Hitch has been saying:  
Even before the economy went in the toilet, a large amount of this industry’s best work and new business wins will come from lean, well run, professional, smaller agencies in 2009 and beyond.  AOR is becoming a thing of the past, clients are doing more project work and increasingly as big agency talent gets pastured or flee the major ad conglomerates, top-notch talent is available in smaller independent shops without all the layers.
On Tuesday the New York Times reported this:

Intel Shifts Image Advertising to a Smaller Agency:  Intel is shifting an important advertising assignment — to create brand and corporate image campaigns — to a smaller, independent agency from a Madison Avenue giant….  How much proof do you need?

Read the entire article here