On the Kinds of Agencies

There are two kinds of digital agencies.

Let's call them what they are. The factory and the studio.

One mass produces content on an assembly line to make the same thing over and over and over again.

And then there is the studio, which obsesses over each piece like it's a work of art.

The former employs today's equivalent of an indentured, soot-faced coal worker.

The latter is where people actually care about what they do. Where you can still see the fight in their eyes.

One is obsessed with production quotas. The other, with production values. One does shifts to fulfill the scope of some soulless calendar that no one else cares about. The other cares about connecting with the audience.

One looks at content like a commodity.

The other sees it as a contribution to culture.

One of these can give you 60 pieces of coal a month. The other can give you 12 diamonds.

You can try as hard as you like to get a content factory to make diamonds. You can even try to force a content studio to make coal.

It's futile. It's like asking an elephant to fly. No matter how much its ears look like wings, it just can't. They work differently. They look at the work differently.

The reality is that most brands say they want a content studio, but end up choosing a content factory.

Not because they don't know better. They do. They can see the difference.

But because they'll let their procurement teams decide. And they don't care about what's good or what's bad. They care about what's cheaper.

They see a line-item breakdown of posts per month and think, "We're getting our money's worth."

Eventually, their audiences will decide what kind of content is worth it. And good luck trying to get that audience back.

So, what's it going to be?

Coal, or diamonds?