THE AGENCY BUSINESS MODEL

“One day we might be working with a 10-person small business and the next day we might be working with the largest telecom provider in the country.”

— Tom Needham, Business Journals Content Studio executive director

It’s hard. It’s expensive. It’s timeconsuming. It’s fraught with ethical church-state issues. But it is also one of the fastest growing sources of revenue for media companies. What makes a successful agency?

• Knowledge of a desired audience

• Knowledge of the brand’s customers

• Access to and a relationship with the desired audience

• An audience database second to none

• Exquisite storytellers. Expert videographers

• Media tech expertise

• Proven, sophisticated design capabilities • Multimedia, multi-platform, multi-channel expertise

• Proven marketing expertise

• A nuanced understanding of how to build sophisticated multi-platform campaigns

Does that list sound like a media company to you? Sure sounds like a media company to me.

The expertise inside media companies is looking like an agency to more and more brands around the world. Many have given up trying to create branded content and media campaigns on their own, or even with traditional legacy agencies.

As a result, many media companies that have created in-house agencies are seeing results that have come to represent from five to 60% of total revenue!