Strategy is at a crossroads, with agencies struggling even as client demand for strategic guidance reaches new highs, according to The Future of Strategy 2025, a global report released by WARC. The study surveyed 1,127 strategists worldwide and included insights from leading strategy experts, highlighting the paradox facing agency-side strategists: their discipline is undervalued even as brands increasingly rely on clear strategic thinking to navigate uncertainty.
Lena Roland, Content Director at WARC Strategy, said: “Our annual Future of Strategy report acts as a temperature check for how strategists are feeling about the state of the discipline. It explores the challenges in agency strategy, and the rise of independent strategists. It looks at the impact of AI and the importance of human-led research. This year’s survey makes for stark reading. It found agency-side strategists feel their discipline is at a crossroads and all too often is treated as expendable. Agency-side strategy needs to rebrand, focusing on helping clients identify where and how to grow.”
The report reveals that 80% of strategists believe their discipline is at a crossroads, and 62% feel strategy is often treated as expendable when budgets are tight. At the same time, brands face volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous markets that require clear strategic guidance. Despite this demand, strategy teams are shrinking, with only 31% of respondents expecting strategy headcount to grow over the next 12 months, compared with 47% in 2024.
Tom Morton, Founder of strategy consultancy Narratory Capital, remarked: “The economic housing of strategy is coming apart, which is strange because the demand for it is as high as ever.”
Ellie Bamford, Chief Strategy Officer at VML North America, added: “We’ve become risk averse, and our clients have become risk averse... We are hiding behind mountains of data and research, and we’re not coming out strongly enough with our point of view. And that’s diminishing our value.”
The report also found that many strategists are considering client-side or consultancy roles, with 24% of the most experienced respondents eyeing consultancy positions for their next career move.
The Role of AI in Strategy
Strategists remain divided on AI’s long-term impact. Nearly half (46%) disagree that AI will erode their value, but 37% agree that AI could learn critical skills like taking strategic leaps. AI adoption has accelerated, with 76% of strategists reporting increased use in the past year—especially in North America (85%) versus Asia (74%) and Europe (69%).
Oliver Feldwick, Chief Innovation Officer at T&P, commented: “The challenge for strategists is not to resist AI, nor to blindly embrace it, but to partner with it. This is not about abdicating our role. It’s about evolving it. Reclaiming strategy from the grind and rediscovering the joy of thought.”
Strategists are leveraging AI to streamline competitor analysis (66%), speed up brief development (51%), and gain cultural insights faster (42%). Yet they caution that AI cannot replicate originality (61%) or cultural nuance (60%), emphasizing the continued importance of human-led research.
Rethinking Agency Strategy
The report calls for agencies to embrace more imaginative, disruptive thinking, moving beyond rigid frameworks to identify gaps in understanding, access, and timing. Joseph Burns, Strategy Lead at Quality Meats Creative, said: “Strategy regains relevance when it stops polishing symmetry and starts opening up advantages: gaps in understanding (insights no one has), in access (places others can’t go), and in timing (moves others can’t match).”
Steve Walls, Planner at Moon Rabbit, added: “Planning needs to stop trying to be right and start trying to be useful. It needs to take leaps of faith and to convince others to follow it into the unknowable. Strategy should be infused with empathy, imagination, ambition and truth.”
Strategy as a Growth Partner
WARC’s report recommends rebranding agency strategy as a growth partner for clients, not just a support function. Tomas Gonsorcik, Global Chief Strategy Officer at BBH, explained: “We have to rebrand strategy – not as a back-office function, not as a luxury, but as a service: clear, accountable, and indispensable. Strategy should operate as a standalone service inside the agency. Its primary customers are creatives and CMOs, and its purpose is to deliver growth clarity, not just decks.”
The biggest opportunities for strategists lie in helping clients navigate volatility and complexity in their categories (52%) and in the media landscape (45%), highlighting strategy’s critical role in driving business growth in an uncertain world.
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