In this incisive opinion piece, global strategy consultant Franklin Ozekhome examines the advertising industry’s critical but largely ignored succession problem. Ozekhome reveals how agencies built around visionary founders often collapse or lose their creative identity when these charismatic leaders depart. Unlike tech companies and management consultancies with structured leadership transitions, advertising agencies remain personality-driven enterprises that rarely prepare for life after their icons. Ozekhome dissects this systemic failure through high-profile examples like Droga5, CP+B, BBDO, JWT, and R/GA—all big global agencies that struggled to maintain their edge following leadership changes.
The piece concludes with practical solutions for addressing the industry’s succession crisis, with a look at ownership structures that give future leaders real stakes in the business, standardized leadership development, long-term strategic planning, and a shift from founder worship to institution building. Without these fundamental changes, Ozekhome argues, advertising agencies will remain vulnerable enterprises—”always one exit away from irrelevance.”
…Why Advertising Has a Succession Crisis No One Wants to Talk About
The Ghosts of Great Agencies Past
The first time I truly understood the weight of succession in advertising, I was in a dimly lit boardroom, watching an industry icon—one of those names that shaped modern advertising—grapple with his own exit. His agency, once a juggernaut, was now a revolving door of leadership changes, creative compromises, and legacy clients quietly walking away.
“I built this place from scratch,” he muttered, shaking his head. “And now, I’m not sure it survives without me.”
That moment stuck with me. Because it’s not just his story—it’s the industry’s. Unlike tech companies, where founders hand over the reins while retaining a strategic role, or management consultancies where leadership transitions are baked into the system, advertising agencies seem uniquely terrible at preparing for life after their icons.
Fast forward a decade. The agency’s old, once-glorious office—buzzing with energy, ideas, and culture-defining work—is now a ghost town. The high ceilings remain. The name on the door still stands, but the soul has vanished.
This isn’t fiction. It’s the fate of too many once-iconic agencies that lost their founders, fumbled leadership transitions, and quietly faded into irrelevance. Because advertising, for all its obsession with the future, refuses to answer one fundamental question:
What happens when the visionary leaves the room?
The truth? Agencies are built around personalities, not systems. And when those personalities exit, they often leave behind something closer to a ghost town than a thriving institution.
While consulting firms and tech giants have built systems to outlast their founders, advertising still clings to outdated hierarchies, personality-driven leadership, and an illusion of permanence. And when the reckoning comes, as it always does, the industry acts surprised—like an aging rock band that never planned for the drummer’s exit.
So let’s dissect the problem, layer by layer.
The Cult of the Founder: Great Men, Fragile Empires
Advertising has long worshipped its creative titans—David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach, Dan Wieden, Lee Clow. Agencies aren’t just businesses; they’re personal brands. The founder is the DNA, the culture, the differentiator.
But what happens when that person leaves?
The answer, more often than not, is chaos.
Take Wieden+Kennedy. It wasn’t just an agency—it was Dan Wieden’s legacy. His philosophy, creative audacity, and vision made Nike more than a brand—it became a cultural movement. After Wieden stepped back, W+K remained strong, its independence intact. But is it still shaping culture at the same level? Or has the landscape shifted too much for any agency to hold that kind of dominance?
Now, compare this to firms like McKinsey or Deloitte. No one outside the consulting world can name Deloitte’s CEO. And that’s the point. The business isn’t dependent on one person—it runs on a deeply embedded system of succession, ownership, and process. McKinsey grooms partners for leadership years in advance. When a new Managing Director takes over, the firm doesn’t lose its identity—it reinforces it.
Advertising? A completely different story.
What Happens After the Founder Leaves? A Brutal Pattern
If agencies want to survive leadership changes, they need to shift from being temples of personality to institutions of expertise. But can an industry that thrives on creative chaos ever become systematic?
