Insights 06.29.2018

5 Reasons to Go Small When Choosing a Creative Partner

06.29.2018 / Articles

Should you hire a large agency or a smaller studio? This is a question which is often debated by organizations who value design. While there are good reasons to hire large agencies and many of them do exceptional work, we’ve noticed that clients who are actually interacting and working with the agencies, tend to prefer working with smaller studios.

Granted, size is important. It’s the third question people typically ask when they meet Avendi for the first time:

“How many people work for you?”

It’s a question that typically comes right after they ask “What do you do?” and “How long have you been in business?” They are legitimate questions when trying to gauge a company you’ve just been introduced to, but don’t be tempted by the old adage of “bigger is better”.

The Advantages of Going Small

There are plenty of advantages to going small when choosing a design studio—whether you’re working with us or someone else.

1. You’re more important.
   Your business will typically mean more to a small creative firm that has a few accounts of similar size, than to a big agency that has many accounts of your size and probably even larger. Your business would have to represent a significant amount of revenue to occupy the same space in the heart of a big agency as you could have with a smaller firm.
2. You have the attention of the higher-ups.
   When working with a small creative firm, you often have the personal involvement and attention of the most senior people in the company, and you are never handed off to “The B Team” once the sale is made.
3. You can get smarter work.
   With continual advancements in the industry, it’s not only plausible but common for small creative firms to produce exceptional work. With fewer people involved, it doesn’t mean you get fewer ideas—it means the good ideas actually stand a chance of bubbling to the top without being diluted or killed in “design-by-committee” approaches.
4. You know who’s doing it.
   With a big agency, you’re likely working with an account exec and may never meet the team who is actually developing the work. That “big agency” may assign your job to a small team of just two or three people, or they may outsource it entirely to an outside firm – usually a smaller studio.
5. You can get it done more efficiently.
   Small creative firms are typically more responsive than a large organization and are able to pivot quickly as a project requires. Internal processes move more seamlessly, and there is simply less room for bottlenecks.

Whether you’re already working with Avendi, or you’re just thinking about it, we encourage you to consider the value of working with small creative firms. Bigger is not always necessarily better.