Most of you know I spent the early days of my career at Fleishman-Hillard. I loved that job. It was where I learned all about PR, but also where I came out of my shell.
When I interviewed for the job, the GM of our office, Gary Kisner, asked me where I saw myself in five years. I remember looking around his office and saying, “In here looks good.”
He laughed at me and offered me the job on the spot.
It was going really, really far out on a limb for me. I was incredibly shy and saying something like that took every cajones I had (clearly I’ve gotten over that).
I became somewhat of a pet to him. I used to bite my fingernails, clear down to the cuticles. He pulled me aside one day and said, “Gini. You are so smart. You’re beautiful. In this world you can have just about anything you set your mind on. But you have to stop biting your fingernails. It’s demeaning your credibility.”
And stop biting my fingernails I did. So he began to put me in new business presentations. And suddenly I also came out of my shell.
Leaving there was bittersweet for me. I was on the fast track to making partner and to getting a company-owned BMW and parking spot…by the time I was 30.
But something was pulling me out of Kansas City. I had to move.
From there I went to work at Rhea & Kaiser to help build their PR department, which didn’t exist in 2001. And I learned what it was like to work for a mid-sized company.
By the time I opened the doors at Arment Dietrich in 2005, I had big and mid-sized agency experience. Now I needed to create boutique agency experience.
Boutique vs. Large Agencies
I’m often asked by young professionals what are the pros and cons for working at a global agency vs. a boutique firm. And clients typically usually work with one or the other. Having been inside both, I can tell you.
Pros of a Global Agency
- You have access to minds smarter than your own all around the world.
- Your access to software, expense accounts, and newest technologies is unlimited.
- Bringing together a team that is right for the client is as easy as calling another office.
- You learn how to do one job really well. If you’re in media relations, you learn that skill until you’re an expert. Then you get promoted.
- The process and procedure is already in place…and works pretty well.
- No one, from a client perspective, ever got fired for hiring a global agency.
Pros of a Boutique Agency
- You have direct access to the CEO, both as staff and the client.
- Your team knows how to react quickly and get something done, even if they’ve never done it before.
- This may sound trite, but there is a personal touch because you’re working with the owner and a select, very carefully chosen team.
- The team that pitches a piece of new business is the team that works on that business when it becomes a client.
- As a team member, you become a jack of all trades and learn different parts of the job very quickly…because you have to.
- The team is always very flexible and nimble.
- A small budget to a global firm is usually a gigantic budget to a boutique firm.
Cons of a Global Agency
- Learning a new skill takes years, if ever at all.
- Flexibility and being nimble are like asking the Titantic to turn quickly.
- The team that pitches new business is always the most polished, smartest, best presenter the office has to offer…and they almost never work with that client.
- Clients that have smaller budgets are left to the young professionals to manage, which is great for the employee, but not so great for the client.
- Having access to the CEO, unless you’re a Steve Jobs, is almost non-existent.
Cons of a Boutique Agency
- The shininess of presentations, projects, and work isn’t as slick; some of the stuff we have to bootstrap with you.
- Clients have been fired from their jobs for taking a chance with a boutique agency, if that agency screws up.
- Bringing together a team that is right for the client sometimes means calling in other agencies.
- Process and procedure are almost non-existent; you create it as you go.
- The resources available are sometimes pretty slim.
The lists could go on and on so I leave it to you now. What are the pros and cons of each…either having worked inside them or having worked with them, as clients?