The feed moves faster than the boardroom

Joel James, Co-founder and Chief of Innovation at Studio Blo, zoomed out to the cultural shift underway.

We don’t live in a mass-media era anymore. TV and radio don’t drive culture. Instagram does. Reels did that. Now everything is louder, faster, and way more competitive. Culture today rejects perfect. Raw beats polished. Real beats prim-and-proper. People would rather watch something messy and honest than something that feels rehearsed,” James argued.

That speed, he noted, often pushes brands and agencies toward sameness because virality feels safer than depth. “Brands are genuinely trying, but the pressure is insane. They’re not just competing with other brands anymore; they’re competing with creators and influencer-led brands who speak the language of the feed natively. You have five seconds, and you’re sharing that moment with a hundred others. Virality feels safer than depth.”

That pressure, James argued, isn’t just external. It’s reinforced by how agencies are structured and how their value is increasingly misunderstood.

“Agencies are still often run by older decision-makers, so everyone ends up chasing the same formats, the same humour, the same faces. Somewhere along the way, brands also forgot what agencies actually do. Agencies aren’t just production houses. They’re psychologists and cultural scientists, disguised as creatives. That thinking gets lost when everything is about instant results.”