Crowdsourcing Clients – Where Agency Nil Went Next
11th August 09
Posted in transformational change
At the end of May this year we got pretty excited and the debate got fairly heated about the launch of Agency Nil – the agency with the convention-busting business model that ‘will work for all it’s worth’. In other words, they’ll do the work and you pay them what you think you should. Unorthodox, audacious stuff whichever way you look at it, we were impressed.
Since launch they’ve been approached by both clients and talent and, inevitably, as they started work on live projects (including clients with food products and online services, not to mention a pitch for a large software company’s NPD launch), one of the toughest questions facing any agency arose: when were they going to find time to do the work brilliantly AND keep scouting for new business? Clearly a conventional solution wasn’t going to cut it at Agency Nil, which is when they came up with this ultra simple, ultra ‘on brand’ idea:
Agency Nil announces their Spotter Program
Catching up again with Agency Nil’s founders, they explained the concept a little more:
“If a person connects Agency Nil with a business that would be interested in our services and they become a client within a year, Agency Nil will give the person who refers them 10% of the first payment they receive (from $100 to $100,000 or more…). This person is called an Agency Nil Spotter. All it takes to become one is an email to Agency Nil introducing the potential client (with the client cc’d, of course). Then the Spotter’s referral is documented. When Agency Nil get paid, the Spotter gets paid. Simple.”
We love the idea of an agency experimenting with new business in this way. A smart move that painlessly exploits an era where networking and sharing useful information has never been easier. What’s more, it’s in keeping with the spirit of their launch which, as they put it at the time: “It’s a win/win. And that’s the kind of business we like to be in.” Agency Nil also draw attention to the fact they’re putting into practice a simple way for talented individuals to profit from their connections: “Isn’t it about time people started to get rewarded for the networks they’ve built?”
Of course this isn’t the first time an agency has used crowd sourcing to find prospective marketing clients. Who knows, will people really refer a hot prospect? How reliable will the connections be? Will it tend to be for small projects only, or will Agency Nil land a multi-million dollar account this way? They may hit some bumps in the road along the way, but to us this approach looks like a natural next step for them and a dead simple, innovative solution to an age old problem. So again, we say hats off to Agency Nil and good luck.
If you want to sign-up as an Agency Nil Spotter, send an email to Spotter@AgencyNil.com.
Crowd-sourcing is one way of describing this initiative.
The other, with less attractive connotations (but much more history of generating revenue) is affiliate marketing.
This is commision based lead-generation, pure & simple: nicely marketed, sure, but that’s what it is.
Hey Ciarán
Thanks for your comment.
We think this is a great way to get people into the Agency Nil concept – having them looking around, and keeping us in mind and helping us connect the dots. We thought of just asking for peoples help…not giving anything but a big hug and a thank you. That may have worked, it still might, we can try that later but we thought it would freak out those people who are used to earning a living…one step at a time in trying to do things in a new way no?
Andrew
this feels really, really cheap. like the waffle house of agencies…or whatever.
Hey Riley
Sorry you feel that way. We are BIG fans of ‘the people’…one of the first to break our Story was Springwise – they have a cool network of spotters (and they call them that too…) who help those spot stories. We looked at their model – saw them interacting with people in a whole new way versus a traditional site or blog and thought we would engage with people in the same way…
Now we could have lots of slick sales people running around driving their BMWs and dialing for dollars on their Apple 3Gs but we’d rather engage with people like ourselves who are knocking around, making a living, and know of companies that need our help and tell us about them. Let’s face it, there is nothing more powerful than Word of Mouth – why should we pay sales people when we can pay regular people for their help? We want to tap into people like us…its really that simple.
Should people help us for free? Sure – if they want, or we can say thanks and recognize their help. If people want to just send business our way – we’ll say thank you very much! But we believe there is nothing wrong with free enterprise, every business pays its sales people, we’re just choosing to pay the people who we think deserve it…we are all about saying ‘thanks’ when someone gives us a leg up…
Does this all make sense?
Andrew,
Thanks for clarifying a bit more.
I started following the Agency Nil story since we were looking for inspiration on how to position our own start-up non-agency ‘plug-in’.
And liked how it got such varied reactions. Always a good sign.
At first, I thought this Spotter idea was a bit gratuitous, but your comment put it more in perspective. So well done again.
I’m going to keep following.
Good luck with it. Looking forward to see what you guys get up to.
grr
do keep in mind waffle house could arguably have the greatest hash browns of all time.
So true.
On a deep level, the current challenges facing the advertising world are facing the world at large.
