The Agency as A Community

One of the great things about small shops is that, to some extent, everyone does everything. There's a level of cross training that doesn't happen in large agencies, if simply by virtue of there being fewer people in closer contact. That makes a smaller agency more flexible and it also helps break down walls. Large agencies can emulate this with better internal communications structure (i.e. using Twitter or similar to encourage chatter between disciplines and levels) and serious educational efforts. Like, if you even want to TOUCH a digital project you should have to go through some sort of boot camp. This seems obvious to me, yet I constantly see stagnation due to lack of information. And that's when a smaller, nimbler shop strikes without the burden of dead weight.

This is such a phenomenal post - and the comments are great...

Stuart, your idea that death for an agency could take 20 years has a ton of merit. Once an agency gets past that "boutique" stage and has sustainable numbers, like high six figures, then it can easily take forever to figure out that stagnation is continual without embracing new stuff.

I've watched a couple die this death by a thousand cuts, it's PAINFUL to witness.

One of the great things about small shops is that, to some extent, everyone does everything. There's a level of cross training that doesn't happen in large agencies, if simply by virtue of there being fewer people in closer contact. That makes a smaller agency more flexible and it also helps break down walls. Large agencies can emulate this with better internal communications structure (i.e. using Twitter or similar to encourage chatter between disciplines and levels) and serious educational efforts. Like, if you even want to TOUCH a digital project you should have to go through some sort of boot camp. This seems obvious to me, yet I constantly see stagnation due to lack of information. And that's when a smaller, nimbler shop strikes without the burden of dead weight.

One of the great things about small shops is that, to some extent, everyone does everything. There's a level of cross training that doesn't happen in large agencies, if simply by virtue of there being fewer people in closer contact. That makes a smaller agency more flexible and it also helps break down walls. Large agencies can emulate this with better internal communications structure (i.e. using Twitter or similar to encourage chatter between disciplines and levels) and serious educational efforts. Like, if you even want to TOUCH a digital project you should have to go through some sort of boot camp. This seems obvious to me, yet I constantly see stagnation due to lack of information. And that's when a smaller, nimbler shop strikes without the burden of dead weight.

One of the great things about small shops is that, to some extent, everyone does everything. There's a level of cross training that doesn't happen in large agencies, if simply by virtue of there being fewer people in closer contact. That makes a smaller agency more flexible and it also helps break down walls. Large agencies can emulate this with better internal communications structure (i.e. using Twitter or similar to encourage chatter between disciplines and levels) and serious educational efforts. Like, if you even want to TOUCH a digital project you should have to go through some sort of boot camp. This seems obvious to me, yet I constantly see stagnation due to lack of information. And that's when a smaller, nimbler shop strikes without the burden of dead weight.

This is such a phenomenal post - and the comments are great...

Stuart, your idea that death for an agency could take 20 years has a ton of merit. Once an agency gets past that "boutique" stage and has sustainable numbers, like high six figures, then it can easily take forever to figure out that stagnation is continual without embracing new stuff.

I've watched a couple die this death by a thousand cuts, it's PAINFUL to witness.

One of the great things about small shops is that, to some extent, everyone does everything. There's a level of cross training that doesn't happen in large agencies, if simply by virtue of there being fewer people in closer contact. That makes a smaller agency more flexible and it also helps break down walls. Large agencies can emulate this with better internal communications structure (i.e. using Twitter or similar to encourage chatter between disciplines and levels) and serious educational efforts. Like, if you even want to TOUCH a digital project you should have to go through some sort of boot camp. This seems obvious to me, yet I constantly see stagnation due to lack of information. And that's when a smaller, nimbler shop strikes without the burden of dead weight.

This is such a phenomenal post - and the comments are great...

Stuart, your idea that death for an agency could take 20 years has a ton of merit. Once an agency gets past that "boutique" stage and has sustainable numbers, like high six figures, then it can easily take forever to figure out that stagnation is continual without embracing new stuff.

I've watched a couple die this death by a thousand cuts, it's PAINFUL to witness.

Spot on.

It's not the size of the talent pool that matters. It's the leadership and ability to implement strategies in a meritocracy based system.

Check out Michael's comment below.

Thanks Michael. I've been on both sides of the fence and in the smaller boutique, in-house and now the integrated agency. Ideas truly are free, otherwise I would probably make a lot more money ;).

I definitely agree about breaking down the insular nature of any institution, but think that these days death comes slowly (especially to companies not tied directly to specific institutions). An agency could linger for 20+ years before falling apart imo.

Enemy making is never good. Unless they are the right ones to make :)

I think that rather than agency size be your metric, you should consider how nimble thinking, not the number of personnel, is what sets agencies apart. Big agencies (with larger clients and fees) or small boutiques (with start up clients with small budgets) are only as good as what they can accomplish, after all.

It's not that bigger (or smaller) is necessarily better. And in terms of whether big agencies have more layers of bureaucracy and silos, that depends on the shop. Isn't the boutique with the magnetic entrepreneurial leader at the helm just as likely to have followers on staff instead of leaders? (Have you ever asked yourself why so many shops are named after their founder?) Both situations come with their own ups and downs. Many boutiques suffer from the lack of ability to pull off the big ideas that the integrated shops can accomplish with ease. But others can outsource and get it done.

It all boils down to culture. If your company has the ability to adapt to changes as they come (and they're always coming!) it will survive and thrive. If the manager in a position of power is keeping a worker from accomplishing a brilliant idea because "there's no way someone so junior could be right" then that manager should be circumvented. In which case, having the crowd sourcing of an internal social network for sharing ideas is a great way for those in power and those with less to put all ideas on the table.

But, as we all know, ideas are free. The ability to get them from concept to reality is what matters. And if a culture isn't open to ideas from all all outliers, then it will become insular, make enemies, and ultimately kill itself or be killed.

What I find interesting is that larger agencies have a larger talent pool to crowdsource from than the smaller agencies, and they still cannot find solutions faster than smaller ones.

Larger agencies still suprise me by how much internal beauocracy they have. Encouraging everyone to be on twitter and getting rid of cubicle walls isn't the final solution. Internal crowdsourcing on a level playing field is what really is going to make a difference.

Another issue that I faced is this: Small agencies simply can't do all the things that a large one can do. But they can do a small amount of things FAR BETTER then larger ones...which allows them to annihilate certain categories of RFPs.

Who are you going with for your social program? An agency devoted to it or one with a retrofitted PR department that had social added to the title yesterday?

There's an article on AdAge talking about the same topic and using Minneapolis as an example. Here in MSP, we're seeing a lot of spin-off's and smaller agencies sprout up and take the industry by storm. Why? The reasons you listed above. There'll always be the big agencies, but there's definitely a shift toward the smaller ones - with Fortune 500 companies taking notice.