Ad Age's Can a Collaborative Cohort of Indie Shops Topple the Big Agency Networks covers a new ad agency called Circus Maximus.
Founded by a trio of former big ad agency executives, Circus Maximus is part of a new wave of small advertising firms that are challenging the big agencies.
What caught my eye is how Circus Maximus describes their talent and business models.
Instead of hiring a lot of employees, Circus Maximus is planning on partnering with other small agenices and independent workers to pull together "creative platoons" to work with clients. Key quote from the article:
"We think of ourselves as an 'adhocracy', the opposite of a bureaucratic structure,” said Mr. Cameron. “Based on the problem we need to solve we will put together a team, and it’s an informal project structure that’s organic, and adaptive." The agency says it plans to keep a minimal management layer, with as few as five full-time staffers, with the rest all be project-based and freelancers."
These teams also drive their business model, which is based in part on keeping their overhead expenses low. Key quote from their website:
"We provide all the services you've come to expect from an agency, but our collective model lets us engage creative free agents, academics, outliers, and entrepreneurs that don't exist in traditional agencies. Despite what you hear, entrepreneurs don't work in those places.
We're able to do it by decoupling ourselves from traditional agency infrastructure. No vanity services, no bureaucracy, no bloat, no waste. We call it "NOverhead.""
The article also has a great quote from one of the founders on why they see this approach as being the best way to serve their market:
There’s a trend towards project work. There’s the rise of the freelance class. And, as someone who was in a management position, I saw that the best talent didn’t want to work full-time. I couldn’t get them to come to the agency. They wanted to manage their own hours and work on the projects they believed in. It was hard to blame them.
People have been predicting for decades smaller, collaborative, networked organizations would replace large, hierarchical organizations.
We don't believe large organizations are going away anytime soon. But it's clear collaborative, networked organizational models are becoming more common.
We'll have more on this topic in the coming months.
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