👋 Hello pitch deck survivors!
If you’ve ever had to sit through an agency creds doc that claimed to be “future-ready” while still using 2017 screenshots of Facebook Ads Manager—this one’s for you.
SBS just dropped their “Adapt to Thrive” whitepaper and it’s basically an obituary for the traditional agency model. The Frankenstein monster of holding group bureaucracy, awkward in-office mandates, and cross-market P&L turf wars? Yeah, that’s not thriving. That’s flailing.
Let’s dig into the whitepaper that’s got the whole programmatic peanut gallery side-eyeing their org charts.
The Death of the Deck & Rise of the Doers
SBS isn’t mincing words. If your agency hasn’t restructured, retrained, or re-platformed in the last 18 months, you’re not evolving—you’re in denial.
Key take? Agencies need to stop playing procurement bingo and start behaving like actual partners. The days of “bill more, deliver less” are being replaced with “scale smart or step aside.”
The report’s big bets:
Omnichannel or obsolete – If your campaigns aren’t fluid across CTV, DOOH, display, and audio… what are you even doing here?
Curated programmatic is the new black – Open exchanges are for cowboys. Welcome to the era of surgical precision, private marketplaces, and curated supply paths.
People > Pitches – Stop overselling and start upskilling. If your activation team still doesn’t know how to QA a dynamic creative, please escort them off the DSP.
From Deck Fluff to Actual Strategy
This isn’t just a rant. “Adapt to Thrive” outlines practical recommendations. Think of it as therapy for underperforming agency teams.
Retrain or be replaced – Upskilling is no longer a “nice to have.” It’s a survival tactic.
Collaboration ≠ More Meetings – The whitepaper calls out bloated comms chains and misaligned client-agency-tech partner triangles. Fix your Slack before you fix your strategy.
Data-Led or Dead – SBS advocates for actual decision-making via data. Groundbreaking, we know. But when your last “insight” was based on someone’s gut feeling and a LinkedIn poll, it’s time to evolve.
Culture Is (Still) the Strategy
Buried in the tech talk is a cheeky truth bomb: none of it matters if your people are miserable.
SBS wants agencies to actually care about culture. Wild idea, right?
The whitepaper nudges agencies toward creating “people-first environments” that foster innovation. Translation: pay your junior planners properly, ditch the blame culture, and maybe—just maybe—stop expecting them to deliver a QBR deck with 8 hours’ notice.
Mic Drop Moment
The funniest part? Holding companies are still pretending their model is “integrated.” Meanwhile, the rest of the market is quietly ditching the groupthink for independents that actually pick up the phone and know what a CPA is.
TL;DR for agency leaders:
Programmatic isn’t dying, your structure is.
Clients want performance, not posturing.
And if your whiteboard still has the phrase “always-on optimisation” written in dry marker, it’s time for a serious reset.
Adapt to thrive? Or keep selling that “global network, local insight” nonsense until your biggest client leaves for a boutique with brains.
Cheers to those building the next-gen agency. The rest can keep writing case studies no one reads.
Get the whitepaper here: wearesbs.com/adapt-to-thrive
Until next time!
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