I spent 20 happy years in agencies before starting Agency Assessments International 15 years ago, and have the same admiration for agencies and agency people as I did all those years ago when I was seduced into abandoning a sensible career with Nielsen.

But I do not believe that the redefinition of the business that you are calling for will come to pass without serious changes in the way agencies work as businesses, and the way you and clients work together. As I read it, you are calling for agency leaders to believe and promote three main principles and truths:

1. The brilliant execution of great ideas can transform the fortunes of brands

2. The creative function is even more important now – and agencies have to invest more in talented people

3. Agencies must make the case to be paid better for contribution to client bottom line growth

Can anyone disagree with that? Well…let me comment on each in order.

From our experience both in helping clients select agencies, and advising both sides on making relationships more efficient and productive, I can see no evidence at all that clients doubt either the capacity of agencies to come up with big ideas, or that these ideas can make a big difference. Indeed pitches get better and better, and so do ads (or at least the cream of the crop) – and if agencies have lost faith, they certainly disguise it well. But “brilliant execution” is not just a creative agency thing these days. Media agencies play a vital part, as do directors, photographers, production companies, artistes, animators, sponsorship, PR and DM experts and so on.

And this relates to your point about creative talent. You say that 25% of agency payroll (that is creative agency payroll) is an absurdly low percentage. Yet big agencies frequently commit three or more creative teams to important accounts, and still have capacity to mount galvanic pitches to other agencies’ clients. My question would be whether you would need the level of staffing you maintain (creative, account service, planning, whatever) if we had a different remuneration regime. When headcount fees took over from commission, we little knew what the implications would be. Under the fee system a long menu of agency players apparently committed to an account for so many days every week is the only way of getting paid – give or take a payment by results element. Is headcount really the best business model for a creative business? Maybe it is not more creatives that you need – but less of everyone else? Why not press for a different remuneration system – preferably one that guarantees a decent retainer, but provides for really juicy performance incentives?

That brings us to the “underpayment” problem. As you say in your essay, an oversupplied market does not help. But the recession has inevitably highlighted the agency income crisis. In the financial pages of my newspaper this morning one of Britain’s icon advertisers is forecasting “flat sales in a tough market”. Not unusual – and it would be amazing if the management had not commanded a company-wide drive to take out all unnecessary cost.

And it gets worse. This week’s Ad Age carries reports from their “Madison + Vine” conference last week in Beverly Hills. Steven Heyer, President-COO of Coca-Cola Co. called on agencies (along with their cohorts in media and entertainment) to create new business models or “risk extinction”. “Agency executives”, he said, “your model is in need of a wholesale redefinition….You should view us a partner and a resource, not just as a source of new revenues.”

William, I honestly don’t think that salvation will come from rediscovering anything. I can see plenty of faith in client companies, and in agencies, in the worth of creative ideas, the people that come up with them, and the agencies that employ them. What the industry needs – and here I mean clients and their agencies working together – is inventiveness. We need to put time and energy into inventing new business models, new commercial arrangements, and above all new and dramatically more efficient process. That’s the issue, not this relationship thing that we used to worry about. Fewer, better people in agency and client teams working well together will always succeed.

If you would like a starter for ten, how about concentrating on a remarriage with media? The split between the creative and media agencies was the most expensive divorce this industry has ever seen. It must be time to work towards a horizontal integration of the best in creative, media and content. There is a far higher prize at the end of that rainbow than endless concentration on what creative agencies can achieve by themselves, or by vertically integrating with below the line.

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