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Size Doesn't Matter

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

Size doesn't matter — at least when it comes to your agency. Yesterday marked the end of the second annual Advertising Age and Creativity Small Agency Conference in Denver, and if you were following the #smallagency hashtag on Twitter, there was a lot of love being shown to the small shops.

Brands like Boost Mobile and Kayak represented and told the crowd how much they love working with small agencies. AdAge statisticians jumped on and talked about the agency-client culture and touted statistics like:

1/3 of Americans are not able to afford your product.
50% of agency-client relationships last less than two years.

Interesting stuff. Then came the shop and idea talk. Phrases like "Attention is the new currency," and "Define an agency by the size of its ideas and not its staff size," began to fill the thread, which isn't a bad thing.

Were there some takeaways? Absolutely. People noted that brands like working with small agencies because they get a chance to be a little more daring and a little less conservative. Smaller agencies play more and work faster. Small (successful) agencies tend to have staff who are more entrepreneurial than regular agencies. They must be able to juggle more on their plate, and be more creative.

One thing I wish the conference had dived into more detail on were the problems in the industry. They brushed over several really quickly, basically saying "Yeah, that's an issue," but no one went further. Tom Denari from Young & Laramore lamented that agencies are terrible at differentiating from each other and promoting themselves, which is true. One answer to that? Agencies need to stop trying to sell the process and start selling the people. The business world hasn't changed; people still like doing business with people they like.

CP+B thought another problem had to do with negative comments on creative work on the Web, and not the fact that they are negative but the fact that people choose to hide behind anonymity. Their representative said that the "digital industry is fueling it" but they didn't begin a dialogue about facing it.

And of course, the elephants in the room — racial diversity and women in agency leadership — were ignored once again.

But beyond the shortcomings, the Small Agency Conference looked like a success. Small agencies got the attention they deserved, and many shops got a chance to be with other professionals who share the same battle day in and day out.

Plus, I found out that BFG9000's name is a reference to the huge gun from Doom, the video game. Awesome.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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