Big vs small clients: Which is better for agencies?

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with an absurdly wide variety of clients (it actually is absurd now that I write it out):

• Giant companies/brands like Procter & Gamble (Swiffer, Febreze, Olay, Pantene, Dawn, etc), Nike, Microsoft & Starbucks

• Music/entertainment/action sports brands like Element, Quiksilver, DC, etc and bands including Periphery, A Day To Remember, Ice Nine Kills and Of Mice & Men

• 100+ solopreneurs and creators (from engineers to financial planners to marketers and more)

• 300+ brand deals as a creator (Skillshare, Factor, Nord VPN, Draft Kings, etc etc)

When I worked for Abercrombie & Fitch in marketing, I spent almost all of my time working with/managing our vendors & agencies - so the point is, I’ve seen this from a lot of angles.

And one of the biggest things I’ve realized from all that is that there’s essentially two different worlds with it comes to clients: there’s big companies, and there’s everyone else.

I wouldn’t say one is necessarily BETTER than the other- but I definitely don’t agree with the typical narrative that essentially boils down to “big companies suck because they’re slow and dumb; small companies are cooler and more fun to work with.”

But in my experience, it’s quite a bit more nuanced than that— I’ll give you an example.

Back in the 2000s, I did all the creative direction for Flo Multizine, which was a DVD/ print magazine that about music, action sports, and video games. We worked with all the big names like Rockstar, X Games, Quiksilver, Interscope, etc as well as tons of smaller companies.

I can vividly remember one of those small companies (a snowboard brand that I’ll choose not to name), just straight up told us they weren't going to pay us for the ad we ran. Imagine the most spacey stoner bro of all time saying “Yeah… sorry man, it’s just like… not happening.” 💀

To have an invoice completely denied is definitely not normal, but it's a funny example of the larger pattern that a lot of small companies simply don't have their sh*t together.

They might be faster to make decisions, but if they're disorganized and/or sloppy, then they're just making worse decisions more quickly.

If you're going to work with small companies, make sure that at least one of these things is true:

1. They're considered “cool,” so having their name on your client list will make you more marketable

2. They'll give you the freedom to do your best work, so you'll have a valuable asset for your case studies/portfolio

3. You’re broke and you need to pay the bills, so none of the above matters 😅

If it's option number three, do what you've got to do. But don't do it any longer than you have to- the more you fill your portfolio or case studies with mediocre work, the harder it will be to break out of that.

So am I telling you that big companies are all great and amazing and they're the perfect clients? No.

All the criticisms that you've heard of big companies are true: they tend to move very slowly, they make you jump through a million hoops (getting on the approved vendor list, 500 stakeholders on every project, etc).

But what a lot of people don't tell you is that these are usually the companies that understand and value the process the most.

For example, on the Febreze project above I think we billed something like $50k for the research and strategy part alone. And that wasn't a problem because they invested huge amounts in building out their research function, so they understood why that worth the time and cost.

Translation:

1. Big companies will pay you for shit that small companies won't because they understand the value of it

2. You may actually do better work for a big company because they respect the process

For example, I've seen a lot of people talk about big picture strategic things like brand narrative, user research, et cetera- you're going to have a very, very hard time finding any small company that will pay for those “luxuries.”

There are a few who might, but the majority of them either don't really understand what those are and/or don't think they’re important enough to pay for— they'll probably just push you to execute and hand over some deliverables ASAP.

🚨 BUT 🚨

Understand that working with enterprise clients is a whole different ballgame compared to small or mid-sized companies. The amount of hoops they make you jump through is no joke, and understanding how to navigate their complex bureaucracies is a whole skill set of its own.

That's a whole other topic that I won't get into right now but my friend David Ledgerwood Is a wealth of knowledge on that topic, so give him a follow if you want to learn that playbook.

→ The bottom line:

Neither of these are necessarily good or bad, categorically. It's just about deliberately making the trade-offs that come with either kind of client.

Generally speaking, I think you should build toward working with bigger clients- they have bigger budgets and a more sophisticated understanding of the process, and that's pretty tough to beat.

But you don't want to end up with nothing but a pile of dry, corporate case studies- big logos are impressive, but if the work you've done for them is boring, that's a problem too.

So you want to balance that out with cool projects that you initiate on your own or with the subset of cool companies that get it and won't ghost you when you send over the invoice 🫠

PS- I don't really have capacity for more clients right now, so I have nothing to sell you. But I always like meeting new people, so if you enjoyed this email, reply and say hi! I should have time for some Zoom coffee chats soon- LMK if you’re interested.