Ex-Royals director and partner Dan Beaumont has revealed a different model with his new creative advisory, GAME.
GAME will be a “reasonably lean operational model”. He doesn’t want leases, he doesn’t want to hire too many staff and he's not calling himself an agency.
“Fees are getting squeezed," GAME founder and managing director Beaumont told AdNews.
"The only way I see agencies making money is by pitching with the most senior people winning the business, and then putting juniors on that business in order to make a margin.
"It's a slippery slope to oblivion, and it's not the right way to be able to solve big business issues. You need smart, experienced people around the table.
“Those people that clients meet in that first chemistry session, or in that first discussion about a business are going to be the people that are actually solving the problems, not juniors.”
GAME will be a fully integrated end-to-end advisory, connecting business strategy to brand strategy, as well as how that brand comes to life and engages its particular audience. From media, to PR and production, to creative platforms and design branding.
The advisory will be best suited to clients who aren't seeking an agency of record.
GAME will co-create with the independent talent, who have opted out of traditional agency constraints. Beaumont will cast and select the right team around a particular client's project or problem or assignment. He says he's going to leverage great talent, who in the old language are called 'freelancers'.
"But they're not defining themselves as that anymore. They're starting their own businesses and keeping those businesses small and running boutique shops, rather than trying to be a big agency.”
Beaumont’s not simply seeking help from freelancers, like a lot of independent agencies are, he says. He’ll be co-collaborating and co-creating with other businesses too.
“Those businesses and those operators will have the chance to build their own brand on a project and also be able to take credit for the work that they do with GAME. It's a number of businesses working side by side and collaborating on a client project," he says.
GAME’s model is designed for changing client demands, characterised by tight budgets, project-based work, an increasing prevalence of in-house capability, yet a critical need for high-quality, impactful creative ideas to build a competitive advantage for businesses.
While he plans on slowly building a business and a brand, for the time being there’s too much talent floating around to not utilise it, Beaumont says.
"That will be the model. It's very different to starting an agency."
Beaumont’s seen the shifts in market over his last 25 years in the industry, particularly since the COVID pandemic.
“What clients need from agencies has changed a lot. That's characterised by things like a lot more project by project work and no retainers, a hell of a lot of pitching – which is throwing free ideas at the wall, hoping that something sticks… which invariably, the odds are against you,” he says.
“In this economic climate when businesses are watching every penny and they're certainly trying to trying to control costs, marketing usually gets hit first reasonably hard.”
Beaumont, after joining The Royals from The Monkeys in 2014, has been working in his own business now for 10 years. He says times have changed in terms of headcounts.
“It's not how many people you've got or what your headcount is. People just don't want to be upfront and ask how much money you're making and if you're profitable. It should be about what kind of work you’re doing and if the business successful," Beaumont says.
That's how he's going to measure his own success with his bespoke model.
"Whether we're doing great work for clients, whether we're solving problems really creatively and if those clients are being successful. Because if they're successful, then I'll be successful, and GAME as a collective will be successful. I certainly won't be keeping an eye on headcount."
In the next 12 months, Beaumont would like to have three to four great pieces of work completed and in market, producing stronger brands for clients. That's going to be a key metric, he says.
"And making it good along the way. Making sure that people who work with GAME in any way, shape or form, are really satisfied with what they're producing; professionally and personally fulfilled."
The entire industry, including indies at the moment, is overall more competitive than Beaumont has ever experienced.
“The challenges for independents are probably the same as they are for the big holding companies, but the independents have got a lot more benefits built into their business model than the holdcos have for clients.
"That's if you're working with owner operators, who genuinely care about clients' business because their business relies on it. You get all of that with working with independents."
The challenge is, he says, that there’s a lot of stress that comes with running your own business - with winning it and, especially, losing it.
"Growing a business and building a brand is fun. It's really dynamic and there's lots of energy in it. Then you hit a certain point where that growth curve flattens, and that's when it starts to get harder because you've got to maintain and hold onto business to feed your agency."
"You’re running your own business without the support of a multinational network behind you, making a lot of sacrifices to make it work. There wouldn't be a business owner-operator in any category of the world that is immune to that. It’s part and parcel of owning your own business.”
There’s lots of opportunities at the moment for indies, he says. Beaumont’s noticing businesses are now moving among independent agencies, leaving one just to go to another.
"I've experienced being on pitch lists, shortlists, in the last few years, where you're only up against independent agencies. It seems to be very commonplace for clients now that they only want to talk to indies and agency owners. The standout agencies in this market right now...the majority of them would be independents."
GAME is a self-funded project by Beaumont for now, in which he intends to keep it like that for a little while.
"I've got a good network of people that I'm talking to regularly. I have unofficial mentors that I've been talking a lot to over the last few months about this, and I'm always open to advice and always open to feedback, which I will never stop seeking," he says.
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