Generous abundance vs. scarcity mentality.
Creativity vs. process.
Non-local consciousness vs. ego-driven consciousness.
I give mad props to Nil for continually being on the progressive side of all this upheaval.
Hey Mark – now, before I comment – please tell the people that we have never met each other before and I have nothing up my sleeves! No rabbits or flowers right?!?
Anyway – getting serious for a sec (dammit!) – thanks for your thoughtful response – We love feedback – positive or negative – seriously! (OK – we do slightly prefer the positive but hey – we’re human too…).
Thanks again! You are a Rock Star!
Andrew
Yes. I don’t have a clue who you are personally. I am merely posting a comment on the Internets. Nothing to see here.
(please leave my bag of money behind that tree we talked about…)
I was looking evreweyhre and this popped up like nothing!
This is a very pro-business idea, if you know what I mean. Agency Nil wins and so does the person who introduced them to a client, and I think that’s just the way it should be. For one, they’re honest enough to say that they’re interested in meeting new clients, but they’re also transparent about how they’re going to reward people who help them. It has the makings of a good community, if you ask me. Just like Springspotters. Nice.
Thanks for the kind words Anjali. What should we do next to upset the moldy applecart? Any ideas – all greatfully accepted – no idea too crazy for us…
Andrew
What Agency Nil is doing is pulling back the the sling and being the first “extreme” to shoot the rock at the Goliath.
They have nothing to lose.
I admire this and think that this is a great way to finally break the stigma that brands need hundreds of people coddling their campaigns and paying through the nose to do so when a small skilled team will do a much better job at a fraction of the cost.
Its a well known fact that once an agency signs a big account they then go RAMP UP to get coddlers for the account, typically mediocre to barely a heart beat type people to fill the seats so that brand X feels that there are enough people wasting time on the multitude of out of sync spreadsheets that end up floating around and justifying the huge bill at the end of the month.
Smaller agencies of 15-20 people are so much more efficient and cost effective for brands to navigate these new waters we live in. Just like services like Google, Twitter and Facebook are free to the public to use budgets do NOT have to be as bloated as they once were for brands to speak to the masses. So much can be done on a shoe string and that shoe string is more than enough to make a smaller agency successful and vibrant. Itw ill assure the brands that the best minds are focused on their work and the layers of stupidity will be eliminated and everyone’s lives will be made so much easier and we can all get back to having fun doing what we love in this business.
Craig! Wow! You completely get it…I couldn’t have written this better myself (and to all those in blog land – NO! I didn’t write this… *cough*)
But one thing I would add is Agency Nil received some kick ASS resumes from both young, fresh, recently minted folks and more experienced, ‘been there, done that’ people who could charge out for a small fortune if we a) were a traditional agency (which we’re not) and b) charged by the hour (which we don’t).
So we get the talent (and they keep coming… resumes to audition@agencynil.com) without needing to waste cash on Madison Avenue real estate…a win win for all except the Madison Avenue Starbucks…
Andrew
Anytime you need an honest top notch digital crew to help you on a pitch or some work gimme a call, we are right there with you!
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the offer – can I chew your hand off please!
We have a number of live digital projects and I am really keen to work with more like minded professionals. Can you drop me an email at steve@agencynil.com and we can chat more.
I applaud almost anything that doesn’t perpetuate the status quo old way of doing things. Kudos to Nil for trying and to BBH Labs for promoting the competition. Two things are apparent to anyone whose eyes are open. 1. social media, CS and technology changes everything. It creates new opportunities and begs that we think differently about our business, prospecting, partnering, creating, etc. 2. Clients are demanding, not asking for, but DEMANDING lower costs and greater efficiencies. You can squeeze the shit out of every last person and resource you have, work even longer days than we historically do, or get inventive. Funny thing is we are supposed to be creative. Why are we so restrictive, as an industry, in where we’re willing to apply that creativity. Can’t wait to see whose standing five years from now.
Totally, but toally, agree with you Edward! I think it hard for agencies to re-invent themselves. The good ones evolve ahead of the market but totally changing is tough, especially when many are happy with the status quo.
it´s really huge and kind to have the openness to put your own community towards your objectives. this way you build mutual commitment between the nodes of this graph – agency, spotter and client. i really believe that they will have some bumps in the beginning, but which process doesn’t have it on its birth?
nice move agency nil !
How interesting. Every agency seems to have a “point of difference” but a lot of them are just hooey cooked up to disguise the fact that it’s just another agency, started by people who wanted their own way all the time. This is genuinely different, and justifies the agency’s existence on experimental terms at the very least.
