Yesterday at BB King’s, smack in the middle of Times Square (and Advertising Week), a few “thinkers and makers” got together to discuss ‘Making Things vs. Saying Things.’ We say a lot of things in advertising—in fact, saying things is often half the battle. Let’s not discount the magic of saying things, it’s those initial things that we say that get us to the point of being able to make something. Well, at least, that’s how it works in advertising.

Back to the panel. TBG’s CEO Benjamin Palmer sat down with an array of these thinkers and makers—including Greg Clayman (Publisher of The Daily), Nick Parish (Editor of Contagious Magazine), Alli Mooney (Head of Trends and Insights at Google) and Henrik Werdelin (Founder of Prehype). The topic on hand: Why is being able to turn creativity into something tangible and create from scratch a new imperative in advertising? If apps are the new commodity, does that mean agencies need to do more product-like development and less of…whatever they’re doing currently? Most panelists agreed. “Product development is the new copywriting,” added Palmer.

So how do agencies not only convince brand to fund start-up-like products, while staying within the lines of traditional budgets in advertising? By creating new, original content within already existing frameworks, suggests Google’s Mooney—who notes that brands rarely take full advantage of already existing APIs and frameworks before attempting to (expensively) create their own. But is branded content convincing and ever truly “of quality?” Clayman, who helps develop integrated advertising for The Daily noted, “Creating good content is hard and expensive”. He explained that The Daily started by building unique advertising into their platform literally AS advertisers were demanding it. And because they have to publish everyday, ads have to adapt and change daily. The challenge is that not all brands can keep up with that schedule.

If agencies alone can’t create start-up quality products or consistent quality content for brands, how can they still nudge their employees toward that type of outside-the-box thinking? 20%, says Google, who allows all employees to use 20% of their time toward outside projects. Along the same lines, at Barbarian Group we have a similar project. Named “Project Popcorn,” new employees are required to band together and create a unique project during their first week.

While they would like to straw inspiration from start-ups in terms of ingenuity, mimicking is not an agency ideal. And is there anything that start-ups can learn from agencies? “Problem solving,” answered Palmer.