For every business type, there are multiples models of how to make the f-er work. A recent post by Mike Arauz about new digital agency models inspired me to have a brainstorm about models that would work for a modern digital agency.
The typical agency has business development people and creative/execution people. The smaller the agency, the more multifunction each role becomes. Flatter structures have scalability issues so I tried to come up with a way for a model that could scale creatively without amassing huge overhead costs as far as development.
Verticals are nothing new. Certain people are better at marketing a beer can than medical services. The pool of the executing team, however, is where the cost and overhead creeps in very quickly.
I propose having a fully verticals-based agency that shares core but not creative resources.
A vertical champion (as we call them at KIT digital) would facilitate the function of business development, account management, and creative direction for a specific vertical. This champion would then, based on their sales forecast, employ the resources needed to services that vertical. If the vertical grows to the point where more account managers are needed, they can be added to the team.
In essence, the company is a set of micro agencies of different size that share administrative, finance, and hard development (CMS/backend capabilities) functions while scaling all the other teams based on the performance of that vertical.
Here is a proposed org chart:
The only major issue is that if the pipeline is mostly large clients once in a blue moon for a certain vertical, the champion will have to work with a lop of temps in order to complete a certain project while retaining only a small portion of the staff for ongoing support.
Thoughs? Ideas? Suggestions? Shoot me an email, tweet, or leave a comment!
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