“When I'm sourcing an agency for a client, the first thing I think about is what would be my relative priority as a client within that agency. I would be lost like a fart in a hurricane if I put a small client into a very big organization. Agencies should say, there will be no one more important than your brand in our organization.”
Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast · Agency Business · November 2026
Context
David Meikle, who helps clients pick agencies, says independents shouldn't try to match the networks' scale. They should sell priority instead.
Transcript
…strategy. And the Dominant West campaign is one of the most underlying advertising campaigns and inspiring advertising campaigns of the moment. But I think you just started reading the IPA effect winners. But everybody who listens to this, just read them. They are well worth their weight in goal.
…I will put the link in the show notes to those old awards. This concept of Kinzugi, sort of celebrating the brokenness. I'm going to put you both on the spot. Can you think of an agency right now who has also used that strategy or how they could perhaps see that strategy for themselves right now?
Yes, I don't think it's difficult at all. I mean, it's not unlike what we were talking about a moment ago with the difference between corporates. They have their role, but a lot of the time, when there's a forced comparison between a huge network agency and a smaller agency, a smaller independent agency, then oftentimes people will say, well, they're smaller and therefore they don't have as much talent. They don't have as much this. They don't have as much that. But when you think about it in the terms that I use, for example, when I'm sourcing an agency for a client, the first thing I think about is what would be my relative priority as a client within that agency. So I would be lost like a fart in a hurricane if I put a small client into a very big organization, but I would be a more cherished client, which has the priority of the agency's best talent if I go to one which is a better ratio of my size to them. So as a start point in terms of how I would shortlist an agency, agencies need to think not about computer on the terms of the larger agencies and trying to say we can match all of this, but say there will…
I think to add to that, if you look at the whole girls, and look, they're going for tough times for a number of reasons. Their business model is obviously to appeal to their shareholders. They've got cordly figures to hood, but there's been absolute desperation of talent there. And then just their…
It's funny, it reminds me of another point about the way that we constructed this, which is strategies aren't singular. What's really nice about strategies, you can take a bit of this strategy and you can take a bit of that strategy. So, what Temp's describing here is also a bit David and Goliath's…
When you were talking there, I was just bringing to mind a friend of mine who has an agency, it's a very specialized medical copywriting agency, and they have very senior people on the team who work directly with clients. And even though some of their clients have been subject to Holdco global…
More from Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast
