The ‘full-service’ brand agency myth

On your pilgrimage to find your perfect brand agency have you encountered either of the following home page claims; ‘We are a full-service brand agency’ or ‘we are a multi-disciplinary brand agency’ or perhaps even ‘we are a one-stop, fully-integrated brand agency offering a full spectrum of services across all disciplines’?

Honestly, my eyes roll back into my head whenever I see this on a brand agency’s homepage. Why? Because I’m bitter, twisted and envious of their accomplishments? No, because with the exception of an exceptional and awe-inducing few, I honestly don’t believe that any brand agency can claim to offer a ‘full-service’. In fact, I’m not just having a jab at brand agencies, I believe this is true for most companies across all industries. I don’t believe that any one company can fulfill every one of anyone’s needs.

The full-service illusion

I doubt that the majority of the brand agencies that advertise a ‘full-service’ are being entirely honest with themselves, let alone you or I. I’ve come across brand agencies that claim to do marketing really well, marketing agencies that claim to do branding also really well, and digital agencies claiming to do everyone else’s job really well, including their own. The more claims and services listed, the less credible and more questionable the company begins to appear.

Their ‘full-service’ claim is commonly founded on even more ambiguous phrases like ‘wide range’, ‘complete’, ‘end-to-end’, ‘array’, ‘best in class’ and ‘full spectrum’.

So why so much bragging and territorial pissing? I think there are a few factors at play here, none of which are very flattering.

FOMO

Every company seems to be under the impression that in order to be successful, they need to offer as many things to as many people as possible. That’s true to a degree. In fact, if you can dip your toe in the same service pool as your competitors, then all the better, right? Not necessarily. The fact is, by trying to appeal to everyone, you’re actually appealing to no one. The boundaries of your core brand proposition have been blurred and buried with an unsightly pebble dashing of peripheral commodities and service side-orders. This desperate ‘catch-all’ attitude has cost them their focus. If they no longer identify with a specific audience or need, then it’s possibly true to say that their audience can’t identify with them.

What’s more troubling is that these brand agencies are in the business of ‘brand positioning’. The same people you’re looking to for advice on your branding, seem to be having an identity crisis themselves. Positioning should be as much about saying what you are not, as what you are.

So has the concept of a ‘specialism’ been completely lost? Think about it for a second. Who honestly looks for a generalist? Would you look for a ‘sports injury specialist’ or someone who is experienced in treating a wide range of injuries including sports injuries to name but a few? And who honestly would want to be considered a jack of all trades?

This ‘fear of missing out’ is what prevents most companies from honing and defining their services, the fear that putting too much focus on a core service proposition will appeal only to a limited audience. That appealing to a general audience is less risky than appealing to a more specific, targeted one. It’s nonsense. It’s the same reason why you won’t expect to find burgers on the menu at Pizzahut.

Corporate karaoke

With every business in every sector, there’s a natural temptation to ‘benchmark’ your competitor. In fact, let’s call it what it is. ‘Copying’. It makes good business sense on paper to ensure that you and your competitor match like-for-like in service offerings, certainly if you’re expected to square up to them in an outright fight to the death. And that’s probably the main reason why most brand agencies use end up using the same language, as they’re all essentially lip-syncing to the same service proposition. It’s basically ‘corporate karaoke’. And for agencies who present themselves as creative, out of the box thinkers and strategists, it shows a lack of imagination or expertise.

Benchmarking your services against your competitors at best will make you ‘comparable’. From the perspective of your customers, you’re identical, indistinguishable from the other full-service agency. It’s now just a matter of which one of you is the cheapest and how far you’re willing to drop to win their business.

Next up, Al Pacinos favourite sin.

Vanity

Agency 1: Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.
Agency 2: No you can’t.
Agency 1: Yes, I can.
Agency 2: No, you can’t.
Agency 1: Yes, I can.
Agency 2: No, you can’t.
Agency 1: Yes, I can, YES, I CAAAAN!!!

You get the idea.

Most brand agencies would argue that although their services are a mirror of their competitors, the quality of their work is ‘better’, more creative than other brand agencies. But if you’re in the business of creativity, it’s not enough to say you’re ‘better’. ‘Better’ in the context of creativity is an abstract value that exists in a broad grey area measured with a sliding scale, held at arm’s length, whilst squinting. I’m basically saying it’s not an accurate measure of ‘best’. No matter how discerning you think your customers are, the measure of ‘better’, is an unknown quantity to them. However, to say you’re ‘different’, that’s an entirely different value proposition altogether. ‘Different’ can be easily clarified, but only if your message and your language is also different.

