A celebration!? One year of Cartel Agency.

The past 12 months have been anything but ordinary for our industry. AI is accelerating everything and becoming more accessible by the day. What once required time and experience can now be done faster and cheaper. Which inevitably raises the question: what is the role of an agency today? The sector is feeling that pressure. Layoffs are happening across the board. But we see it differently. Our answer is simple: agencies are here to stay – just not in the way they used to be.

What’s disappearing is the old model: growth through more people, more hours and more output. What remains is the need for direction. For choices. For coherence. Machines can produce, but they don’t set direction. That’s where we come in.

Cartel Agency is built as an agency by humans, for humans. Not as a slogan, but as a belief. Our way of working – compound creativity – reflects that: not one-off campaigns, but consistent, cumulative growth.

We’re not building Cartel Agency as a standalone business. As part of Friends of Cartel, we have a structural advantage: we combine focus with scale. We stay sharp in what we do, while drawing on a broader system of expertise, technology and talent. We don’t need to do everything ourselves, but we do take responsibility for the whole. That makes us both more agile and more resilient than a traditional agency.

No radical leaps, but deliberate choices. We’re making the agency future-proof by embedding AI into how we work, developing tools and workflows, and shifting our services further towards strategy and systems.

Compound creativity: not a concept, but a way of working

Compound creativity is how we describe our approach, but it’s more than a label. It’s the belief that communication only delivers real value when it builds over time. Not a single campaign that peaks and disappears, but work that grows layer by layer: each idea strengthening the last, each action building on what came before.

It calls for consistency, patience and strategic backbone from clients but in return, it helps brands grow steadily rather than swing from peak to peak. Our collaborations with BelOrta and Wibra, recognised with an Effie in ‘Sustained Success’, prove exactly that. Not a one-off burst of creativity, but a story built over time. In a world where AI increasingly takes over production, that becomes even more valuable. Ideas aren’t scarce. Direction is.

We’re deliberately building a network rather than a closed structure. Collaboration within the collective remains intense. With the design expertise of Lex & Turner, employer branding as a growth driver through Cartel Works, and RCA PR as a catalyst for attention and reputation, we’re not a generalist but a multispecialist.

Our collaboration with HeadOffice also continues to grow stronger: we increasingly support them with strategy, media and performance, while they strengthen our content collaborations in return. With Born Digital, we unlock new technological possibilities.

And we don’t stop at our own walls. We work with Agency in Residence partners such as Manamana, collaborate with research and production partners, and rely on a flexible network of freelancers.

We’ve also strengthened our team with people bringing diverse perspectives. Sam, Thibault, Matthias, Fleur and Mara joined us with backgrounds in agencies, advertising and technology, helping us push our team – and our clients – forward.

We’re proud of the work we create, but even more of the direction we’re building with our clients. We’ve delivered strong work for clients who have believed in us for years. They didn’t resist the change; they embraced the opportunities it created. We also welcomed new collaborations with CM, Goed, Primagaz, Lapperre, Acerta, and brands we can’t name due to NDAs.

We’re equally proud that our clients are choosing brand platforms over one-off campaigns and that they’re evolving with us towards steering on impact through OKRs and KPI-driven reviews. The result: stronger creative work, greater trust in our approach, and growing recognition – from clients, partners and peers – that this model is built for the future.

After one year, one thing is clearer than ever: the future of agencies isn’t about doing more, but about organising what matters more effectively. Not doing everything yourself but taking responsibility for the whole. Not focusing on output, but on impact. That’s exactly where the strength of our model lies.

One year is not a finish line. It’s a starting point. We believe our industry needs a new model. Not just another agency that executes better, but one that is built differently. We want to be that example. A model where creativity is once again tied to business, and where collaboration works structurally better for clients and agencies alike.

Less naivety. More responsibility. More business through creativity.