The birth of the Nano-agency and the great RTO mistake

There is a growing Nano-agency movement in the creative communications business.

Despite the best efforts of the leaders of the Holdco agency groups, a return to office policy will not encourage the next generation of communicators to produce their best work.

Prior to the start of the pandemic, I was asked by my good friend Ian Truscott to write an article about the future of marketing. I leaned into the task and decided to set it 60 years in the future.

Without any qualifications or verified sources, I anticipated a world in which nano-agencies thrived; where the home was a hub, a workshop and a living space. That the work/life divide was blended so perfectly that there was no clear delineation of working hours. We had agency in our professional lives; we worked while we enjoyed experiences, and we enjoyed experiences while we worked.

So I was incredibly energized when I read this article  “Independent, Not Invisible: Why Freelancers Deserve Centre Stage” by Maja Pawinska Sims on the Provokemedia website. It promoted the  Independent Impact 50 awards, recognizing the UK’s top freelance and independent PR and communications professionals.

If this topic interests you, I urge you to read it and promote it where you can because it’s an acknowledgement of a growing wave of workers – and for employers it lays out a framework for the future of growth.

The awards came at the same time, another of my most valued connections – futurist Tom Cheesewright - published details of a report he’d written for ITS Technology Group, called “Building the Super City”.

In it – and I quote it directly – it frames the case for employers needing to move beyond argument that “people need to collaborate in person” in order to enforce a full return to office rule:

“Now that the expectation of flexibility is set with so many workers, few will accept its restriction. And doing so is demonstrably bad for the economy and employees. Studies on hybrid work and four-day working weeks have shown higher performance, higher retention, and higher satisfaction.”

 I covered this very topic recently in a podcast with Tom Salmon, CEO of Agency by Agency, which has conducted the first ever unbiased research into the independent marketing communications agency sector (see main image). One of the many incredible revelations on the show was the fact that in the agency ecosystem, there are holdcos (big network agencies), there are medium-sized agencies (large independents), there are small agencies (boutiques) and there are now nano-agencies. These are agencies - mostly around 5 years old, born from the pandemic, usually run by one or two wiser old heads with a 20+ year track record in the agency world, who wanted to plow their own furrow.

It’s the fastest-growing element of the agency sector, whether advertising, design, public relations, branding or digital.

Two years ago, a guest of the podcast Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a future-of-work expert predicted this very thing, and because my own business has been operating remote/hybrid for 11 years, I can tell you - without doubt, that remote and hybrid work IS possible. You just need to move beyond the 1950’s 9-5:30 mindset.

And trust people.

Of course there’s a compromise, but in the second decade of the 21st century, business and the management of many companies has evolved – the UK proved that with its big Four Day Week experiment. However it also proved that not every business can operate with flexi and hybrid working practices. 

But show me a company in the communications and marketing sector that demands full-time return to office working hours, and I’ll show you a company that’s neck-deep in a sunk cost fallacy and failed to understand what GenZ and the people they manage need.