I read Campaign‘s article about the fallout from WPP’s capital markets day. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair of WPP’s chief executive, Mark Read, to lay the “didn’t reinvent quickly enough” thing at the feet of the creative shops.

It’s clearly true, but as I remember it (as an EMEA chief creative officer of a WPP network), the barrier to reinvention was also the fact that WPP would never sign off any margin relief to do anything. That and the institutional immune system in agencies that tries to attack anything acting differently or entrepreneurially. Anyway. Financial performance has been in decline for years. On that, we agree.

Further down the piece, someone was talking about a supposed “shortage of talent” to capitalise on growth opportunities. We can argue the toss about whether or not there is a shortage in agencies. But in the market there is absolutely no shortage of talent. It’s just that agencies are looking in the wrong place. And if they should happen to find it, they are just not set up to work with the growing global pool of A-list “independent” creatives, strategists, technologists and entrepreneurs that are the key to growth.

There is an incredibly talented crew out there for whom the agency Kool-Aid has curdled. All ages, all genders, all over the world, don’t understand why they need to work all the hours god sends and have zero work/life balance when there is an alternative. There is an exodus to the portfolio career. Some have private clients, some work with a number of agencies, some work directly with brands, some are entrepreneurs, some have personal projects. They flourish.

On the whole, they haven’t been forced to work from the kitchen table by a global pandemic: they made the explicit choice to jump off the burning platform and find sanctuary.

You can find them in the north of Scotland, on the west coast of France, a beach in Indonesia, Crouch End, Goa, Wherever. Technology allows the creative diaspora to go wherever it damn well wants to, in a way that couldn’t happen just five years ago. Technology has changed the game for good. And the pandemic has only expedited this process.

But here’s the rub. As I was leaving my big old network job, I excitedly explained my start-up idea to a European chief creative officer. A mate. Someone I rated.

He raised his eyebrows and said: “Wow, so you’re going to do that with freelancers?” He sort of spat that last word and at the same time left it hanging in the air. That’s the issue there. What is it with the pejorative use of that word?

In a more chivalrous time, when knights wore shining armour and rode white horses, the Free Lances were the elite. A warrior class for hire. Tied to no one. Not your poor plodding foot soldier. Not pawns on the battlefield for a top-down feudal system (bit too obvious for a network analogy?) – but the best and most skilful crew money could buy.