Describing himself as the "unelected shop steward for media agencies", MindShare Worldwide's chief executive said media agencies faced a time of unprecedented change.
Proctor said: "Competing on so many fronts, you'd better watch out. The only way you can sustain that kind of competition is to be good at all these things [buying, planning, communications planning, research, content, video-on-demand and mobile]."
He advocated forming alliances with competitors who would now become "frenemies". These included specialist agencies, management consultants, ad agencies looking to re-import media expertise and even media owners. He added: "We have to become more and more ambidextrous, we have to work with people who we compete with in other spheres. If we do not, then clients like Johnson & Johnson will look at other spheres.
"The big global media owners do have an ability to disintermediate, so we have to be careful to protect our ground on that."
Proctor pointed out that while MindShare was a powerful player in the traditional media world, it had less leverage over new media owners such as Google. "We are their biggest customer, but we represent less than 1% of their income," he said.
Proctor was coy on whether the required investment could be made without hitting profits, noting that we "can't make less profit because we all work for people who won't accept that".
Proctor's warning followed a similar call for change from Mainardo de Nardis, the global boss of Aegis Media, who warned that the old media model was dying. He said clients were not happy with media agencies' rate of progress and that they still "focus too much on cost rather than value".
Esther Lee, senior vice-president and chief creative officer at Coca- Cola, said agencies needed to educate clients as to the possibilities of media. "We need to sometimes do more small things instead of just big ideas," she said.
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