Working at an Advertising Agency or a Boutique Shop - which option is better?

• Posted: March 18, 2008
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• Author: Chris Murphy
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• Filed under: Design, Developement, Grrr
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• Tags: Agencies, Creative, Design, Development, Internships, Work Experience

It's internship season again and the queries are starting to flow in greater numbers. One of the most frequently asked questions I hear from students is, "am I better off working at an ad agency or a boutique shop?" This is usually followed up by, "is one better than the other?"

With all the stiff competition for limited placements in agencies, it’s not difficult to understand the concern over wanting to work for the best and at the best creative agency. To confuse students further, they now have much more to choose from in terms of creative agencies — so much so that it is more difficult to draw a clear distinction between a traditional ad agency and a boutique shop when it comes to web.

The creative industry has seen an incredible upsurge in companies adding “interactive” to their service offering, and along with that we have a number of other vendor companies which bill themselves as agencies with similar services.

If you are a student, you may want to consider that the idea of “working for the best” is more of a matter of determining where you can best hone your craft — in this case, web design or development.

Is there a difference?

Yes. But let’s take a step back for a moment and take a look at the question holistically.

The creative industry is comprised of many players, but you can draw a clean line right down the middle — I can say this because I’ve been on both side of that industry line.

The players fall into two distinct categories: the traditional Advertising Agency, and the Boutique Shops (vendors).

In the past, it was possible to make a distinction based on their portfolios, but given the current state of the creative industry, we need to consider what makes an ad agency versus what makes a boutique shop.

For the most part, ad agencies have a much broader service offering than a boutique shop. A traditional ad agency will typically offer their clients such services as: branding, messaging, conceptualization, and design. These types of agencies bill themselves as a “full service” agency as most of them include additional services like “media buying”. A full service agency also has the added benefit of several organization layers — management specifically designed to handle a large volume of projects.

The service offering of a Boutique Shop is considerably less. In most cases, a Boutique Shop will offer only a fraction of the services which an ad agency supports. The services are typically design, development, broadcast, post-production, etc. Companies like this have chosen to specialize in one field or another and offer their specializations to larger companies who outsource to them. A Boutique Shop does not [always] have the organizational layers to handle volume.

When it comes to Interactive Services such as web design and development — this includes flash, application programming, etc, — ad agencies typically rely on outsource partners to provide that specialization.

At this point I can already see the emails coming in to argue this particular point, but let me say this much: ad agencies can often provide “Interactive Services” through internal web-teams, but most of them do not. This as more to do with their particular focus in the industry (traditional media, print, etc).

Why the distinction?

The distinction has less to do with size than it does with capabilities. More specifically, it’s about the creative.

Advertising agencies want to own the creative on every level. Quality is obviously important, but the execution is not something they want to concern themselves with most times. The capabilities of an advertising agency are quite considerable, but again, this all relies upon their outsourcing relationships — printers, media, etc. An ad agency relies on the specializations of a vendor to help them execute a concept.

Boutique shops typically do not have the capability to execute a fully integrated campaign on a national level let alone a global scale. That is not to say that they can’t leverage serious partnerships to allow them to do that, but even then the campaigns are limited in scope — mostly online with limited if any offline components.

Interactive boutique shops know this. Quite honestly, most of them appear to be quite happy with this distinction. There are certain financial and client-related constraints which boutique shops do not have to worry about simply because they typically will not encounter them. On the flip side, you get the few who attempt to bill themselves as a full service “agency”. Well, nobody is being fooled, least of all the client (if they’re smart).

Don’t get me wrong — a boutique shop can be creative and have great ideas. Sometimes those ideas resonate so strongly that they propagate into a campaign idea or platform, which may or may not turn into a national or global campaign. But you get the idea.

Suffice it to say that what a boutique shop does is execute on components of a campaign. A boutique shop can do this quickly where ad agencies with internal web development teams might take longer — specializations remember?

Which is better?

Neither is better … or worse.

Ad agencies offer tremendous opportunity for creative development, where as a boutique shop might offer better opportunity for technical development. For students, an internship is an opportunity to challenge the way you think and work, and ultimately what you’ve learned. If you are a student, you may want to consider the company which offers you the best experience in terms of professional growth and opportunity, and not necessarily what looks best on a resume.

When it comes to interactive — web design and development — I strongly suggest interning with a creative company which will challenge the skills and theories you’ve learned in school. The work you may encounter as an intern is a direct reflection of the capabilities of a creative company (ad agency or boutique shop), so make the determination based on what you might end up working on, and what you can walk away with.

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