In recent weeks, our weekly Agency Advice series has given itself over to a mini-series, The Agency Founders’ Starter Pack. Today, our panel of agency leaders turn to one of the most pressing questions for a startup founder: when you’re starting out, how do you compete with the big guns?
Steven Bennett-Day, co-founder, Ourselves: “How to punch above our weight is what literally keeps me up at night. When my co-founder and I set up our agency six years ago, we decided to walk into every ‘hello’ meeting with a bunch of killer concepts that the potential client could do straight away. Our strength – two creatives, rather the usual creative/account/business combo – was to show what we do, rather than just rely on the creds of what we’d done before. My advice: show, don’t tell. It takes much more effort than automated outreach, but it works.”
Joe Churchill, founder, FanClub: “There’s no silver bullet, but without a clear USP, you
are dead in the water. It’s not good enough to be the best if your offering has nothing
Nat Poulter, CEO, Restless: “We launched just a couple of weeks ago. While we had built and sold an agency before, there’s no playbook to refer to for help. And we certainly can’t rely on pure reputation, like the bigger shops. We needed a new mindset to win clients, so we treated ourselves as one. We invested in capabilities. Leaned into social to cut through, capture attention and drive conversation. You’re never going to beat the bigger opponent unless you disrupt clients’ attention. Think content in all its forms: newsletters, blogs, topical explainer videos, comedy videos, all driving to a site with character. Show your personality through content.”
Danny Gonzalez, co-founder, Bandits & Friends: “Don’t rush your announcement. You only get to do it once. If you can stack a few newsworthy things (the announcement, a new client, a new hire, a project, a thought piece) and pace them out over the course of a couple weeks, you can manufacture momentum and go from an agency no one’s heard of to a name seemingly everywhere pretty quickly.”
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