Read this story from Fast Company “Ad Industry: Here’s Why Your Best Talent Is Leaving And What You Can Do About It,” and you’ll find the buried lead in this story should be disturbing to ad professionals: companies are being way more creative than their ad agencies.

Let’s admit it, though some of us in the advertising industry are doing great stuff, they’re doing more. Companies are innovating, transforming industries, markets, finding solutions and developing ideas that excite customers.

We now live in a world where the people considered most creative are not ad folks like David Ogilvy, Lee Clow or whomever is in the movers section of Ad Age, it’s the recently deceased head of a tech company (Apple) and the thousands of others that still work there.

Hats off to corporate America’s amazing release of creativity and innovation. Hopefully it’s inspiring (as a smarting kick in the pants) to the advertising industry. And a suggestion to do what I say to clients is the true definition of creativity: problem solving.  That means strong pictures and clever copy is nice but the here’s the real test: does your creation just look good? Or does it actually have the power or idea to change something or solve a problem for a client?  When more and more of us do that, we’ll recapture the creativity title.