A call to arms. Make way for ‘the builders’.

Rishad Tobaccowala’s blog post at Reinventing, and his speech at the American Association of Ad Agencies Transformation conference, are both incredibly exciting.

With both, he calls for renewal and appeals to the ad industry to save itself by hiring in top tier talent to build a new world, specifically:

This is the time to build. The talent we most need are builders, sculptors, painters. Folks who create and not just manage.

And what should we be building?

Rishad says the ad industry needs to be able to remakes industries and build new business models in order to survive. This is what the hungry, young tech dudes in Silicon Valley do. If the ad industry doesn’t go out and get these people, he says, they’ll simply carry on building the future anyway for themselves. Like, they already are. And the ad industry will remain on the outside looking in – watching the builders smash their world to pieces and re-make it in their own image.Rishad says the ad industry needs to be able to remakes industries and build new business models in order to survive. This is what the hungry, young tech dudes in Silicon Valley do. If the ad industry doesn’t go out and get these people, he says, they’ll simply carry on building the future anyway for themselves. Like, they already are. And the ad industry will remain on the outside looking in – watching the builders smash their world to pieces and re-make it in their own image.

The problem?

An ad industry that’s developed an incentive system that rewards seniority over talent.

Rishad’s blog post is a must-read and neatly dismisses any thought that this is about digital versus analogue. That’s boring. This is about making stuff – specifically re-making the way the world works with new platforms, apps, ecosystems, communities and models. Yeah! And it’s about making the ad industry somewhere The Geekerati want to work (they’re looking for, “Accountability, a culture that will let them do what they want, and some skin in the game”).

He’s not pulling punches. This is a raw and emotional appeal to the old guard to get with it or get out.

You came in with dreams, and now you stand with spreadsheets. Let’s get back to the audacity and the dreams and the spreadsheets will fill up beautifully.