Tough Time for Creative Boutiques

Creative boutiques have long been an important part of the advertising industry. The competieive advantage for boutiques has always been their ability to turn out inventive creative work quickly, without the cumbersome bureaucracy and politics of larger agencies. Large and small shops coexisted successfully because boutiques usually pursued smaller accounts than large agencies were interested in. And even as the agency business was reshaped by consolidation and the creation of large mega-agencies that now dominate the industry, creative boutiques were riding high on the dot-com boom of the late 90s that provided a boost in billings, profile, and morale for small shops. However, the dot-com wave crashed even faster than it appeared, and then came the terrorist attacks of September 11. which were followed by the warst advertising recession in decades.…