This is why agencies either:
1. Sell to Holding Companies (Because There’s No Internal Heir Apparent)
Droga5, the most celebrated independent agency of its generation, was a beacon of creative ambition. But independence has an expiration date when there’s no clear transition plan.
When David Droga sold the agency to Accenture Interactive in 2019, it was a strategic move—but also a signal. Droga5’s future would no longer be shaped solely by the culture and leadership that made it famous. Droga himself stayed involved, eventually becoming CEO of Accenture Song. But was Droga5 still Droga5? Or just another cog in a consultancy’s machine?
The same happened to CP+B (Crispin Porter + Bogusky), once advertising’s most disruptive agency—a creative powerhouse that reshaped the industry with bold, culture-defining work. At its peak, Alex Bogusky was advertising’s rockstar—redefining the industry, winning every major award, and proving that challenger brands could outmaneuver giants through sheer creative audacity.
As Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Bogusky was the driving force behind CP+B’s golden era. Under his leadership, the agency delivered groundbreaking campaigns like Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” and “Whopper Freakout,” as well as Mini’s irreverent U.S. launch and Domino’s game-changing brand turnaround. CP+B became synonymous with fearless, unconventional marketing that made brands part of cultural conversations.
But creative dynasties are fragile. Bogusky left in 2010, and the agency began to lose its edge. Talent drifted away, and its rebellious identity blurred. In a dramatic twist, he returned in 2018 as Chief Creative Engineer to revive CP+B, but the comeback was short-lived—he stepped away again in 2020.
By then, CP+B was already fading into irrelevance. The agency, once an icon of creative ambition, struggled to maintain its identity. As it became fully absorbed into MDC Partners (which later merged into Stagwell), it was no longer the industry-defining force it once was. CP+B still exists in some capacity, but its days of shaping the future of advertising are long behind it.
2. Lose Their Identity & Scramble to Stay Relevant Post-Founder
Lee Clow stepping down from TBWA/Chiat/Day marked the end of an era. The agency tried to evolve, but the bold, challenger-brand energy Clow embodied began to fade.
R/GA was synonymous with Bob Greenberg—a true pioneer of digital storytelling. But after his departure, did R/GA maintain its radical edge? Or did it become just another agency navigating the holding-company machinery?
3. Experience a Massive Creative Decline
BBDO: The Erosion of an Icon?
BBDO was once the gold standard of storytelling and craftsmanship. But in August 2024, Omnicom merged BBDO, DDB, and TBWA into Omnicom Advertising Group—a move framed as an “efficiency play.”
But does consolidation fuel creativity—or dilute the very essence that made these agencies legendary?
JWT: A Legacy Merged Out of Existence
JWT, one of advertising’s oldest agencies, struggled to find its footing in the digital-first era. The solution? A 2018 merger with Wunderman, creating Wunderman Thompson.
This wasn’t just a merger—it was a quiet burial. JWT, once a Madison Avenue institution, became a data-driven, tech-focused entity with little resemblance to its former self. The name endures, but the agency’s soul is gone.
Agencies Don’t Build Leaders. They Build Workhorses
Let’s talk about why agencies fail at succession planning. They don’t groom leaders—they train executors.
Agencies celebrate the doers—the creatives who grind out award-winning campaigns, the strategists who craft pitch-winning insights. But leadership? It’s an afterthought, rarely nurtured.
Meanwhile, consulting firms and tech giants take a different approach:
🚩 Consulting firms (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) operate on a partner-led model, ensuring leadership continuity through structured mentorship and succession planning.
🚩 Tech firms build platforms that generate compounding value, allowing leadership transitions to be smoother.
Take Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s departure didn’t cause a crisis—Sundar Pichai had been prepared for years.
At Amazon, Andy Jassy’s transition was seamless because Bezos had already positioned him as the natural successor.
Agencies, by contrast, live quarter to quarter.
They chase the next pitch, the next project—always in survival mode.
So when a global CCO or CEO exits, the agency scrambles. Some have succession plans, but most rely on the next big personality rather than a structured leadership pipeline.
