Size is everything? Size isn’t important? An age old debate that covers a multitude of topics, and in the world of agency/client relationships and hiring decisions it’s one that seems to have enduring elements of partiality.
Client-side businesses appear to be either those that only use big or national agencies or those that only use smaller more local suppliers, and very often there is no mix and match. Size is actually often very important in the equation, as it tends to be the larger companies that insist on working with the larger agencies, either through legacy or through nervousness that a smaller agency might somehow let them down or provide smaller ideas, smaller service, and smaller lunches? Alongside that, often the larger agencies are simply too expensive to work with for smaller companies.
During my 10 client-side years I’ve hired a number of agencies that included the huge and the tiny, the sublime and the terrible, with budgets that ranged from puny to mind-bogglingly big. I can safely say that there was no relationship between size of agency and size or service/idea/success. During my time agency-side and before the launch of Secret Pie, I was lucky enough to manage the digital operation for a mid-sized agency that had once been a very big fish in the north and still had the hangovers of large agency life….it was excellent experience and taught me a lot. It mainly taught me that great service and great ideas are dependent on the people involved, and they do not automatically come with impressive premises, a board of Directors, and an army of account execs, account managers, account directors and account controllers. Nor do they come from having lots of people in a Creative Department, or lots of digital folk, or a large studio of artworkers.
Great ideas and great service come from being truly exceptional at what you do, and that comes from experience and passion and, let’s be honest, from caring so much for a client’s project because your personal pride and financial future depends on them being happy with what your business provides.
A lot of big agencies I have worked with in the past have rolled in the big hitting experienced directors for the pitch and then when the ink has dried on the contract have left me at the mercy of the 22 year old fresh from uni account executive who briefs the 23 year old creative who is just doing a ‘job’ before he/she goes travelling who then discusses how it could work online with the internet expert (who either once managed the Direct or Data Marketing department or is young enough to have more than 300 ‘friends’ on facebook). These collective ‘creams of the crops’ then present their ideas for a B2B pension sales campaign or some other completely alien and abstract (to them) business problem or topic and it’s naive and off the mark. Now, hold up, where has the 20 years experienced director gone from the pitch meeting who once did that TV advert for XYZ, and what happened to the senior creative guy we met who did the brilliant thingamajig campaign for our main competitors a couple of years ago….and exactly who am I paying £700 to £900 a day for? Little Miss Twitter, Snowboard Boy and Washed-Up Data Dude? Not good enough; much better is when you know that the person you shake hands with and buy into is the one who will be doing the work for you.
The reality is that when you engage with a large agency, no matter how many international clients they have and no matter how many millions they bill each year, you will at best get 4 or 5 people who touch your work and possibly 2 of those will bring nothing to the party other than neatly typed invoices and contact reports. The daily rate you pay will only be worth it if you are lucky enough to get the best the agency has to offer working on your project, otherwise you will be serviced by the large percentage that are there to make up the numbers. Getting great ideas and great service is not guaranteed just because the daily rates you pay are high or the agency’s business address is posh or the list of clients is long and impressive.
Take a £25k to 50k annual online marketing budget to a body such as Digital Marketing Group and you will more than likely meet good people who will produce good work but I expect you will be way down the list of priorities against their vastly bigger spending clients and you will get half the output you would from a smaller company. Take a £15k annual search engine optimisation budget to any of the medium or large search marketing agencies in Leeds (never mind Manchester or London) and you will be a small client and you’ll know that and get very little in the way of results.
Take those budgets to the smaller operations who have less overheads and more personal responsibility for your work being done to your satisfaction, and you might be surprised how far a pound coin can go. Do your homework though – make sure the small company is run by and staffed with experienced and talented professionals.
If you look around your area, especially if you are in or near a city, you will find that somewhere within 30 miles is a big marketing agency but also on your doorstep will be a selection of 1 or 2 man band specialists who perhaps only work on video projects, or flash animation, or search marketing, or email marketing, or illustration. Why not give a small local niche company a go next time you have a small project. Don’t spend money with your main large marketing agency to get photographs taken as they will simply find a photographer to take them and then charge you a fee on top of the photographer’s fee. Don’t ask them to produce a corporate video if it is not one of their core services – go to the local guys who can impress you with passion and a creative showreel.
My prediction is that one day the large national agency model will break down and some of the space that the not so exceptional agencies used to occupy will be held by collectives of truly talented local people who work independently and collaborate with other passionate experts to deliver the large projects for the larger companies. Better maybe for you to hire a collective of experienced sensibly priced talent, than the gamble of possibly inexperienced and overpriced large agency staff who ‘do a job’ and get paid by their company whether you like their work or not.
As I mentioned higher up, I’ve spent many years working with big and small digital agencies, and as the Outspan adverts used to say in the 80s….small ones are more juicy. Secret Pie is small, but with our knowledge and experience and our partners’ knowledge and experience we know we can outpunch anyone digitally.
To close off, and to bring balance to this post, if you are familiar with the agency scene in Yorkshire then you will know about the likes of Elmwood, Brahm and Gratterpalm, but you’ll also do well to look further at the quality smaller operations such as The Brand Nursery and Stone Soup, or eko creative and parispanda. Secret Pie is just one of many smaller operations who can move worlds for their clients. We’re all on your doorsteps, and we’re all within your budget.
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