Why agencies are stuck in middle of in-house ambition and consulting creep, Amitesh Rao explains

New Delhi: The advertising industry rarely sits still for long. But right now, it seems particularly restless.

Brands are building in-house creative teams. Agencies are reworking what they offer. Consulting firms are showing up in marketing conversations more often than before. And AI is quietly changing how work gets done. Sometimes faster than anyone can explain it.

Put together, these shifts have made agency roles harder to define than they once were. Not broken. Just less tidy.

According to Amitesh Rao, Chief Executive Officer, Leo, much of the current debate sounds newer than it actually is.

Watch the full interview here:

Familiar territory, louder conversation

The growth of in-house creative teams is often framed as a recent disruption. Rao pushed back on that idea early. “It’s not a new model. I’ve seen companies deploy in-house creative teams with varying degrees of success for the last two decades,” he said. 

What does feel different today is the confidence with which brands are expanding in-house capabilities. Speed, efficiency and tighter control over output are common motivations. For certain types of work, those choices appear to be sticking.

But Rao suggested the model has always had limits. “Fundamentally, creativity is about perspective,” he said, explaining his stance. One reason agencies continue to be brought into the picture, according to him, is that “a creative company like Leo adds value to a client’s business because we bring a different perspective.”

That external viewpoint, he implied, is harder to sustain internally, no matter how capable the team.

That external lens, he believes, is difficult to sustain inside any organisation for long. Some sectors, especially those driven by agility or operational control, are increasingly comfortable relying on in-house teams. 

At the same time, he pointed out, “I don’t think anyone has patented a way for an in-house model to consistently bring an external perspective.”

In his experience, this gap has shown up in different ways.

“I’ve also seen client organisations where in-house creative teams were tried and shut down within 24 months because they simply weren’t working.” The reasons are not always creative. 

Rao pointed to “talent challenges, retention challenges, and several other issues” that tend to surface once the initial momentum wears off.

That does not mean the in-house story is slowing down. Technology is clearly reshaping how these teams operate.

“With AI and technology, other models for in-house creative deployments are emerging and starting to work,” Rao said, though he was careful to qualify that success. Those models, he noted, tend to suit work that is “more formulaic, where efficiency is more important than thought.”

As a result, agencies are seeing certain kinds of work move away, while other, less predictable briefs continue to land with them.

The consultancy question, without the pivot panic

Alongside the in-house conversation runs another: whether agencies need to become consultancies to stay relevant. Rao does not see it as a simple switch.

“It’s not a black-and-white question,” he said. One distinction he emphasised was that “AI is not handling creativity; creativity is using AI.”

Technology, in this framing, is a tool rather than a replacement. But Rao was direct about what agencies cannot afford to ignore.

“Any creative business that does not embrace data, technology, and AI has no reason to exist,” he said, adding that such businesses are either “already dead” or “going to die very soon.” At the same time, Rao questioned the assumption that creative agencies are the most exposed to automation.

“I don’t think AI is an existential crisis for creative companies,” he said. “I think it’s an existential crisis for consulting companies.”

He pointed to signs of pressure in that space, recruitment freezes, stalled increments, layoffs and what he described as “commercial devaluing of the consulting product.” “That industry is under far more pressure than ours,” Rao said.

Despite seeing more clients opt for short, project-based engagements, he stopped short of calling this a shift towards consulting. “I don’t believe our business is going to, or should, pivot to the model of a consulting company,” he said.

Clients, he acknowledged, are increasingly framing briefs as specific problems. But, as Rao put it, “that doesn’t mean we become consultants.”

Advisory work, without the label

Part of the confusion, Rao suggested, comes from treating “advisory” as a new demand.

“The best partnerships we have with our clients are already advisory and consulting in nature,” he said. “That’s not new.”

For him, the idea that agencies simply respond to instructions belongs to a different time.

“We don’t exist to say, ‘You need an ad; I’ll make you an ad.’ That’s not a creative partnership.”

Rao noted that it is often hard to separate creatives from strategists or business leads and that this overlap is deliberate.

“You can have a very strategic conversation with a creative, and a very creative conversation with a planner,” Rao said, adding that “clients see that in our DNA.”

In a climate where agency relationships are being examined more closely, Rao believes relevance is increasingly tied to involvement.

“If you’re not participating in your client’s business growth, you’re not really a partner,” he said. That, he added, “is another way of saying you’re not an advisor.”

A picture still forming

Across the industry, the signs are visible but uneven.

In-house teams are expanding in some areas and struggling in others. Agencies are adjusting scope and structure as certain kinds of work move away. Consultancies are appearing more often in marketing rooms, even as automation reshapes their core offerings.

What is emerging is not a clean handover from one model to another, but a period where roles overlap and expectations shift case by case.

Some work moves in-house because it needs to move fast. Some stay with agencies because they need distance or judgment. Some relationships turn project-led. Others quietly change shape.

The boundaries are less defined than they used to be. And for now, that lack of clarity seems to be part of the landscape rather than a problem to solve.

Not a conclusion. Just a snapshot of an industry mid-adjustment.