An interesting article from Forbes. Before you follow the link, you might want to read this Daring Fireball post first.

That said, Avi Dan, writing for Forbes:

Apple, is the most influential American company. Reaching out to Madison Avenue and recruiting Myhren and other well-known creative luminaries is a game changer. I believe that more companies will follow suit and enlist top creative directors to head their internal creative teams. And that would be disruptive for traditional ad agencies.

Why are talented creatives leaving agencies and going client-side?

The people who generate all the ideas and work are passionate and ambitious for their ideas. Agencies, on the other hand, are happy to keep trying to live in a world which is ceasing to exist. Clinging onto the same attitude, tools, and ways of working with CEOs who are either oblivious to the current mindset or too frightened to instigate change. It’s the perfect storm of increasing decreasing loyalty and an industry reveling in mediocrity.

Ad agencies are geared to make money, to bloat projects, to burn hours. Those hourly billings have become Madison Avenue’s real product. This is not what many “A” creatives aspire for. The holding companies, agency bureaucracies and account people that insert themselves into the process have often impeded and, indeed, disrupted an environment that allows for great work.

The fly in this ointment is that there is a limit to the number of companies that can afford to bring “A” talent in house. This is more of a drain of top talent that will dilute the agency model, but I don’t see it disrupting the model entirely. Still, an interesting observation.