Author’s note: I recently delivered the keynote address at the AAF District 10 Next Wave Awards luncheon in Dallas, an event focused on recognizing emerging talent and reflecting on where this industry is headed.
As I prepared, I found myself coming back to conversations building across our agency, with our partners, and throughout the broader marketing landscape. Conversations about change. Pressure. Uncertainty. But also, about opportunities to grow.
This is an adapted excerpt of that talk – a perspective on key shifts that offer a more optimistic view of where our industry could be headed, and why the opportunity is closer than we think. – Zac Pritchett
When I first started in advertising in Texas about 20 years ago, the advice was pretty simple: If you want to make it, leave.
Head to New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Just get to one of the big cities. Start at a big agency. Work on a big brand. And be sure to jump around every couple of years.
That’s where the opportunity was. That’s where the best work was. That’s how careers were made.
I didn’t do that.
I stayed in Dallas. I didn’t jump around. I actually stayed at one agency that entire time. I got to work with some big brands along the way but spent most of my career with small and midsize challenger brands. Companies trying to grow, compete, and punch above their weight.
If I’m being honest, there were moments when I wondered whether I was making a mistake. Maybe I should be headed to the coast and padding my résumé with bigger brands. Maybe I was limiting my trajectory.
Today, though, the opposite is true. If you’re building a career in advertising today in mid-America, there’s a strong case to be made that you may be in precisely the right place at the right time. Because I see a handful of shifts that, when combined, paint a perhaps more optimistic picture of what the future could be.
The Shift to Mid-America
For decades, this industry has had clear centers of gravity in a handful of coastal cities where the biggest brands lived and the biggest agencies operated. But over the past ten years or so, that opportunity has spread to new markets.
Take Dallas-Fort Worth, for example. Since 2010, the DFW metro has grown by over 30%. A 2022 Freakonomics podcast episode, “Why Is Everyone Moving to Dallas?” suggested it is on pace to overtake Chicago as the third-largest metro area within the next decade. At the same time, of the 561 U.S. corporate headquarters that have relocated since 2018, nearly half have landed in Texas.
This isn’t just a Dallas story. It’s happening across the country and throughout mid-America. The markets historically considered as those centers of gravity are the same ones experiencing the greatest losses in corporate headquarters, in favor of markets like Dallas, Austin, Nashville, Phoenix, Houston, and Denver. Markets growing faster, attracting talent, and increasingly shaping the direction of business in our country. And opportunity tends to follow where people are going, where companies are investing, and where decisions are being made.
The Shift to Mid-Market
Another assumption was that the most important brands were the biggest ones.
While big brands do benefit from their size and scale, some of the most interesting growth is happening in the middle. Midsize brands, and midsize agencies, for that matter. Challengers. Not the biggest, but the ones built to grow.
A recent Bain & Company report looking at insurgent brands in the CPG category found that 36% of the category growth came from the challengers that collectively represent less than 2% of market share. These are the brands that simply have to grow. And when they pair that hunger with smart marketing, they can look and perform far beyond their size.
Interestingly, this shift applies to agencies too. Because for a long time, the assumption there was similar: Serious brands hire big agencies. And for some companies, that’s still right. But that model is also under pressure right now with consolidation across holding companies, mergers, layoffs, and restructuring.
And when we, a midsize agency, talk to midsize brands, we hear a few consistent themes: They want clarity, not complexity. Access instead of layers. They don’t want a pitch team that hands them off; they want their team. Beyond size, they want partners who can move at the speed of their business. It’s no wonder the majority of agencies on the most recent Ad Age agency A-list are midsize and independents.
The Shift to Effectiveness
More good news: We know more today than ever before about how marketing and advertising actually work. Because for most of the history of this industry, we really didn’t.
We had instincts, opinions, and frameworks. But a lot of it is now just debunked theories. To be fair, they came from experience, from what felt true. But they also resulted in a number of pretty confronting statistics: 84% of what’s out there isn’t memorable enough to matter. Six of seven digital impressions don’t pass the attention-memory threshold. And at best estimate, the cost of dull advertising is around $189 billion.
Thankfully, we now have a real body of evidence for marketing effectiveness. From groups like the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the IPA, and from great thinkers like Byron Sharp, Les Binet, James Hurman, Karen Nelson-Field, and so many more. Together, their collective work offers something we’ve never really had before: a map.
And if you’re coming into this industry right now, that’s an advantage. Because you don’t have to spend years learning and then unlearning things that don’t hold up. You can start with a better foundation. A clearer sense of what matters and where to focus.
The Shift to Human-Centered AI
Earlier this year, we hosted an event at TRG called “Rage With the Machines,” bringing together creatives, strategists, and technologists – people working with AI every day. One idea kept coming up throughout the session: While AI is incredibly powerful, it is most powerful when humans stay firmly in the loop. Only when combined do we truly see a fundamental expansion of what’s possible.
But when everyone has access to the same tools, the advantage doesn’t come from the tools themselves. Particularly in the case of AI. Because when applied to creativity, AI tends to optimize toward the average. And average is exactly where brands disappear.
Ideas start to look more similar. Strategies start to sound more alike. Outputs converge toward what’s expected, what’s safe, what’s statistically likely. So while AI lowers the cost of some things, it simultaneously raises the value of others. Namely, judgment and taste and the ability to decide things like: What actually matters? What signals do we trust? And what’s true to the brand?
It raises the value of that human spark.
The Shift to Value
And finally, the business of our business is changing. Because for a long time, agencies have been paid in a way that doesn’t really reflect the value we create.
We’ve often sold time, hours, headcount, FTEs, and staffing plans. But if the commercial model says you get paid for how long things take, then getting better can actually make you worth less. That is a broken incentive. And more broadly, it creates a disconnect between what brands want and what agencies are rewarded for. The model based on time rewards activity. Busy-ness. Whereas brands are really more interested in outputs and outcomes, which reward solutions and performance. People like Michael Farmer and Tim Williams have been talking about this for years. Time is simply a bad proxy for value. The opportunity is to better align our business with the value we create for brands. Understanding both how to make great work, and why it matters. With the confidence to stand behind what that’s worth.
So this is where it all comes together.
Opportunity is shifting to our market. The most exciting brands are winning in the middle. We know more than ever about what actually works. Technology is increasing possibilities across the system. And the commercial model is evolving to lead with value.
Wielded appropriately, these shifts have the power to help our agency grow – bigger and better. And I believe they have the power to also create more opportunity for agencies, brands, and creative people across the country.
Together, these shifts suggest to me a future with a greater emphasis on accountability. And independence. On creativity that works. And opportunity that shows up in new places for more people.
So if you’re building your advertising career today in mid-America, you don’t have to leave. You don’t have to jump around if you’ve found a place and a team that you love. You don’t have to chase the biggest brands if you’re doing meaningful work that fills you up.
If you’ve found a path that works for you, follow it – with the optimism that the future isn’t something we have to chase. It’s something we get to shape.
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