As a small agency, we like to hear from other agencies out there fighting the good fight ... showing up day-in and day-out to do great work that will truly move clients' businesses. We know that we don't have the financial support to dive into the expensive coffee every day, but what we lack in caffeine quality, we more than make up for in tenacity and good ol' fashioned blood, sweat, and tears.
Which brings us to a recent post by Bart Cleveland on AdAge's Small Agency Diary, a fixture on our regular reading list (we've cited Bart's posts before). In it, Cleveland focuses on the past as a teller of future stories. In a nutshell, the biggest and best of today - the Goodbys, the Weidens, the Chiats, the Crispins - they all had to start somewhere and usually that somewhere was a small group of people just trying to make their mark as a 'shop'. But they continued to focus on challenging themselves to raise the bar, rather than waiting for clients to demand it, and in doing so, began to build more than agencies. They built legacies.
OK, all maybe a little over the top, yes. But if you're not wildly passionate about this business, you shouldn't be in it. And what you find more often in smaller shops are people who are crazy about what they do and about what they are helping their clients accomplish. Being small gets you closer to the action and in doing so, you understand the relationship between your job and the rest of the company and see it as more than a means to another month's rent or car payment. You see it as being able to really build something and help people on the other end of the phone build something, too ... whether it's their own businesses or careers.
What the people Cleveland refers to in his post have done so well is to simply 'make it happen', time and time again, creatively and consistently. Sure, they've had some luck along the way, and yes, they are all brilliant people. But they don't have a corner on the market of leading revolutions, and it doesn't mean that there's not a storied future yet untold in smaller agencies out there right now. Like ours and like others.
To imagine what's possible in the future requires some occasional retrospection to put things in context, and Bart's post has done a great job at that. We hope you enjoy it as well.
Which brings us to a recent post by Bart Cleveland on AdAge's Small Agency Diary, a fixture on our regular reading list (we've cited Bart's posts before). In it, Cleveland focuses on the past as a teller of future stories. In a nutshell, the biggest and best of today - the Goodbys, the Weidens, the Chiats, the Crispins - they all had to start somewhere and usually that somewhere was a small group of people just trying to make their mark as a 'shop'. But they continued to focus on challenging themselves to raise the bar, rather than waiting for clients to demand it, and in doing so, began to build more than agencies. They built legacies.
OK, all maybe a little over the top, yes. But if you're not wildly passionate about this business, you shouldn't be in it. And what you find more often in smaller shops are people who are crazy about what they do and about what they are helping their clients accomplish. Being small gets you closer to the action and in doing so, you understand the relationship between your job and the rest of the company and see it as more than a means to another month's rent or car payment. You see it as being able to really build something and help people on the other end of the phone build something, too ... whether it's their own businesses or careers.
What the people Cleveland refers to in his post have done so well is to simply 'make it happen', time and time again, creatively and consistently. Sure, they've had some luck along the way, and yes, they are all brilliant people. But they don't have a corner on the market of leading revolutions, and it doesn't mean that there's not a storied future yet untold in smaller agencies out there right now. Like ours and like others.
To imagine what's possible in the future requires some occasional retrospection to put things in context, and Bart's post has done a great job at that. We hope you enjoy it as well.
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