It’s a well-known principle of behavioural psychology that a person is more likely to regard something well when introduced to it by someone they like or respect. So it certainly seems like a model that could work.
The thing that sticks in my mind, though, is whether you’ll be able to get any big clients this way. I’d be surprised if a gargantuan account could be acquired through web introductions, but then most new agencies start off with miniature clients, so maybe the big’uns will come later.
The only criticism I have, Agency Nil, is that your website only loads to 11% in Chrome. What have you got against Google, eh?
Thanks for the comments Copybot. I think it unlikely that a mega piece of business will land in our lap through a spotter intro – but its a nice idea! Naturally big and small clients are happier to start small and invest more when they see the quality of ideas. I am just delighted by the range of clients that want to take time and check us out.
Sorry that you having problems loading our website. Might be worth adding the www. first and I think it should cure the it.
I really love the initiative and comprehensive thinking that has gone into their proposition. But it’s getting complicated now. So let’s get back to the basics of what should attract any and all smart clients and incentivize them to pay handsomely for an agency’s services: show the work.
Whether you charge NIL, or they charge a MIL…all that matters is the work.
If the work is great, it’s worth whatever a client is willing to pay to achieve their goal. So show the work. Celebrate it. Put it front and center. Make it the only thing that matters.
Because it is.
Tim
You are right. At the end of the day its all about the quality of the work. Thankfully, despite being a baby Agency, we have some work in the pipeline being tackled by some talented people…whew!
One project just helped secure a new company a spot on the shelves of a rather nice retailer – we’ll be able to pull back that curtain soon (assuming the client is ok with it…).
Thanks and stay tuned!
Andrew
@copybot: Nothing wrong with small clients or projects, I’d say.
* If you keep the set-up simple and agile and plug in the right people for the right job, surely you will be able to make good money from smaller jobs.
* If the industry is slow to change, what can we expect from clients? Take social media for example. A lot of big organisations still don’t know how to get involved, so smaller projects will be a great way to win trust.
Sure, you won’t win awards for Best Integrated campaign or whatever, but is that really important to the client?And more importantly, to the their costumer/user/crowd?
* Smaller and younger companies will be more inclined to adopt a non-traditional, trans-media, cross-platform,… approach to communication.
* In smaller companies, it’ll be easier to get to the essence of the product/brand/organisation. Easier to become the client. Which should lead to better solutions.
Easier to get decisions made too.
* Experimenting means messing up. So you might as well mess up on a smaller scale.
But yes, bring on the Nil projects! At the end of the day, clients don’t really care how and by whom an idea got developed.
Steve/Andrew, if you’re ever in London…
‘Crowdsourced’ as a description of the Spotter Program: a fresh way to refer to the good-business practice of asking for referrals. Such ongoing word-of-mouth business development can be beneficial for so many types of companies.
I wish Agency Nil much success in identifying prospective clients, and in providing (and getting compensated for doing) great work on their behalf.
[...] Labs recently highlighted the agency’s new business solution in an article titled: Crowdsourcing Clients – Where Agency Nil Went Next “If a person connects Agency Nil with a business that would be interested in our services and [...]
How do you handle web sites? Those can be very expensive (or not). Do you have “minimum pricing” guidelines or anything for projects like these?
Hey Ben
We do websites and lots more beside – what the cost is depends on who works on the project – thankfully we have a broad and deep pool of great talent from recent graduates, no gradutes but awesome portfolios to people with oodles o experience… which leads me to another great point – we don’t only take graduates – its about skills, talent and experience…we’e probably much more of a meritocracy than some of those other agencies.
Cost is driven by who works on the project – we don’t have a specific price tag for each project.
Make sense?
Let the freemium agency wars begin. I Know who i’ll be charging over the top with
[...] @jtwinsor: Crowdsourcing Clients-Well-framed offer from Agency Nil. Sounds better than finders fee http://bit.ly/I304WRT @GrahamHill: @innovate Growth requires a BALANCE of small i incremental and large i radical [...]
[...] Plaza of Crayon on V&S and Contagious takes a look at V&S here. BBH Labs on Agency Nil here and here. You can read my interview with Alex Bogusky of CP+B and Hank Leber, founder of Agency [...]
I like the new approach. Most of what came before was right (and unconventional) for the time and companies like BBH and Saatchi and Saatchi were being just as innovative and groundbreaking with the way they did business as they were with their ideas. It’s great to see a fresh thought process . I have no doubt it will work. It brings value back into the hands of the client.