The
research problem was explored through a phenomenological approach and consisted of two
sample groups. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and transcribed then data was
collected and cross-sectioned through a thematic analysis. The most significant findings was
the agreement of the participants, that the ad agency ‘model’ is ‘broken’. In addition, the
factors that were criticised were found to not be parts of the model itself. Furthermore, the
criticisms did not align with the participants’ recommendations for ad agencies to use in
order to fix the supposedly ‘broken’ model. Ultimately, this suggested that both ad agency
representatives and their clients were uncertain and that the perception that the standard
ad agency model is ‘broken’ is not clearly substantiated.
