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Rory O Rourke, who swapped a consultancy chair for the agency floor at Dynamo, argues brand strategy must live alongside execution if promises are to be kept. His intervention revives a debate about whether strategy belongs in agencies or in specialist consultancies.
Background and context
At a time when many strategists have migrated to large consultancies and specialist firms, Rory O Rourke’s recent piece for AdWorld makes the counter case: keep strategy embedded in the agency. O Rourke, Dynamo’s Strategy and Innovations Director, wrote that although strategic work has fractured in recent years, that fragmentation risks creating a gap between what a brand promises and what an organisation actually delivers. His full column is published on AdWorld. (Source: AdWorld).
The argument sits against broader industry data. WARC’s Future of Strategy report and other industry briefings have documented the feeling among strategists that their discipline is at a crossroads, with many high value tasks migrating to specialist consultancies. That trend is real, but O Rourke warns it is not an unalloyed good. See WARC for context.
What Dynamo is doing in practice
O Rourke points to two recent Dynamo projects as proof of concept. In one case the agency led a repositioning for a major Irish corporate law firm; in another it is helping prepare to launch a retail bank into the Irish market. The common approach was not an ivory tower strategy divorced from reality but sustained, organisation‑wide engagement: senior leadership to set ambition, and broader employee involvement so the brand could be tested against the realities of customer service, product design and internal culture.
That method is familiar to those who follow Roger Martin’s critique of separating strategy from execution. Martin has argued that strategy cannot be a pure, abstract plan; it dies in the small day to day choices that people make when they deliver a product or service. For a reminder of that school of thought see articles and commentary on strategy and execution in the Harvard Business Review.
Why the debate matters for business leaders
There are two clear stakes here for Irish companies and clients. First, reputation and behaviour are twin aspects of a brand. A brand campaign may move market perceptions, but it will fail over time if internal processes and people cannot live the promise. Second, fragmentation can create consultancy arbitrage: specialist firms can charge for high level strategy then hand the brief to others for delivery, which can drive up cost and dilute accountability.
That does not mean consultancies do not bring useful expertise. They are often strong on diagnostics, systems thinking and change management. The question is one of balance and implementation. O Rourke’s point is practical: if you want a brand to be an organising principle inside the business, you need the people who craft that principle to be in touch with the people who must enact it.
A different way of doing strategy
Dynamo’s approach places multi disciplinary teams at the heart of strategy development. Not just planners and creatives but product, UX, operations and frontline employees are brought into the room. The result, O Rourke says, is that strategic thinking is stress tested early and often, and ideas that cannot be realised are exposed before they become expensive creative liabilities.
That process is particularly relevant for sectors with high regulatory, technological or operational complexity. Launching a bank in Ireland, for example, requires more than positioning; it demands service design, compliance flows and call centre scripts that match the tone of marketing. The agency model that treats those workstreams as afterthoughts is liable to produce surface level success and structural failure.
A nuanced critique, not kneejerk nostalgia
There is a populist temptation to lament the rise of the big consultancies and to call for a return to some golden age of full service agencies. O Rourke does not do that. His is a pragmatic case for integration: strategy and execution are complementary tasks that benefit from being convened by one team with authority to shape both narrative and delivery.
For leaders weighing agency versus consultancy, the practical questions should be about governance and capability: who owns the brand promise, who measures execution, and who is accountable for the say/do gap? If the answers are diffuse, the risk is clear. If they are concentrated and cross functional, the brand is more likely to be resilient.
What this means for the market
For the Irish market, where talent is mobile and budgets are scrutinised, the Dynamo example presents a commercial proposition. Agencies that can credibly blend strategic insight with delivery capability will offer a clearer return on investment than networks that simply hand off to a specialist. That advantage matters to boards that want accountability, not just advice.
Further reading and original piece
Readers can find Rory O Rourke’s original opinion on AdWorld for a fuller account of his experience and method. For background on the industry debate see WARC’s Future of Strategy briefing and commentary on strategy and execution in Harvard Business Review.
Source: AdWorld.
