Five creative and economic reasons why corporate brands should work with independent agencies:
1. THE ‘CREATIVITY PREMIUM’ YOU RECEIVE WHEN WORKING WITH INDEPENDENTS
Creativity and pioneering talent will always get drawn to a home where it feels it has purpose and real impact. More often that spiritual home is at an Independent founder led agency. Creative pioneers gravitate to culture, autonomy, diversity, passion and to independence. And that’s what you get when you work with independent agencies. You get access to top notch creative talent. Their business survives and proposers by attracting creativity and specialism. Their product is creativity, not account management.
2. THE ‘CREATIVITY TAX’ YOU PAY WHEN WORKING WITH BIG HOLDING COMPANIES
When you choose to bring in external agencies, you’re obviously paying for expertise and extra capacity that your business needs. But have you asked yourself what’s included in the price? Large holding companies and big global consultancies carry huge fixed costs that ultimately the client pays for. This can amount to up to 10% of their rate card or fees! This covers the cost of running large account management teams and expensive head offices located around the world. Independent agencies are much leaner because they have to be to survive. They simply represent greater value, ensuring your budget pays for accessing specialist talent, not funding non-value adding overheads.
3. BUYING FROM INDEPENDENTS CREATES JOBS AND DRIVES COMPETITION
When corporate brands work with independent agencies, they are investing in jobs and competition. An independent agency doesn’t have shareholders or hundreds of partners to remunerate. Independent owned agencies reinvest more of their income in growing their businesses. And that means hiring talent and creating new high skilled jobs for the economy. The more successful independent agencies we have, the more competition there is in the market. Which is good news for clients and for creativity.
4. ACCESS TO THE FOUNDERS, NOT ACCOUNT MANAGERS
Have you ever been pitched to by the top brass of a big holding company and when the work starts, you don’t see them for dust? Well, the reason for that is, that’s their job. To get flown in and then flown out, onto their next pitch. And to be fair, they’re brilliant at it. Independent agencies will typically have founders that still turn their hand to their craft, as well as run their businesses. They do this for two reasons. The first, they’re running cultural led businesses, so they need to show their people they’re leading from the front. Secondly, they uniquely understand how important your business is to theirs. So that’s why you’ll see them not only at the pitch but also on the project!
5. INDEPENDENT AGENCIES ARE NOT HIGHER RISK
Just because an agency is independent doesn’t mean they don’t have capacity. Or that they don’t have multi-geography reach. Or that they don’t have the systems in place to handle customer data securely. These are all myths put out by the large holding companies about independent agencies. Studiospace partners with some of the most pioneering independent agencies, that are multi-geography, multi-service and multi-sector. Don’t let this stereotype dissuade you from working with them.
Studiospace Marketplace
The team behind Studiospace have experience of buying creative services from a corporate buyer perspective. As well as running an independent agency and working for one of the largest professional services firms in the world. So we know first-hand the secrets and successes of working with agencies. And from these experiences we’ve chosen to back indies because we believe that they deliver better creativity, service and societal benefits. That’s why we created Studiospace Marketplace - to connect big corporate brands directly with indie agencies.
