Working With Agencies vs Direct Clients

How the two relationships differ in briefing, approval and risk, and what a studio should change about its process for each.

A studio working through an agency and a studio working directly with a brand are doing different jobs, and treating them identically is why some projects run smoothly and others consume twice the expected effort. The differences are structural rather than personal, and adapting to them is a process decision.

Working through an agency, the studio is usually receiving a brief that has already been developed, sold and approved. The concept exists, the client has bought it, and the studio's job is execution. This is efficient: the strategic questions are settled, the deliverables are defined, and the agency handles the client relationship. The trade off is distance from the reasoning, which matters when a production constraint requires a creative decision.

The specific risk in agency work is the telephone effect. Feedback travels from the client to the agency to the studio, and it arrives interpreted rather than raw. A comment that originated as a concern about a claim becomes a request to change a shot, and the studio solves the wrong problem. The remedy is to ask, when feedback seems arbitrary, what the underlying concern was, and to ask it before implementing rather than after.

Approval chains in agency work are longer and should be planned for explicitly. The agency reviews internally, the client reviews, sometimes several client stakeholders review, and each layer adds latency. A schedule that assumes a single review round is optimistic; one that builds in the agency's own internal approval as a distinct step is accurate. Mirzaei et al. (2025) argue that project methodologies should be customised to the specific project, and the number of approval layers is exactly the kind of factor that should change the process.

Working directly with a brand, the studio typically receives a business problem rather than a concept, which is both an opportunity and a larger obligation. The strategic work has to be done, or the film will be well made and aimed at nothing. This is where a paid concept phase earns its place, and where a studio that can think as well as execute is worth more than one that only executes.

Direct relationships also carry the account management that an agency would otherwise absorb. Scheduling stakeholders, chasing assets, resolving internal disagreements, explaining why a request contradicts a decision made in week two. Studios that price direct work at agency execution rates discover this cost after signing, and it is substantial.

The commercial structures differ in ways that should be understood before quoting. Agency work is usually a defined scope at a defined price with the agency carrying the client relationship risk. Direct work carries higher margin and more exposure: the studio owns the outcome, the relationship and the blame. Sarasvuo et al. (2023) found that buyer perceptions of fit and attractiveness shape how corporate service offerings are evaluated in B2B contexts, and a studio's fit with a direct client is assessed across the whole engagement rather than only on the film.

Rights and credit deserve explicit attention in agency work because they default unfavourably. Who may show the finished film in a portfolio, under whose name, and with what description, should be agreed in the contract rather than assumed. A studio that produces a well known campaign and cannot reference it has lost most of the marketing value of the work.

The information a studio needs differs between the two. From an agency: the approved concept, the client's actual objection history, who the decision maker is on the client side, and what has already been ruled out. From a direct client: the business problem, the audience, the internal stakeholders, the approval process, and what happened with their last video. Asking for the second list from an agency is often unproductive; asking for the first list from a direct client produces blank looks.

The practical adaptation is to run a different process for each. Agency work: shorter briefing, tighter scope definition, explicit approval layer mapping, and a habit of tracing feedback to its origin. Direct work: a paid discovery phase, a named single approver, more account management time priced in, and a stated process for handling internal disagreement. Studios that run one process for both are over servicing the agency work and under servicing the direct work, which is the wrong way round on margin.

References

Mirzaei, M., Mabin, V. J., & Zwikael, O. (2025). Customising hybrid project management methodologies. Production Planning & Control, 36(9), 1188–1205. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537287.2024.2349231

Sarasvuo, S., Liljander, V., & Haahtela, K. (2023). Buyer perceptions of corporate brand extension attractiveness and fit in B2B services. Industrial Marketing Management, 115, 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2023.09.006