The Blurred Lines of the Business

I’ll start off by saying this; agencies and brands will always want access to top talent for the execution of great ideas. However, as the industry model changes, agencies, along with content and post production suppliers, need to start rethinking their infrastructure. There is an opportunity to thrive in today’s new landscape. But companies which stick with yesterday’s bloated, slow and expensive model risk failure.

Most big cities are saturated with great talent and that talent is having to learn to work with budgets they used to be able to laugh at. We’re all aware that our own disciplines, be that as an agency, production or post company, are very competitive markets, but the lines between them are now being blurred.

Once upon a time, in halcyon days past, a production company would pitch against two other production companies. Now they’re pitching against two production companies and the agency that is actually outsourcing them for the job. That’s pretty confusing!

In an effort to become more efficient and profitable, agencies are rushing to create in-house solutions for content and post production. However, they are still relying on their current (for now) suppliers to teach them how to execute production and post flawlessly.

The problem is, those companies aren’t exactly in a rush to teach agencies how to achieve beautiful execution at a fraction of the price. Agencies are quickly learning that they can execute ideas in-house at a fraction of the current monetary fee, but sometimes that is coming at a creative cost.

What can look like a simple solution on a spreadsheet, can face resistance from a creative standpoint, with conversations such as the below taking place:

Agency producer: “Hey gang, we’re editing in-house on this one.”

Creative: “But I want to work with Franky Editorstein Esq. at Big Bucks post.”

Account director: “We’ll bring him in!”

Creative: “He doesn’t want to come, he said the final product won’t look as good because we don’t have the proper equipment.”

Agency producer: “He can tell us what equipment we need to upgrade, and then he can come in and we’ll still save our client money and make some cheddar for ourselves.”

Initially, top creative collaborators were hesitant to become the in-house talent, running the risk of becoming the “No Name” brand of their discipline. But as agencies come up with answers, suppliers are presented with fewer creative opportunities and may decide to go in-house because of a lack of options. 

I still believe that top talent is that for a reason, enabling beautiful execution and flawless delivery that saves clients time and therefore money. That’s why the same is true on the other side; companies that were formerly considered suppliers to agencies are quickly becoming direct suppliers to brands.

In fields like digital production, the top companies are no longer being considered production houses but rather digital agencies. It’s hard for some agencies to catch-up to digital production companies that became experts by strictly focussing on digital projects since the beginning of the digital age.

Brands will always need help but whether that help has to come from a traditional agency depends on how quickly that agency is evolving to meet the needs of marketers. And with the industry flooded with top freelance art directors, copywriters, creative directors and strategy consultants, some production companies are now outsourcing the creative.

I believe the future of client/supplier relationships will be very blurred. In some cases agencies will pull together a combination of in-house and outsourced content and post production talent. On the other hand, production companies might outsource creative and strategy, becoming their own one-stop agency capable of working with brands from conception to execution. Regardless of the workflow, relationships between highly specialised experts will always remain at the core of great work.

So, as Missy Elliot said, “put your thing down flip it and reverse it,” and may the fittest survive. It’s not a question of agencies vs. content and post production suppliers, of who will come out on top, it’s a question of which ones within each discipline will evolve and become the new wave of specialised creative businesses.

Now, more than ever, is the time to start re-evaluating your relationships with suppliers because tomorrow you might be the one hustling. Be scared, be very scared. Actually just be nice. And creative.