R/GA: The Agency Built to Reinvent Itself—Until It Couldn’t
When the Architect Leaves, Does the Empire Crumble?
Bob Greenberg built R/GA into a digital-first, innovation-driven agency—constantly reinventing itself, from a production studio to a digital powerhouse. But even the most adaptable agencies face a challenge they rarely plan for: leadership succession.
In the summer of 2018, Nick Law, the legendary creative mind behind the agency’s revolutionary digital-first approach, and heir apparent, shocked the industry by leaving to join Publicis as its global chief creative officer and President of Publicis Communications. His departure marked a major shift in the industry, signaling the increasing consolidation of creative leadership within holding companies.
Then came an even bigger shift. In 2019, Bob Greenberg stepped down as CEO, making way for Sean Lyons. But by then, the industry had already changed.
Clients were building in-house teams. The agency-of-record model was fading. Budgets shifted from creativity to performance marketing, redirecting ad dollars from agencies to platforms like Google, Meta, Adobe, and Salesforce.
R/GA responded the way struggling agencies always do—layoffs, consolidations, office closures, and shutting down unprofitable divisions. When Greenberg left, so did the agency’s defining vision. R/GA, which had once helped brands future-proof themselves, now faced the same existential crisis it had helped others avoid.
A Pattern, Not an Exception
This isn’t just R/GA’s story. It’s an industry-wide flaw. R/GA was a blueprint for the future. But when Greenberg left, that blueprint was lost. And like so many agencies before it, R/GA found itself on the wrong side of the industry shift it had once mastered.
The Advertising Paradox
So why does advertising struggle to pass the torch? Why do even the most iconic agencies falter when their founders or key leaders leave? And most importantly, what does this tell us about the future of the industry?
Until agencies stop being personality-driven cults and start becoming lasting institutions, the answer will always be the same: agencies aren’t built to last.
The Future: Can Advertising Fix Its Succession Problem?
Unlike tech and consulting firms, advertising agencies don’t plan for longevity. They don’t groom successors—they groom potential buyers.
Most independent agencies aren’t thinking about the next 50 years. They’re thinking about the next five, hoping for an acquisition deal before they burn out.
If advertising wants to survive beyond its rockstar founders, it needs to rethink its core operating model:
🚩 Tie Leadership to Ownership
Tech and consulting firms thrive because key leaders have real skin in the game. Agencies must rethink equity structures—giving future leaders a stake in the business, not just a paycheck.
🚩 Standardize Leadership Development
Creatives are nurtured from day one, but future agency leaders? Not so much. Succession planning shouldn’t be an emergency fix—it should be a core function. Train leaders in business, strategy, and ownership early.
🚩 Shift from Short-Term Survival to Long-Term Vision
Stop thinking quarter to quarter. Plan for 3-5 years. Then 5-9 years. Codify processes. Distribute decision-making. The best brands in the world outlive their creators—agencies should do the same.
🚩 Make Succession a Process, Not a Crisis
If you don’t have a successor, you don’t have a business—you have a ticking time bomb. A founder’s exit shouldn’t mean an agency’s collapse. Transitions should be structured, seamless, and planned years in advance.
🚩 Move Beyond the Founder Model
Great companies outlast their founders. Agencies must stop worshipping personalities and start building institutions. Otherwise, they’ll remain fragile enterprises—always one exit away from irrelevance.
Final Thought: A Cautionary Tale
The industry doesn’t lack talent. It lacks foresight. Until agencies prioritize succession, they will remain vulnerable—forever playing catch-up to industries that have mastered the long game.
Because in the end, the agencies that survive won’t be the ones with the best ideas.
I’d love to hear from you: What do you think is the biggest succession challenge agencies face? What models have you seen work? Drop a reply, and let’s keep this conversation going.
In this scene from The Godfather Part III, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) delivers this line with exasperation, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” summing up the inevitable pull of leadership and influence, even when trying to exit.
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