So, when an entire industry’s model is stuck at getting paid on billable hours, this endless loop of over-negotiated costs, thin margins, heavy workloads, prioritisation of effort over creativity, stagnation in innovation, and a propensity for cutting corners becomes seemingly inescapable. Everything that’s wrong in the agency business can in some way, ultimately, be traced back to the way we price.
There’s a reason why, as much as we love long-term brand retainers, we’ve embraced the project model at Talented. Because it demands a job-by-job focus on margins, they’ve kept us on our toes commercially. We’re able to assign internal teams sustainably and show agility by bringing on external partners.
We can truly sense our creativity and add more value by being able to focus more on sharper brand problems and less on insignificant daily output. More often than not we finish these projects with a sense that the pricing model fairly reflected both our effort and the outcome.
Source: Your agency isn’t making enough money
