South Africa, March 25 -- This is not a hypothetical provocation. It is already happening. The question for every CMO and brand owner is whether their agency partners and internal teams are adapting to it or waiting for it to go away.

Most agencies, despite years of borrowing the language of agile from software development, remain stubbornly organised around a Waterfall model. A client request becomes a brief. The brief goes to a strategist. The strategist hands the creative director a framework. The creative director briefs their team to ideate a big idea and execution. Weeks pass. Approvals accumulate. The original spark of an idea is reviewed, revised, and risk-assessed until it resembles something that nobody could possibly object to...