Empathy is a powerful emotion and we can definitely empathise with everyone on the truth that the world doesn’t need another boring ass agency.

Which leads me to context. In our industry, context is probably the most important consideration in everything we do. Stating the world doesn’t need another agency, suggests the world is already full of agencies (some good, most not). But what exactly is an agency and why are there so many different kinds of agencies? What makes them different and what makes them great? Is boutique/independent/full-service better (or worse) and isn’t it all just marketing anyway?

No, it’s not. Though it is a pretty damn confusing landscape for advertisers.

Constant shifts within the industry, changing perceptions and ambiguous definitions of where we bring the most value to our clients is continually under fire. More often than not, this is generally caused by confusion within the industry around the terminologies we use to describe our own existence in an attempt to differentiate or position ourselves as distinctive within a ridiculously crowded market.

Unfortunately, all this has done has confused an already chaotic landscape for our clients. Now, most of the time, we end up being all things to all people even though we try our hardest not to be, because we can’t even find the clarity in our own offering and were exactly we fit into the overall marketing piece, where we really shine.

Some agencies describe themselves as full service, others are digital, or content agencies. There’s creative agencies who mainly do ideas and design work, but also production sometimes, and if you really need it, have been known to dabble in the world of product design too!

There’s pay-per-click agencies that aren’t digital agencies, there’s marketing agencies that do no pay-per-click advertising and digital marketing agencies out there that are merely social media or pay per click agencies and do no actual marketing (if you don’t agree with me, upskill yourself in marketing or forward your opinionated hate mail to my office). I’m also not getting into a rant around the widely dismissive definitions of what constitutes ’traditional’ and ‘digital’ (is digital out of home advertising ’traditional’ or ‘digital’ – spoiler: it’s 2020. It’s all just, advertising!).

The commonality between all of these ‘agencies’ is the need to create, connect and communicate with an audience. To fight for the shrinking space within a prospects mind that their clients brands can truly own. And the secret is, it takes a highly strategic approach to bring all of those ‘agency services’ together in order to deliver a message to your audience in a consistent, memorable and interesting way. All in an attempt to influence the customer and give that slight nudge to purchase, try, and fall in love with your brand.

It takes great strategic directive, flawless creative execution, quality production work and a delivery or distribution strategy to bring it all together.

How do you do that, when as an industry we’re too busy fighting with each other to see the value we all bring to the puzzle and you (you’re the client in this narrative) know the full service model is limiting, uneconomical and broken.

This is where a strategically led, brand focused advertising agency like Maker Street comes into play. We help advertisers align objectives of the business with the brand and marketing department to uncover and drive creative solutions that help our clients stand out in an interesting way.

And, this modal works for us! Because we’re not ‘full service’ and we don’t really care what ‘specialists’ or ‘gurus’ you have working on your tactical day-to-day marketing efforts. We’re here to assist with high level strategic decisions to help develop brand focused advertising work, and then we leave to let the experts bring that work to life.

What this actually means is that we know how to play well with others and while that also means we don’t always get credit for the work, as long as we’ve helped drive revenue growth in some way, we’ve done our job and ultimately, that’s what’s most important to us.

If you want to sit down with us – you can reach us at hq@mkrst.co

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn