Advertising Week · Agency Alchemy · September 14, 2026
Advertising Week invited Rick Wayne, Executive Creative Director at Brand Imagination Group, onto its Agency Alchemy podcast to work through a question worth asking out loud: what happens when filmmaking collides with the agency world, and why is the traditional agency model struggling to keep up with the way creative work actually gets made now.
Below is our read on the five ideas that mattered most, written in our words. The episode is Advertising Week's, and it is worth your time in full.
Our summary of the conversation, not a transcript. Advertising Week published its own write-up of the episode, and the full discussion lives on their site.
Most shops still hand an idea down a line, strategy to creative to production, and it gives up a little of itself at every stop. Rick's argument is that the structure is the problem, not the people in it. Put storytelling, design, production, social and experiential in the room on day one and the idea arrives intact.
Good cameras are everywhere now, so gloss no longer separates anybody from anybody. What reads as cinematic is the thinking that happened before the shoot: what the story is, where it breathes, what the frame chooses to hold. That is craft, and craft is available at any budget.
The job used to end at yes or no on an execution. Rick describes something broader: an idea has to hold its shape across film, social, creators, technology and culture, and somebody has to own whether it does. Less judging the work, more designing the thing that produces it.
Borrowing the surface of a scene and bolting a famous face onto it reads as a transaction, not a point of view. People clock it instantly. The work that lands starts from a real human truth and a real community, and earns its place there before it asks for anything.
Cutting one beautiful spot into nine placements is distribution, not creativity. TikTok, Reddit, broadcast and social video each have their own grammar and their own expectations, and honoring that is really just honoring the people on the other side of the screen.
The full conversation covers more ground than five cards can hold, including where AI sits in all of this and what it takes to move fast without sanding the idea down on the way out. It was published by Advertising Week on September 14, 2026.
Listen to the full episode on Advertising Week