Can a brand agency offer a complete, fully-integrated, full-spectrum, end-to-end service?

Well technically ‘yes’.

Of course, an agency can contract the skills they claim to have in-house out to those that do have them. No headlines or inside scoop here, as this is fairly standard across most industries.

The problem with relying on contractors and freelancers is that it’s difficult to guarantee their availability. They’re not wedded to any one agency, they tend to go wherever the money is and typically book their diaries up months in advance. So your project will potentially be passed about from one contractor to another in order to keep the ball rolling. It’s not a bad thing, but there is an issue with consistency and the feeling that your project isn’t being ‘owned’ or loved by any one person. You’re just going around the ‘full-service’ machine.

The other consideration is cost. Contractors will cost more than those on the agency payroll. It’s a sort of convenience tax. And I assure you that you’re not only paying the contractors convenience rates, the agency will need to cover their costs and make a little love on the side too. I can speak with authority on this subject because I occasionally take on contract work for other agencies, although it’s not something I openly publicize out of client confidentiality. But I do have a story to tell with a moral of sorts. Gather round…

Once upon a time…

I was once approached by a potential client (a start-up) to produce their branding. I met with them, took a creative brief, provided a proposal, and left it with them to mull over at their leisure. I followed up on the proposal with a timely email one week later to see where their head was at. They informed me that they decided to go with a local ‘full-service’ marketing agency. When I asked them why, they said that the ‘full-service’ marketing agency could offer more expertise in-house.

What they were unaware of, is that this ‘full-service’ marketing agency later contracted that very same branding work out to me. Over the months that followed the start-up client hemorrhaged ‘full-service’ agency fees, covering both my costs and the agencies mark-up. I produced their branding through the agency for noticeably more fees than I had originally estimated to the client. As you can imagine, this made my original rejection by the client much easier to handle, boosting my self-esteem and further reducing my therapy fees.

I no longer ‘pimp’ myself out these days. The biggest downside to contracting is that you can’t legally put claim to the creative work you’re paid to produce. You’ll always be the unsung hero of the story, with nothing other than a wad of cash left for you on the bedside table once the project is put to bed.

Technically it is possible for a full-service company to have all services covered to a degree. But can you honestly expect the quality across the board to be great? Good? Acceptable? If you think about toothpaste for a moment. Is there a single tube of toothpaste out there that claims to whiten teeth, fight decay, clean your tongue, freshen your breath, prevent gum disease, control tartar, reduce sensitivity, and strengthen tooth enamel? If there was, you’d be foolish not to question the all-round effectiveness.

I get by with a little help from my friends

It’s understandable to want to offer a side order of services to complement your main. And there’s always going to be a degree of overlap with your competitors in any industry. I get also that it’s attractive to a client to have all aspects of their branding needs catered for from a single point of contact. I guess what I’ve been pushing for here is ‘transparency’.

‘Collaboration’ is the one thing I’m open about with clients. Of course, I work with photographers, illustrators, copywriters, marketers, strategists, interior designers, programmers, motion designers, UX designers. The difference is I don’t suggest for one moment that they’re on the floor above me, sitting, waiting for me to put my head around their door. The individuals and companies I choose to work with are all specialists, not generalists. They don’t ‘dabble’ or claim to have each other’s expertise. And as specialists, there’s no competition that exists between us, only the potential to create opportunities and add significant value to each other’s work. It just makes sense.

The creative process has always been about collaboration. As far back as my student days, we were encouraged to go upstairs and see what the photography floor was up to, bring illustrators and fine artists into graphic projects. Until recently, the use of the word ‘collaboration’ would have suggested a chink in the armor, a missing tooth, that to suggest for a moment that an agency couldn’t get the job done alone was unheard of.

‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’

Before I drop the mic, I’d like to leave you with this.

Whenever I hear the phrase ‘full-service’ agency it reminds me of that scene from the Wizard of Oz, where Toto pulls the curtain aside to reveal that the Great and Powerful Oz is just a little frail man, frantically pulling levers, pushing buttons and firing off pyrotechnics.

It’s all just smoke and mirrors.