Many hands make longer work.
Why the smallest possible team is the best possible team.
Okay, here’s the thing: I have this theory based on some simple math and over two decades of observation of the creative process: The ideal team to do great work in the absolute shortest possible time is one person. As long as the one person is an art director, a writer and also the client all rolled into one human being. This almost never happens (see below) so let’s just say the next best ideal team is three people. Art director, copywriter, client.
The client provides the input, the creative people collaborate, sketch, write and share. There’s a short feedback loop. The work gets perfected. Done. It’s a nearly perfect system.
In theory. (I’m still working out the details. But so far, the theory is proving to be sound.)
Thing is, most clients need more. They want a media plan, or Google analytics, or a PR plan or some kind of social sharing strategy. And some clients want a “business person” (also known as an AE) on their business because they are not comfortable working directly with creative folks. This is why ad agencies exist. More people need to be involved. People with specialized expertise. Account people. Media. Production people. Developers. Strategists. Proofreaders. Administration.
Some clients just need the extra bodies on their accounts due to the size and shape of their needs. Some agencies are happy to bill them for that.
Larger clients are similarly structured. VPs of marketing have lieutenants. And in-house creative folks. And PR people. And bosses who need to see the work. And their bosses sometimes have bosses.
And, as you may have guessed, the more people you inject into the process beyond the ideal three, the more time you will need to get a project done. (I’m not saying this is good or bad, it’s just fact.)
Let’s do the math. Two top freelance creative people plus one client collaborating can bang out an amazing ad with 8 hours among them. Divided by three it comes to roughly 2.66 hours of work per person.
But for every additional person one adds to the process, you need to multiply their number times 2.66 hours and then times 1.7 — the extra .7 is a multiplier* that accounts for the back-and-forth in the process that occurs when you add more brains to a project. People with brains collaborate. Collaboration creates complexity. Complexity adds time. Meetings. Emails. Discussions. Disagreements. Shifts in focus. More people = more time.
* Sidebar: How did I arrive at this 0.7 multiplier? Good question. Part of it is gut. And part of it is some back-of-the-envelope calculations and reverse engineering of a few dozen different projects I’ve been involved in. Here’s one example: This spring, I created my own agency web site. One person acting as the client, the art director and the writer — I said it ALMOST never happens... And the process took five solid days. Now rewind to last year when I was part of a 10-person team that created a web site for my former agency which took a little over four months. There was one team member who served as client, a CD, copywriter, art director, UX person, two dev team members, a dev team lead, a project manager and an account person — or a team of 10 people. 10 x 5 = 50. Times 1.7 = 84 days or 17 weeks. Roughly 4.25 months. Bingo. Of course, we had a stellar account service person and the best project manager I’ve ever worked with, so for lesser teams the multiplier may be higher — 1.8 or 1.9 or 2.0 even. Not everyone works as efficiently. This is not an exact science. Just an example to back up my assertion that more people equals geometrically more time and expense.
Okay, back to our hypothetical ad project. If we were to double our hypothetical three-person team with a strategist, an AE and another client, a given ad project may then require three and a half solid days instead of one. [6 x 2.66 x 1.7 = 27.13 hours.] Which doesn’t sound so bad. But for huge holding-company-owned ad agencies with layers and layers of people in creative and account service and media and strategy (and 5 or six layers on the client side), the same ad can take weeks. [25 x 2.66 x 1.7 = 113.05 hours.]
More people. More meetings. More research. More input. More directions. More layers of approvals. More wheel spinning. More feedback. But still one ad.
And, as you can guess, the actual cost to create that ad by our two hypothetical freelancers is almost nothing compared to the cost of hiring a 20-person team (if we subtract the five people on the client side). [Two top freelancers for one day = $2,400. But 113 hours times the typical agency blended hourly rate of $140 equals $14,690.00 — for the same ad. The. Same. Ad.]
Again, this is all hypothetical. Albeit thought provoking. And it’s not a bad thing, especially if you are an ad agency whose business is built upon the idea of hourly billings and time sheets.
But here’s the kicker. When you ask agency people what their biggest pain points are when creating great work, they almost always complain that deadlines are too tight and budgets are too small.
Hmm. Maybe. Or maybe the teams are too large? Just saying.
Grant Sanders is the founder of SAND — Strategy Art Narrative Design. He used to work for an ad agency but now he does things differently. One might go so far as to say better. He lives and works on Nantucket Island 30 miles away from the rest of America and he really, really likes it that way.
