Jia Lissa
For fifteen years, Chris Hassell has navigated the treacherous waters of the independent advertising world. When he launched his agency, Ralph, in 2010, the mission was simple: make cool things and get paid for them. Yet, as the industry spent the last decade optimizing for efficiency, procurement, and performance marketing, the "cool" factor—and the margins—began to evaporate.
Today, Hassell is leading a radical, industry-wide shift. He has concluded that the traditional agency model is fundamentally incompatible with the current media landscape. His solution? Transform Ralph from an agency that produces advertisements into an entertainment company that builds intellectual property (IP).
He is not alone. From London-based creative shop Elvis to the boutique firm Small World, a growing contingent of agencies is betting that the only way to survive the "commodity trap" of AI-driven production is to stop acting like service providers and start acting like broadcasters.
The Death of the "Work-for-Hire" Monopoly
The traditional agency model is built on a "work-for-hire" foundation—a process of procurement where creativity is treated as a line item to be optimized. According to Hassell, this is a fatal error in an era where consumers are increasingly immune to standard display campaigns.
"Entertainment is the one part of the creative business that can’t be procured, optimized, or automated," Hassell argues. You cannot put a compelling narrative or a hit TV show through a procurement spreadsheet. Performance marketing can drive clicks, but it cannot manufacture the rights, talent relationships, or distribution networks required for a genuine entertainment property.
For Ralph, this transition is manifesting in a tangible ecosystem: a magazine, a podcast series with Time Out, a dedicated TV channel, and a "Labs" division. The agency is currently developing IP across comedy, music, and culinary categories, with an eye toward long-term monetization through licensing and merchandising. They are even in the final stages of a deal to revive a legacy kids’ brand.
Chronology of a Structural Shift
The transition away from the agency model is not an overnight occurrence, but a long-term recalibration.
- 2010: Chris Hassell launches Ralph as a boutique independent agency.
- 2021: Dan Salkey and Harvey Austin launch Small World, explicitly building the business on an "entertainment-first" philosophy.
- 2024-2025: A wave of consolidation and AI-driven cost-cutting pushes mid-sized agencies to reconsider their value proposition.
- 2026 (Present): Agencies like Elvis hire dedicated heads of entertainment to navigate the shift, signaling that "Entertainment-as-a-Service" is becoming a standard agency vertical.
The structural changes are profound. Agencies are swapping their traditional production partners—historically shops like Stink or Pulse—for entertainment-focused entities like Banijay or Fremantle. This shift forces a change in the internal anatomy of an agency: the role of a strategist is no longer just to define a target audience, but to act as a producer.
Supporting Data: Why "Entertainment-First" Works
The shift is driven by a stark reality: the effectiveness of traditional advertising is waning. Brands that have experimented with entertainment-led models are seeing undeniable results.
Small World’s recent work for the retailer Hot Topic serves as a case study. Tasked with re-engaging a disaffected Gen Z audience, the agency abandoned traditional ad spots. Instead, they assembled a writers’ room—including professional showrunners—to produce a social-first sitcom. The result? The series was commissioned for five additional seasons.
The metrics provided a clear justification for the creative pivot:
- Store Traffic: Viewers of the content were 16% more likely to visit a store.
- Conversion: 12% were more likely to purchase online.
- Brand Perception: A 6% increase in "coolness" compared to control groups exposed to standard retail advertising.
These numbers illustrate a fundamental truth: when brands move away from interruption and toward entertainment, they create value that is measurable, repeatable, and inherently more resistant to the "skip" button.
Official Perspectives: The Leadership View
Chris Hassell, Founder of Ralph
Hassell is candid about the tension between his agency’s history and its future. "If your business model is still aiming to be fee-based, you’re not really approaching it wholeheartedly," he says. Ralph’s revenue remains skewed toward work-for-hire, but the firm has created specific investment vehicles to fund its IP development.
He emphasizes that he is no longer looking for "clients" in the traditional sense. "We’re looking for partner brands—not funding, not clients." The goal is to build an audience that has value in its own right, allowing the agency to move away from the volatility of the client-led project cycle.
Claire Prince, Head of Entertainment at Elvis
For Elvis, the appointment of Claire Prince—a veteran of TV development and high-level agency operations—marks a formal entry into this space. "Staying as a traditional advertising agency means you’re just going to get smaller," Prince notes.
Prince acknowledges that the biggest hurdle is not creative, but cultural. The sales cycle for an entertainment project is vastly different from a standard ad campaign. Some brands, like JD Sports or SharkNinja, are already comfortable with the "social series" model, while others struggle to greenlight a single project in under a year. The success, she notes, depends entirely on whether the CMO understands the long-term value of an entertainment play.
The Implications for the Industry
The shift toward entertainment-led creativity carries three significant implications for the future of the marketing ecosystem.
1. The Death of the "Standard" Brief
As agencies move into IP development, the "brief" becomes an artifact of the past. The new mandate involves long-term audience cultivation. Strategists must now think like showrunners, and creative directors must manage the lifecycle of a franchise rather than the lifespan of a campaign.
2. A New Commercial Taxonomy
The industry is moving toward asset-based pricing. Scott Spirit, chief growth officer at S4Capital, recently noted that clients are increasingly accepting rate cards based on the cost per asset, bypassing the traditional, and often contentious, "time and materials" billing model. This transparency is necessary for the entertainment model to work, even if it creates friction with procurement departments accustomed to "apples-to-apples" comparisons.
3. The "Chief AI Officer" Transitional Species
While AI is often cited as the reason for the industry’s crisis of identity, it is also the catalyst for this change. As AI assumes the burden of low-level execution, the human element becomes a premium commodity. As IAB UK’s James Chandler observed, the "Chief AI Officer" is a temporary role; once AI is fully embedded, the differentiator will once again return to the human ability to curate, entertain, and connect.
Conclusion: The "Fun Worth Finding"
The industry is currently in a state of existential reflection. After a decade of making marketing cheaper, faster, and more forgettable, agencies are asking, "What are we actually for?"
For pioneers like Ralph, the answer is clear: the industry must stop chasing volume and start chasing engagement. By adopting the "Fun Worth Finding" philosophy, these agencies are not just surviving; they are attempting to rebuild the very nature of brand communication. Whether this proves to be a sustainable model or just another industry trend remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the era of the traditional, silent-partner ad agency is rapidly drawing to a close.
Layla Zulfa
Muslim
