Agencies have always been a place where professionals in the various marketing and advertising specialties can come together to work as a collective in the best interest of their clients.

Thing is, this ain’t the 20th century anymore and these fields have expanded to encompass a whole lot more than accounts, creative, media buying, research, production & traffic.

We all throw around the term “full service” to describe the breadth and depth of our offerings. But, can you really claim to be “full service” if you can’t offer web, graphic design, animation, tracking, analytics, coding, integration and the host of other technical services your clients are going to need?

If you can’t do it all in-house, you have 3 basic options: hire additional employees, hire a freelancer or contract with another business or agency.

You could individually hire all the folks you need but technical specialists don’t come cheap and there aren’t lots of us in Hawaii. The higher your retainers go, the more you’ll be locked into the classic agency dance, trying to land the whales. Or, you could control costs by farming it out to the independents. That introduces the problem of managing a detached team and trying to provide your client with a cohesive product. Partnering with a mainland company can be tricky. They just don’t get Hawaii and won’t believe you when you tell them “it’s different out here”.