The peak of Bato Ning Ning offers this magnificent view of the longest white sand beach of the Philippines.
Why would I choose this picture to illustrate the main question: Why choosing a creative boutique agency instead of a large ad one for your next marketing campaign?
Let me answer both.
For the past few years, video has been on everyone’s lips. To the point where starting a communication campaign without incorporating video would be a heresy for many marketing professionals.
But here’s the thing, video has a price… and it’s often quite high!
Not all companies are able to put PHP 1M ($20K), or even way more, for a commercial video spot of about thirty seconds. However, that could be the price of large companies like Publicis or WPP for this requirement.
I’m not saying: it is overpriced. Several factors are involved, and the budget is divided in many layers. I am just pointing out that few companies can afford such expense for one video.
That is where boutique agencies come into play.
Thanks to technological advancement, high quality imagery can be attainable through affordable cameras. Meaning that individuals and not only corporations can own their own production equipment and produce high quality images.
The offer is improving and the demand is changing.
Boutique agencies are fitting a new kind of demand: online videos.
There is a reason why brand managers or CMOs are hiring more and more boutique agencies to fulfill their marketing needs.
Today, it just makes more sense.
$333.25 Billion in Digital Ad spent in 2019 (emarketer.com). It is almost equalizing with the traditional ads (print, radio, TV). And the trend seems to show that digital ads investments will exceed the traditional ones.
This gives already an idea on why marketers invest now in boutique agencies. Those are more keen on producing online content, especially because they are counting on smaller team.
The large production team, let’s say 50 people, from the cinematographers, make-up artists, client, agency project managers, stylists, models, etc. that need big spaces for TV commercials and huge investments, is something that brands require less and less.
Although, boutique agencies carried by highly-talented individuals have smaller teams that can deliver an incredible video to be displayed on social media.
Plus, with the quality that affordable cameras can achieve, it makes the offer way cheaper to afford a high quality video content for your online ad.
We are still going further in this blog post, and I still haven’t replied to the first question: Why did I choose the peak of Bato Ning Ning to illustrate my sayings?
The answer is coming.
A team of 50+ people on a set for a day of shoot for large commercials makes less sense now (especially at the time I’m writing, during the coronavirus pandemic).
Large ad companies employ numerous people. They are generally working in cellular teams. Often assigned to one or two specific clients.
Meaning that they follow strict processes.
Which is understandable as it would be unsettling, if for the same services, one client gets a better team than the other.
On the contrary, a boutique agency (like ours) gathers a small but highly-talented team formed with skillful individuals who work together towards a same goal and vision.
Those individuals are usually multidisciplinary to cope with all aspects of a project brought by a client. Their position in the hierarchy is not limiting their responsibilities.
Therefore, they are used to solve variety of problems. They bring great innovative insights.
Hiring a boutique agency is definitely a solution for smaller budgets.
As they are having smaller teams, they also carry smaller burden of infrastructure costs, they do not have fancy headquarters and will rather work in office sharing space.
Which then have a direct impact of the pricing rates of boutique agencies.
They are even used to work from home.
With office rental saved, other potential investments can be done: better quality equipment or paying well the individuals that evolve around the founders.
People who work in boutique agencies are more connected to each other, we all know each other more than from the small talks at work. We try to understand what’s everyone feeling and if everyone is happy about their work.
With people closer to each other, we are all striving for a common goal: making it work together.
And because they are smaller, as a marketer who wants to hire a boutique agency. You would usually know who’s part of the team. It will be easy for you to look at their individual credentials.
You would know who will do the work and if they are the right ones to do it.
Plus, you usually have a direct access to the founder or CEO. Which is not likely to happen when you are hiring an agency that has 1000+ employees.
Although, having access to the CEOs is a great insurance that the project will be well taken care of.
More than everyone else, founder CEO’s do not joke with their own agency. They spent hours and hours to establish it. Their entire reputation would be ruined if even one project is not doing well.
Which is we have we put more skin in the game than large ad companies. We have everything to lose if even a single one project is poorly delivered.
We all know what everyone is doing as no one can hide between bureaucracy or confusing layers.
A standard structure in a large ad agency would be to assign an account manager as your dedicated person. It seems fine, but don’t be fooled. They usually don’t have the answer you need, their role is to find out who does.
Adding a barrier to the information you truly need.
In boutique agencies, the point person usually know everything about the project. As we mentioned, they are usually multidisciplinary. So, they can add more technicality to the discussions than account managers that are mainly coming from the sales team.
For small agencies, each account matters more, this is mathematics. You could be one account of the 300. Whereas in boutique agency, you are one out of 10. Your individual needs would therefore matter more.
In large companies, you don’t know who was responsible of the success of a campaign or a project. Perhaps, your account is not handled by the winning team. And the one you’re getting is just average.
With boutique agencies, you do know who is responsible of the success of a particular project.
Excellence is concentrated. The team is smaller and you usually know them all. Everyone needs to contribute to the success of the agency as we all rely on each other.
We can’t be mediocre or lazy. We avoid miscommunication and we include everyone in the meetings. The hierarchical positions are being flat down to make our team more efficient.
If we keep a small number of accounts, it is also because it helps us specializing our craft for them. If you see that we have been hired by the same clients for several years, you know that it is because we are doing a good job for them.
That we were able to continuously follow their marketing strategy and answer their needs well.
Let me know answer the question of this featured image: the peak of Bato Ning Ning in San Vincente, Palawan.
We visited that place for a cinematic video, we had to deliver to the Department of Tourism of the Philippines. We were only 3 (behind and in front of the camera).
Only 3 to do the work of what a usual full team would do: pre-production (conceptualization, planning, logistics, etc.), production (days of shoot, camera operations, acting, etc.), and post-production (editing, files sorting, etc.).
The results were more than organic 100K+ views for the first week of publication of the video. Which is quite impressive knowing that impressions on social media are mainly being paid views.
At the same time, they published another video that they have done with a way bigger budget and production team, a year ago about Palawan as well. But the results were very less.
For a couple of hundred thousands pesos, they got more results than with a 10x more expensive production.
And clients are understanding this now, which gives more work to smaller companies like us. We do not need to be the usual-type large corporations to work for them.
A trend that is also benefiting our local community, this shift by clients are contributing to the improvement of local skills.
To the rise of local entrepreneurs, smaller teams, individuals leaving near each other and who want to have a meaningful impact in the society.
We do not need to work with everybody and we do not need to see our capital valuation going higher because we have closed more deals this year.
What we care about is to satisfy our selected clients, that’s all.
If you are looking at hiring an agency for your next marketing campaign, visit our contact page.
