I’ve worked at big and small ad agencies as a full time art director, as a freelance mercenary hired to win new business, and I’ve been a partner at an ad agency. You know what all that agency experience taught me? That you probably don’t need an agency at all. I’m not saying agencies are irrelevant today. If you’re McDonalds, you totally need an agency. But if you aren’t, you don’t. In fact, not only do you not need an agency, you actually only need one person to handle all your marketing needs. I know this because I’ve been that person for the last 18 years.

So what kind of business can use just one person to manage anything and everything from advertising to complete rebranding? To name a few: a baby clothing company, a tech startup, a multi-million dollar communications company, and even a Southern town. And a lot of these projects overlapped. How do I do it? By being Peter Graves.

Peter Graves, Mission: Impossible, Season 3, Episode 1: “The Heir Apparent”, Original airdate: September 29, 1968 — ***Peter Graves,*** *Mission: Impossible,* Season 3, Episode 1: “The Heir Apparent”, Original airdate: September 29, 1968

Ok, I didn’t want to be Tom Cruise so I went with the original star of the Mission: Impossible TV series. Besides, Peter Graves is way cooler. Anyway, you probably see where I’m going with this, but a lot of people remember this show wrong. They remember that the lead guy gets the mission, he picks a team and then they go make it happen. That’s not right. He actually only gets a PROBLEM. They never show him doing the most important part - figuring out how to solve the problem before he picks his team (that would be boring, I guess). If you remember, they DO show him explaining his strategy to that hand-picked team, telling them each what they need to do to pull it off. And that’s why you don’t need a whole agency. Because you most likely don’t NEED THE WHOLE AGENCY. You only need the people who will best kill, kidnap, seduce, or overthrow your problem. (Sorry, I felt I had to circle back to the analogy.)

People always ask me what my process is and I tell them that every client and every project is different. And now you know why. I have a lot of experience doing a lot of things. So, naturally, I end up doing a lot of the heavy creative lifting by my lonesome (strategy, design, illustration, advertising, etc.) and this is helpful in a few ways. Like, I’ll be designing the strategy to fit a budget. And I like to save as much of the budget as possible for media placement rather than production (after all, we need people to actually see it, right?). So if I can do the work and I know what needs to be done, it’s the fastest route to running. But sometimes the project doesn’t need my flavor. Or we need an illustration style I can’t match. Or maybe I don’t know how to do something. Look, I talk about things I can do (and enjoy) a lot, but there’s a bunch of stuff that I admit I need major help with. Like placing digital media (I find it unnecessarily hard and painful). Or using a camera (I’m the world’s worst photographer). Or making amazing After Effects animations (I’m learning this one currently). But for skills like this I call on a stable of seasoned, talented AF professionals that I know, love, and trust implicitly. And, unlike an agency that does this all the time, I don’t mark up the cost of these folks (whether my clients pay them directly for services or not). Here’s a promise I’ll make to you because you’ve read this far: If you don’t need me, but need a photographer or any other type of creative professional, I’ll be thrilled to recommend one of my team and get you connected. My door is always open to helping people solve creative problems right.

Finally, let’s get to how to not hire an agency in favor of hiring someone like me. For me, there is no budget too small or dream too big. Sounds corny, but I mean it. I get untold joy from helping people realize their goals and dreams. It’s my thing. If I can solve your problem in a week, then that’s what I’ll do. A week-long project and I’m done. If you need a complete rebranding and sustained brand maintenance, we can work out a retainer to keep our relationship going. My structure doesn’t involve me making up projects or creating busy work to keep you paying me. You only buy what you need and that works fine for me. Here’s an example of how it works:

Tech Startup
Work: Act as CMO to lead a small team in developing brand materials, advertising, trade show booth and appearances, press releases, and manage advertising plan.
Steady Team: Me, web tech support, and eventually a digital marketing team.
Special Project Team: Gaming app designer, focus group consultant, After Effects editor and Foley artist, Instagram influencer, voice talent, and believe it or not, a bus mechanic.

Cable company
Work: Total rebranding/renaming from business cards to fleet graphics to entirely new website with monthly creative support for advertising, monthly strategy, TV production, on-hold phone messaging, and daily social media posts.
Steady Team: Me, a copywriter, web tech support, digital marketing person
Special Project Team: After Effects editor, a recording studio engineer, a photographer

Southern town
Work: Total positioning strategy and branding, custom retention/loyalty program, branded merchandise design, monthly advertising and brand support.
Steady Team: Me, a copywriter, web tech support, digital marketing person
Special Project Team: Website designer, film director and two actors, a photographer

See? A focused approach like this is both efficient and effective. If you’re a giant international conglomerate, or a CMO that’s rolling in dough and who wants to be fawned over and taken to lunch all the time, get that agency. They love doing that shit and then billing you for it. But if you want to be a part of the process, do some amazing work, and save some of your money to actually run the work, give me a call. Because when you’re with me, Mission: Impossible is actually Agency: Unnecessary.