The End of Agencies 

Background:

The year is 2030 and we get to follow an afternoon in Fredrik’s life.

Fredrik works at FMG in central Stockholm, Sweden. He has worked here since the early 2020’s; he commenced his career in sales but has since then worked his way up to become an AI-recreator.

The end of Agencies:

“Damn, what a day.” The last meeting of the day is running over time and Fredrik checks the news while waiting for the meeting to end so that he can go home. He scrolls through his feed, which as usual is crammed with news from the categories he is subscribing to right now. A lot about Elon Musk, of course, where Fredrik has a subscription. “That man never ceases to amaze me with his clever ideas,” Fredrik thinks. “But what is happening now, why do I see news about a storm in the north of Sweden”, Fredrik thinks. “Of course, my friend Olle competes in cross country skiing there over the weekend. Then it is nice to stay updated about his trip. Fredrik had completely forgotten that he signed up for a three-day subscription to “Local skiing conditions in Lapland” in October, when Olle sent in his application. 

Fredrik thinks back to 2025 when the first one of the big media houses fell. Many people were shocked, but quite honestly – why would anyone want to pay to read about lots of things that you don’t care about while being bombarded with pathetic advertising attempts from dishonest brands? Google and Facebook did not last very long either. 

It was a blessing  that the public pressure finally paid off and that the Global Data Freedom Act was introduced. Then the last companies, those who had not already done so voluntarily, were forced to open up their databases. When they lost their competitive advantage, historical data, we finally got rid of all the giants. 

The meeting ends, Fredrik walks out from the office building and looks up at the wall where the big billboard used to be – it’s unbelievable that we accepted such boring advertising before, he thinks. It feels good not to be met by completely irrelevant communication from brands you haven’t even signed up for. 

He walks down to the subway and gets on the train when a thought hits him – Olle’s compass might have been blown away by the storm. Fredrik thinks that he should buy a new one just in case – it’s actually his friend’s thirtieth birthday party on Saturday. He asks his digital assistant to choose the best one. 

“Of course, Fredrik. Olle has ranked products from SkiExpert and Woodworld high, but the model SouthWEST from Forrester has received the best reviews, so I recommend that you buy that one. 

Fredrik is surprised. “Wow, Woodworld’s new compass must have received really bad reviews from its latest customers – it was the most popular compass last night.” 

Woodworld has a good reputation thanks to the company’s commitment to saving vulnerable forests, their extra charity work and value-creating educational content prior to  the launch of their new compass range. They also have a “share to charity” of 35 percent, which is well above the industry average of 20 percent. Just three years ago, a well-developed CSR strategy was guaranteed to be enough to keep a product on the top list for at least a few weeks due to high levels of positive word of mouth, but those days are over. Luckily, the algorithms have now become faster at capturing negative feedback even on the company’s products, so they can no longer get away with bad products or non-user-friendly services, Fredrik thinks while asking his digital assistant to send SouthWEST to Olle at the beginning of next week. 

Fredrik gets home and is met by his partner. She used to work as CSR and marketing manager until the big CSR- and data revelation. Like so many others in the industry, she resigned and chose to re-educate herself to become a niche writer. She chose to focus on contemporary American tech billionaires, something that Fredrik is happy about since that was how they met. 

“If I had not been so fascinated by Elon Musk, I would have never chosen to subscribe to the articles my partner wrote about him. We would never have been able to chat about Elon’s flame throwers and discover that we had so much more in common”. Fredrik laughs. “I’m glad that man never ceases to amaze.”