This idea came to me in the sense that when I’m hiring graphic designers, I see the best stuff on Dribbble and Awwwards, and I want that level of quality, but every firm within our reach is not going to be as good at those top 5-10 that set design trends.
Or a better example would be hiring an interface and product design studio. There’s Metalab, Konrad, Clay, Instrument and Bakken & Beck.
And they set the bar really high, as the best practice standard. A lot of other studios follow them and make an attempt, but are never quite there.
Within the link building and SEO industry I’m in, there are the top 5 premier, best link building agencies, setting the thought leadership, and then everyone else.
What this means is that the richest Fortune 500 companies will hire the top studios, and set the high bar, and then everyone else is trying to replicate and get to that level but likely won’t.
Following that logic, there is a certain level of expertise that an agency can get to, where it becomes a well-oiled machine and an innovator that pushes the boundaries. They are no longer order-takers but thought leaders. The Fortune 500 companies engage them because they can’t get that level of work in-house. The studio heads will not work in-house, so there’s no option.
Essentially at the end of the day, new agencies run by young pups have to be cheaper, faster and order takers. And they’ll only attract small companies that can only afford them, or large companies that need execution, not thought leadership.
So the job of the agency owner is to know where they are in that journey, be realistic of where they’re at in the pecking order, and charter a course to level up.