United Artists

While we're off the subject, I fell asleep to an American Experience piece that mentioned how the distribution company, "United Artists," was formed. It got me thinking about how "talent" is managed in any large organization. It also got me thinking specifically about how "talent" is managed at advertising agencies. While it is arguable that there is no such thing as talent in ad agencies (those who can don't work in advertising...) it seems that things would be much cheaper for those who purchase marketing services if there were less corporate structure around the "talent" that is being utilized. If some post-modern, post-blog, post-wiki, post-Internet talent pool were created in which all of those people who normally reported to work for a particular company (ad agency) to work in the service of another company (the client) could collaborate (loosely) and receive only the most necessary guidance, it seems we'd cut down significantly on administrative and management costs. Since managers do nothing, and administrators do even less, this seems like an ideal solution to me. As "the client" grows more sophisticated, will it be possible to avoid such direct harnessing of "talented" resources?