Irun a boutique marketing agency, but despite our agency size, we work with some notable brands and growing, funded startups, but I am not going to sugarcoat it. Business has been slow. Earlier this year, we had a couple of clients who "put marketing on pause" despite the good metrics we were getting them, and a manufacturing client literally backed down from a contract because of the tariffs.
At first, I took things a bit personally, but then when I connected with other fellow agency owners and consultants, I noticed that many of them were going through the same thing at some level, at least on the marketing side.
The truth is that we're at an inflection point. The forces reinventing marketing are not merely external; they're structural. Economic shifts are the main driver, but also A