{"id":45508,"date":"2017-09-12T08:14:56","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T00:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/?p=45508"},"modified":"2019-08-11T06:15:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T11:15:21","slug":"why-you-should-hire-a-creative-boutique-instead-of-a-large-ad-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/why-you-should-hire-a-creative-boutique-instead-of-a-large-ad-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Creative Boutique Instead of a Large Ad Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest decisions CMOs and other leaders must make is choosing an agency to market their company<\/span>. Many attributes factor into this choice, including the convenience of the agency\u2019s location, its specialties, and its past work with other brands.<\/h3>\n

Another factor is size. Is the agency large, small, or a tiny boutique?<\/p>\n

Standard advertising dogma says big companies need to hire big agencies. I don\u2019t think this stands up to logic.<\/p>\n

If your company hires an agency with 1,000 employees, how many do you think will be assigned to your account? Probably just as many as you\u2019d get at a boutique firm with a fraction of the workforce.<\/p>\n

Also, consider the fact that large firms are usually driven by volume of clients, ensuring your account team will be pulled in many directions other than yours. Boutique firms, however, are driven by retention \u2014 they\u2019re focused on you.<\/p>\n

Quite simply, the accepted standard is wrong. Here are seven benefits boutique firms offer that make them a better choice for CMOs of large and small enterprises alike.<\/p>\n

1. Access to specialized tools<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you trade a firm focused on volume for one focused on the individual, you often find that not only is the firm\u2019s commitment deeper, but its skills are, too.<\/p>\n

For instance, boutique search engine marketing firm Gauss & Neumann spent nine years developing its proprietary tool MASK<\/span><\/a>. Using MASK allows the firm to build highly structured, highly organized SEM accounts that incorporate more than a million keywords \u2014 eight times larger than the industry average. That specialized, skilled focus allows its team to operate at an elite level.<\/p>\n

2. Adaptability to change<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many boutique marketing firms get their start when creatives from a large agency break free and hang their own shingle<\/span>. They do so often for the freedom that comes from being their own captains. They\u2019re eager to innovate and try new things, knowing they don\u2019t have to sell a big bureaucracy on the idea \u2014 just their client.<\/p>\n

3. Access to the right people<\/strong><\/p>\n

The larger the agency you\u2019re dealing with, the lower the chance any particular person you\u2019re talking to will be able to answer your specific question. A standard structure is to employ an account manager as a dedicated point person for a client, letting the client reach out to the individual who has the solution he or she needs.<\/p>\n

That might sound fine, but don\u2019t be fooled. It\u2019s for the agency\u2019s convenience, not yours. Because of the focus on volume, these managers are juggling multiple clients. They\u2019re likely disconnected from the day-to-day work being done on any one account. They don\u2019t have the answers you need; their role is to find out who does. They\u2019re go-betweens, barriers between you and the information you truly need.<\/p>\n

Boutique firms, on the other hand, have one small team<\/span><\/a>. Your point person will know everything there is to know about your project. In fact, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find someone who couldn\u2019t<\/i> answer every question you have. If you did, that person would still know immediately who to forward you to.<\/p>\n

4. More skin in the game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Put plainly, each account matters more to a boutique firm. It\u2019s not that big agencies are full of bad people \u2014 it\u2019s just mathematics. If you\u2019re one account out of 100, your individual needs matter less than they would if you were one of four. Call it the Jerry Maguire principle<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also logistics. There are sacrifices that come with scale. To scale, you must routinize, systematize, and automate. There\u2019s less room to treat clients as individuals with individual needs for whom you can offer individual solutions.<\/p>\n

The organization becomes the customer, not the client. You can see this in the metrics they use to measure success. Large agencies track success by awards. Boutique firms gauge success by how much they helped their clients.<\/p>\n

5. Concentrated excellence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Being small, boutique firms rely heavily on each member of the team. There\u2019s no room for mediocrity or laziness. Boutiques also don\u2019t have multiple divisions or managerial layers. Everyone contributes to everything: positioning, strategy, and execution.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no separation of teams, so there\u2019s no miscommunication among teams. And everyone attends all the meetings. There\u2019s no need for supervisors to have a secondary meeting after the primary meeting to give their interpretation to the creatives about what the client wants. This flat organizational structure makes the team more efficient<\/span><\/a> and earns clients better results.<\/p>\n

6. Lower prices<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the other side of the efficiency coin. When you can eliminate waste in how your team functions and how it\u2019s staffed, you can pass those savings on to the client. Often, boutique advertising budgets are lower because they\u2019re not chasing volume. Some use distributed teams and don\u2019t even maintain an office. Not all boutiques have low overhead, but their small size offers them opportunities for cost savings that are unavailable to larger firms.<\/p>\n

7. Bankable track records<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you hire a boutique firm with a\u00a0successful client history<\/span><\/a>, you know you\u2019re getting the people who were truly responsible for that success. When you hire a large agency, you don\u2019t know which team you\u2019ll be assigned to. Some may be better than others. Perhaps there are only a couple that routinely win the awards that the firm brags about to its prospective clients. It\u2019s possible that most of the teams are never much better than average.<\/p>\n

But if you hire Baldwin&, with only 34 employees and $11.4 million in gross revenue, you know you\u2019re getting the people who created the genius edible coupon for Krispy Kreme<\/span><\/a>. If you hire Battery, with only 17 full-time staffers, you know you\u2019ll be working with the creatives who developed the compelling \u201cBe the Batman<\/span><\/a>\u201d campaign for the \u201cBatman: Arkham Knight\u201d video game.<\/p>\n

Far from being too small to handle a big account, these kinds of firms can give you much more confidence that you\u2019ll be working with the high-quality creatives<\/span><\/a> who did the work that brought you to the firm in the first place.<\/p>\n

One thing small firms can\u2019t offer is a name everyone has heard of. There\u2019s safety in choosing a firm that\u2019s universally recognized \u2014 no one ever had to justify why they picked Goliath to win.<\/p>\n

But if your company wants to stand out \u2014 if it wants innovative marketing, if you want individual attention, and if you want to know the people you\u2019re working with and their individual track records \u2014 I urge you not to play it safe.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re the CMO of a large business or a small one, hiring a boutique marketing firm could be the best choice you ever make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest decisions CMOs and other leaders must make is choosing an agency to market their company. Many attributes factor into this choice, including the convenience of the agency\u2019s location, its specialties, and its past work with other brands. Another factor is size. Is the agency large, small, or a tiny boutique? Standard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,47,48,19,21,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brand-development","category-brand-management","category-brand-strategy","category-branding-marketing","category-business","category-design","category-46","category-47","category-48","category-19","category-21","category-23","description-off"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"zh","enabled_languages":["en","zh"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"zh":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50567,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45508\/revisions\/50567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xomox.dev\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}