Agency - Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing

As ideas go, starting an advertising agency is awfully alluring.

Having done it, I can tell you it is also provides all of the emotions worth having in life--typically when you least need or expect them, and then, at full throttle.

You should go and do it anyway.

But read Rick Webb's new book, first.

Agency - Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing will become the vade mecum of agencies constructed now and over the next few decades.

"At traditional agencies, we are taking our conventional army up against the insurgents and guerrillas of the Web, and they are better organized for effectiveness than we are."

Rick's candor and insights guide you through the unforgiving realities of operating, creating, pitching, growing and shipping great work today. He doesn't loll in vague management philosophies--this book gets to the useful facts, rooted in his own success and failure. Rick goes deep on pricing, billing, process, client management, culture, legal, hiring/firing, cash flow, selling work, selling your firm and the list goes on, with humor and keen observation. He's managed to translate the sum total of a modern agency into an enjoyable primer. The aspects of running an agency I found least engaging, Rick illuminates.

It's a worthy read even if you have no desire to hang your own shingle. What Rick has done here, is capture the crux of today's agency, making the chaos of who and what we are accessible. With luck, his work will help many of us improve our agencies now and into the future.