Black Noise Goes Public With Open Letter Campaign Exposing the Bloated Holding-Company Model

Founder Craig Crawford challenges CMOs and brand leaders to reconsider the role scale plays in their agency partnerships.

Black Noise®, the independent creative agency founded by veteran creative leader Craig Crawford, is going public with a paid trade-press campaign that exposes a bloated holding-company business model. The campaign points to a growing field of small, independent agencies, studios and collectives offering CMOs a credible alternative to the holding-company establishment.

Launching today in trade pubs, the campaign features a series of open letters addressed to chief marketing officers in the travel, automotive and quick-service restaurant industries. Each letter is built around an iconic tagline: “We try harder,” written for Avis in 1962; “Think small,” created for Volkswagen in 1959; and “Where’s the beef?” the 1984 Wendy’s line that turned a category assumption inside out.

Signed by Black Noise founder and chief creative officer Craig Crawford, each letter argues that the agency model CMOs have inherited bills for bodies and hours, not ideas and outcomes, and that scale has stopped serving clients. 

“These three provocative statements have one thing in common,” said Crawford. “Each of them challenged conventional wisdom that nobody had questioned before. I’m asking CMOs to apply that same instinct to the agencies they’re paying, because the answer they’ve been sold looks a lot like the answer those iconic ads were built to disrupt. I’m challenging them to embrace what comes next — smaller, faster, savvier shops that are building the future of this industry alongside theirs.”

Research by Gartner finds many CMOs ready to listen, with 84 percent reporting high levels of strategic dysfunction within their function. They point to confusion and conflict that leaves marketing leaders unable to create effective strategies. CMOs who recognize the pattern are already acting on it, with 39 percent planning to cut agency budgets this year and streamline agency rosters, according to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 marketing leaders.

Crawford knows this relationship well, having spent more than two decades inside the holding-company system, including 15 years at Team One on Lexus and a recent run as EVP, executive creative director at Leo Burnett on Cadillac.

“I launched Black Noise last year in response to the conversation CMOs were having privately,” said Crawford. “This campaign is the next step. I want to put it on the record. It’s the difference between asking permission to be heard and taking action.”

The open letters will be available at weareblacknoise.com beginning May 4.

Source: Black Noise

  Advertising, Black Noise, Campaign, Craig Crawford, Marketing