Starlog

Cutting the Middleman and the Rise of Specialized, Smaller Businesses

In a recent social media post, the CMO of a major home builder said that she’d had it with her full-service ad agency. She complained the agency spent too much time and money to “immerse” themselves in her brand. She wrote: “They want to go deep. They want to talk to people. They want to do surveys. A lot of agencies won’t do work until they first conduct their strategy. But I don’t want to pay them for strategy. The brand is responsible for the strategy. I want to pay an agency for the outside creative talent I can’t afford to have in-house.”

To Strategize Or Not To Strategize

This is a bit of a Catch-22. For certain assignments, an outside resource like an ad agency should have an understanding of a client’s business, its competitive landscape, and the marketing issues the client wants to overcome. This would be true for a new product launch requiring a multimedia campaign, or the development of a several month social media calendar, or even a package design. But other times, clients just need to get work done without the agency doing a deep dive into the client’s business. If a company needs some video footage of customer testimonials, they don’t need to pay for a lot of brand immersion. If a company wants a video produced for a dealer meeting, or a webinar, or some B roll showing a product in action, this doesn’t require a bunch of strategy. It requires swift, experienced personnel to do the job.

Here’s a perfect example. A few years ago, the person in charge of web marketing for a major SUV company wanted some footage shot to demonstrate the all-wheel drive capability of a particular model. She had a 150-K budget and her turnaround time was five weeks. She knew that if she went to her big agency-of-record, there would be endless meetings, the timeframe would be three months, and the cost would be about a million dollars. So, she went to a smaller agency and got exactly what she wanted for her timeframe and cost.

Changing Business Models

Mind you, we’re not putting the hate on big agencies. We’ve worked for several of them and we understand the full-service agency philosophy of when a client knocks on their door, they’re looking for solutions and the agency needs to do an immersion to better understand the client’s business in order to provide those solutions. But sometimes, deep immersion is unnecessary. Even full-service agencies realize this and are changing their business models. More and more agencies are cutting back on full-time staff and hiring creative talent on a freelance or gig basis. This is specialized thinking on the rise. In the 1990s, contractors, temps and specialized businesses made up only a small percentage of our economy. Now, 44% of businesses are considered smaller or specialized and this trend is only going to continue.

The Advantages Of Small Business 

While there is certainly something to be said about “size matters” and big companies that provide a variety of services, there is also a great power in companies reaching out directly to specialized businesses. According to statistics, there are 32.5 million small businesses in the U.S. and 29% of those have less than 99 employees. Nearly 10% have less than 10. So, instead of thinking “small business”  think “specialized.” It could save you time and money in the long run and give you a better end result, just like it did for that SUV company.

Our Accelerator Plan 

At Hybrid Moon, we can immediately hop into any project you have without a lot of meetings and strategy development. Or, we can do a deeper dive into your visual needs. That’s not contradictory to immersing oneself into your business, but rather a specialized laser-focussed look at your video and photography. We call this deeper dive our Accelerator Plan. It’s a three-step offer of Front-End, Core, and Back-End Services. The Front-End includes an assessment of your video and photography library. This will help with cost-effective multichannel planning and content creation in everything from emails, to website pages, to social media posts. The Core is the main shooting assignment you want us to produce. The advantage here is our wide depth and breadth of expertise having produced hundreds of result-getting videos. We can conceptualize and write it, then nimbly provide any services connected with the production from casting, to location scouting, to post-production needs like animation. The Back-End includes regular check-ins and assessments or adjustments since the scope of projects often shift after initial discussion.

Ready For Liftoff?

Whether you have a quick turnaround project or want to produce a series of videos for a variety of needs, Hybrid Moon is your go to source that eliminates the sometimes frustrating agency process and specializes on just your visual asset needs. We’ll save you time, money, headaches, and you’ll have an end product that’s frankly stellar. Give us a call and let’s achieve your moon shot.