Careless agencies

A field guide to the polished, performative, and quietly crumbling world of the modern ad agency

The Nice Ones

They don’t mean to be careless.

They really don’t. In fact, they’re mostly lovely.

Nice decks. Nice captions. Nice people.The sort who apologise in emails and sign off with smiley faces.

But somewhere beneath the polish, buried under all the “per my last email”s and moodboards, something’s rotting.

Because most agencies today - well - they’re not doing bad work. They’re doing thoughtless work.

And that, dear reader, is worse than anything that can happen. Except maybe Comic Sans.

What Carelessness Looks Like

It’s not the ones missing deadlines.

No no. It’s the ones meeting them. For briefs that should never have been written.

It’s the ones flooding your feed with “content” that nobody asked for, built on insights nobody questioned, for platforms they barely understand.

They don’t ask,“Should we be doing this?”, They ask, “How many assets do you need and what’s the timeline?”

There’s a process. Oh yes, a process!

Followed so obediently, you’d think the stakes were nuclear. No questions. No wiggle room.

No room for human-ness... all while trying to speak to, well, humans.

The Quiet Collapse

Once upon a retainer, the suits stopped selling (too busy chasing timelines).

The creatives stopped imagining (templates are faster).

The strategists? They make pretty and clever slides titled “Strategy,”and called it a day.

And the clients? They said “let’s hire an influencer.”

No one asked “why?”. There just was not space for silliness like curiosity anymore.

Impact became “eyeballs.”

Conversion became “we clicked, hooray!”

And when nothing worked?

They launched three more versions - just in case.

The Unbearable Niceness of Everything

Careless is easy. Care is inconvenient.

Careless says:

“What do you mean you’re not quoting by number of posts?”

“So yes and yes and can we launch next week?”

“I’m not seeing them clicks!”

Care, on the other hand, frowns a little. Tilts its head. And asks:

“Why are we doing this again?”

Care breaks process, interrupts calendars. And does the unthinkable- it thinks!

Care is the unbillable line item. The awkward pause in the pitch.

The one that says, “I know this is what you asked for. But maybe it’s not what you need.”

The Way Out (if you want one)

So. Here we are. A little older. A little wiser.

Here’s what we want: We want to start with why.

We want to say things that matter, even when they’re uncomfortable.

We want to sell with you, not to you.

And we’re not afraid to be the ones asking, “Wait - are we solving the right problem?”

We don’t worship KPIs. We interrogate them.

We don’t ship to hit deadlines. We ship to shift something.

We care.

Not passively.

Not politely.

But loudly.

Inconveniently.

On purpose.

From the ones who still give a whole damn... TRIAD