Creative agencies are swimming upstream. Uncommon recently introduced a global rebrand of JD Sports – with a custom typeface, design toolkit and a repositioning that will be implemented across 38 markets. Traditional ad shops are suddenly doing work that used to be exclusively the responsibility of us branding agencies. Some people are getting their shorts twisted.
The thinker himself writes: “Creative agencies are encroaching on brand territory.” “The lines are blurring.” “What does this mean for specialist studios?”. Everyone is treating it as a mutual quarrel, as if someone is stealing lunch money.
But here’s what we’re not seeing: It’s not about expansion. It’s about improvement.
For years, we’ve worked in this artificial separation – brand agencies do strategy and identity work, creative agencies do campaign work. It didn’t make any sense then, and it doesn’t make any sense now. Because brand and campaign work are the same thing, they are different expressions of the same strategic problem. Setting them apart was always the creation of an industry, not a customer need.
When a creative agency builds a brand from the ground up, they’re not “moving upstream” – they’re acknowledging that you can’t do great work without understanding the basic strategic truth of what something is and why it matters. And conversely, when brand agencies stop at a logo and guidelines without thinking about how that thing moves through culture, they’re only doing half the job.
JD Sports’ work demonstrates this perfectly. The new identity includes a logo angled at 10 degrees to reflect forward motion, with a custom font and motion elements designed to position JD as a driving force behind youth culture. It’s not just pretty photos – it’s strategic positioning made visible, then activated through each customer touch point. You can’t separate brand thinking from creative expression. They are a thing.
Arguably, more creative agencies than ever before are now doing this “land grab” as AI is making production easier, faster, and cheaper. They need to follow the money.
But clients don’t really need experts who live in their field — these are people who understand the entire spectrum of brands’ existence in culture, from the strategic underpinnings to how it looks in the TikTok comments section. The best work has always come from places that refuse to respect arbitrary boundaries.
So maybe the real story isn’t that creative agencies are doing the brand’s work. The point is that the distinction was always nonsense. Good agencies – no matter what you call them – understand that brands are behaviors, campaigns are expressions of strategy, and you can’t do one thing well without deeply understanding the other.
The industry’s obsession with classification has always been more about the billing model than about what actually makes great work. “Brand agencies” and “creative agencies” are financial models, not creative philosophies. What matters is whether you can solve the problem at hand – whether that’s defining what something means or creating a piece of culture that changes perception.
The agencies winning right now are the ones that have stopped asking “Is this brand work or campaign work?” And started asking “Is this the right answer?” Because at the end of the day, customers don’t care about our organization chart. They care about work that changes their business. Yes, it has become a bread-and-butter, but creative/brand agencies like Mother have been in this space for decades.
The streets were always imaginary. Welcome to the merger.
