Stephen Berkov

Stephen Berkov, the executive director of client strategy for Edmunds.com (and former innovation director for Audi) read "Relevance" and had a question for me.

Why have advertising agencies become so risk-averse?

I think ad agencies, in general, are themselves teetering on the brink of irrelevance. I’m not sure it’s because they’re risk-averse so much as it is that they are in a business -- advertising -- that is itself becoming irrelevant.

There needs to be less focus on the advertising and more on the relevance of the products and services themselves. When that happens, the marketing takes care of itself. So, I see a smaller role for advertising and therefore ad agencies in the years ahead.