Amidst all the mergers (Barkley and OKRP), buyouts (Havas and Uncommon), takeovers (Dentsu and Tag), absorptions (Carmichael Lynch and Tierney) and superconglomerations (VML & Wunderman & Thompson & Young & Rubicam – am I forgetting anybody?) – one might get the impression that soon there will hardly be any agencies left, reducing the opportunities for adworkers – and their clients - to little more choice than there is between McDonalds and Burger King and would you like fries with that?
But consider this;
Advertising is notoriously an industry of pendulum swings. Everybody pooh-poohed television until suddenly everybody didn’t. Everybody thought the internet was a joke until they all started making money on it. Everyone thought it wasn’t possible to do advertising on social media until suddenly everybody was. Everybody ignored AI until, well…
So, informed by the history of this industry, and my own nature (which is contrarian to be sure), I started looking in the direction opposite the one that saw agencies jamming their names together in a frenzy of rebranding. And I can’t help but think that maybe the big agency ship has, in many ways, sailed.
But small agencies? Really?
“They’re small!”, you say. They don’t have the resources of big agencies. And they’re populated by people who couldn’t make it in the big shops, right? Touting awards we’ve never heard of for brands we don’t care about. Plus, who are they anyway? Their names aren’t popping up in my Linkedin feed so I won’t be able to defend them to my CEO like I can a J Walter Rubicam or a Wells Rich and Bond.
But let’s unpack that a bit. No, they don’t have the resources big agencies say they do. But how many of those resources do you actually get to use? The global CCO in London? The phalanxes of strategists and cool-hunters across the planet? The cutting-edgiest copywriters and designers and developers from every North American city’s boho-chicest enclave? Is your big agency really pulling people from the four corners of the globe to solve your little awareness problem? If so, then, excellent. Hell, even if you’re just getting a better deal on media because they’re buying in bulk. But the question is, are you?
The second one – the talent level. This is a problem, where perception and reality do an awkward and uncomfortable dance. All those big agency hacks and empty suits had to go somewhere when the last round of layoffs came, and yeah, a lot of them have been pounding away in small shops doing mediocre work for mediocre clients. That said, however, remember that a lot of those people are still at big agencies too (it’s not always cream that rises to the top, sunshine). And one of the reasons they have that job security, is because a lot of really great people got tired of dealing with them and went off and started their own things – little shops that you’ve never heard of but that are full of rocket scientists who did work that you have.
Now, a corollary word about this which you may not have considered and which muddies the waters a bit (my apologies). Those ex-big shop folks who are peopling many small shops? They’re bringing their big shop red tape, processes, bureaucracy and entitlement with them. In other words, because they’ve only ever worked in big shops, they’re modeling their small shop on the big shops – “we need this many people in the room!” “we can’t start this project in less than a month!” “we need eight weeks of research from… somewhere!” and on and on - thereby losing all the advantages a small shop can give you.
And that’s a shame because there are some unique qualities small shops have that often go missed and that I think will become more valuable as the big get bitter – I mean bigger:
Like “agility “– I know, I know - every agency uses this word, and when they do, it makes me throw up. Because what they usually mean is “we’ll make our juniors work around the clock to execute whatever idiotic changes you have. There’s no request too ridiculous, no change too last minute, no re-write too incomprehensible that we (I mean they) won’t stay late and make it. Twice, if you want.” That’s not what I mean by “agile”.
What I mean is being small enough and in-tune enough to the needs of your brand and your customers to react as close to “real-time” as your customers expect you to. Small agencies, because they have fewer layers of approval, because the people making the work are the people making the decisions, and because they have direct access to the clients, are able to respond to the meme, the event, the joke, faster – sometimes faster than the client has the bandwidth to approve. Yes, big agencies can do this too – but generally only when they’ve built a team within their shop that functions like, wait for it, a small agency.
Also “collaboration”. Now, I know, when clients hear this word from an agency they immediately think two things: 1) “this is going to cost more of MY time and MY money” and 2) “this is going to yield results that are less actionable and more confusing to my CEO”. So no, I don’t mean that.
I mean “internal collaboration”, where different disciplines within an agency can sit down together and cross the boundaries that usually separate departments to come up with real business answers that don’t fit neatly into any one advertising category. And since they’re small, usually the people sitting down are the senior, decision-makers who also happen to be the people doing the work – so they not only know what’s possible but also how to tweak it so it works with what innovations the other departments are spinning.
But I also mean externally, where the client and her team can be involved to bring their understanding of the business problems they’re trying to solve to the party. Who can also think ahead about what clientside roadblocks they need to navigate as the ideas take shape – who needs to be engaged, what needs to be managed – so a great idea isn’t shot down for something that could have been massaged if it had been understood earlier in the process.
That said, fun fact: collaboration ain’t for everyone. A lot of clients just want to put their money in one end and get their advertising out of the other. That’s what they believe they’re paying for, that is service to them. I disagree, of course, but hey, that’s what makes it a horse race.
And speaking of things that aren’t for everyone –
Risk – A former client once described a particular big agency to me this way “You use them because you know nothing’s going to break. You know you’re not going to get a call in the middle of the night because something blew up. You won’t get the most exciting ideas, you won’t get the most mind-boggling returns, but you also won’t get fired because they screwed up.” That makes a lot of sense to me – and especially for really big clients whose campaigns have zillions of moving parts. I can see the comfort and attraction of a measure of confidence in the implied competence, and trading that for, you know, greatness.
But small agencies don’t have that luxury. So they have to be the place where ideas that scare you, ideas that haven’t had all of the flavor chewed out of them, ideas that you’re just desperate enough to try, come from. That’s why it was the small shops who were the first to really make TV work, who were the first into digital, the first into social, and are doing the most interesting work in AI right now.
Look, I’m not saying that there is no place for big agencies – just as there will always be an audience for big, billion dollar Marvel clusterflix, there will always be clients who lust for the, at least theoretical, stability of big. And I also know – and celebrate – the great work that big agencies have done and continue to do.
But big agencies are built to do two things - return shareholder value (ask any one of their CFOs about their daily conversations with their holding companies), and create functional efficiencies that help the company run more profitably. Both of which are great for them but neither of which have anything to do with making great work that helps a client’s business. So at best that’s their third priority. (hey, don’t take my word for it - read your Michael Farmer)
Which is not to say that making great work that helps a client’s business is the first priority of every small agency. For most it’s not. Most small agencies are only interested in turning clients’ cash into ads – full stop. But I do think it’s a longer trek for big agencies than it is for small agencies. For the same reason that it’s impossible for an aircraft carrier to make a hairpin turn.
And when clients re-discover that, then the pendulum will swing back towards the small agencies that do.