Kiki Dunlaevy and Robin Scarborough.
Agency marketplace StudioSpace is helping specialist independent agencies and brands combat the costly, time-consuming pitching process through a supplier system.
Launched in 2022, the company now sources more than 600 special independent agencies for more than 40 brands across Australia and the UK.
StudioSpace co-founder and managing director, Robin Scarborough, told AdNews that they are tackling an access problem for both brands and agencies.
“For agencies, they want it to be easier to work with the right clients on the right projects that fit what they're good at. And it's hard to be discovered by larger companies,” said Scarborough.
“Agencies want to stay a specialist. They want to maintain that focus on what their offering is. To be able to do that, though, they need to have ways to find the right work for their model.
“And even if you're connected with that right client, it can take months to onboard as a new supplier and be able to work with them.
“For the clients, that's an access challenge as well.
“Clients are in a rush to find the right partners, so it’s about how agencies stand out in such a crowded market and be known for the right things with the right target clients.
“Agencies also want to minimise their cost of sale. The high cost of pitching for agencies makes it difficult for them to make money and work profitably.”
StudioSpace is a channel through which brands can work with all agencies as contract suppliers in the marketplace.
StudioSpace enables clients to go from brief to proposals in 5 days and can start working together within 2 weeks or less.
Some clients using the service include King Living, Jaguar Land Rover, HSBC and URBNSURF and the Australian Institute of Management.
The specialist agencies services range from advertising, brand creative, digital performance, social digital product, experience design, building apps and websites, digital marketing solutions, corporate comms, employer brand and more.
StudioSpace director of client partnerships, Kiki Dunlaevy, said that in-house agencies are now seeking specialist agencies to support in specific areas.
“For a CMO in advertising 20 years ago, there was only print, radio and TV to focus in on.
“Now there's many platforms and channels to consider. What a CMO needs today is a specialist agency that can work extremely well on specific needs.
“It's also a result of in-house agencies changing. Eight years ago, if a client had an in-house agency, they typically didn't require external support. Now that black box has evaporated and clients need agencies that can provide additional skill-sets.”
Last year, StudioSpace reviewed the top 20 projects in the marketplace, in which half were for agencies of 15 people or smaller.
Half of those agencies were female-founder owned, and StudioSpace received client feedback of 4.6/5 for agency quality.
There's demand from clients to work with the most senior experienced practitioners.
Scarborough said that despite the large number of specialists in the market, the list of options for brands narrows down quickly when responding to a particular need.
“There is a large supply of agencies, and for a client, that means there's more choice than ever. We've been thoughtful and careful about how we onboard new agencies coming on,” he said.
“We've built out a map of all the agency services, capabilities, and it's been designed in response to what clients have asked us for over the years.
“Clients are under pressure to grow their brands. Typically in the current climate, they've got more to deliver, less budget spend, and less time to show results.
“There are now so many different specialist disciplines involved in how you grow a business, and so when we drill into what all these different agencies do, you quite quickly get down to a shorter list of agencies that are a really good fit for that particular client.
“And then the chemistry between the client and the agency narrows it down even further.”
The future of the pitch market includes fewer drawn-out pitches, shorter selection processes, and more paid trials, according to Scarborough.
“A lot of clients will brief an agency on the first job through StudioSpace, which is quite tightly scoped, to try them out and see how that works," he said.
“And then often we see that extend into lots more work off the back of that initial pilot or test case.
“StudioSpace has stayed true to the original vision that we had five years ago, and we've been building that out. We're going to continue investing in technology around our platform."
Scarborough also wants StudioSpace to build a presence in the market, including introducing a video series featuring all our agency founders and leaders.
“We're trying to build a modern operating model that makes it easier for big brands to access and easily work with all these great specialist agencies," he said.
"Increasingly, procurement is looking to us to help simplify that long tail, where they've just got a single supplier to deal with and get more flexibility and choice than ever.
“So rather than onboarding them directly, they're introducing them to us so that they can access them through StudioSpace.”
“Each agency is having a conversation with me about their specialist area of expertise and how that thing that they do helps big brands grow.”
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