7 niche agency freelance models and specialties

More and more agencies are electing to work with a cadre of freelancers to service clients—a model that facilitates off-the-shelf pricing, quick sprints and more. These shops—including Selected Works, Not For Hire, Beers with Friends and The Room Service—often have their own niche, deploying both traditional creatives and those from outside adland, such as musicians, comedy writers, sculptors and others. More: Ad agencies are opening rapidly Below, seven ways agencies are working with freelancers to offer a wide variety of services to brands. Agency Review Tracker Stay up to date with the latest account reviews Click here Speed with sprints Several agencies, including Fortnight Collective, X&O and Beers With Friends, are pulling from a pool of freelancers to support clients with fast-turn ideas for a fixed fee, often known as sprints.Read more: Agency sprint models and how they work X&O’s experts, who are kept anonymous, deliver ideas as quickly as one week or as long as eight weeks. The company, founded by former agency execs Eric Segal and Brett Banker, focuses more on solving business problems than executing ads. Once the idea is sold, the client owns it, and it is typically passed on to another agency to execute. For example, X&O supported the creative strategy for a Minute Maid campaign starring Jon Hamm that launched in March. WPP’s bespoke Coca-Cola team, Open X, created the campaign. Gen Z expertise Focusing on specific generations has become an increasingly popular niche for new shops. Carson+Doyle, which launched in 2017, has seven employees and a network of 15 freelancers—all of whom are Gen Z (the eldest members of that generation turn 27 in 2024). The agency’s freelance pool is mainly creatives with skillsets ranging from graphic design to copywriting to art direction. Carson+Doyle also works with freelance producers and directors. It typically taps its freelance network at the beginning of a pitch process for current and prospective clients, said Charlie Naus, the agency’s co-founder and managing director. “Once [the freelancers] are briefed, we will usually build an internal project plan to give them visibility into how they are involved in the larger process and an idea of the expected workload, and then once we’re aligned on rates, we kick off,” Naus said. “We like to treat freelancers like they are a part of the full-time team culture by inviting them to internal meetings, hangouts, etc.” Carson+Doyle recently helped Spotify debut its AI-powered DJ, which builds personalized playlists for users. In another example, creative shop SuperHeroes in May 2023 created The Robins, a group of more than 80 freelance Gen Z influencers, students and young professionals, which it taps for insights and strategy. Investing while creating Selected Works is a hybrid ad agency and investment company recently founded by Jonathan Vingiano, a former creative director at R/GA and Barton F. Graf. The agency is composed mainly of 100 freelancers who can invest in startups they are able to work on as well. Both freelancers and full-time employees interested in investing can join Selected Works. Vingiano estimated that about 70% of creatives in the network are pure freelancers; the remaining 30% are employed at traditional ad agencies and participate in Selected Works on the side. Vingiano said he works with freelancers as if they are “vendors” not “temporary employees,” which he believes is an important distinction. “Holding companies have started treating freelancers as if they are temporary W2 employees and this has shifted the perception of freelancers in the market,” Vingiano said. “The best creatives are career freelancers who work as if they are mini-agencies. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but I am in massive support of not forcing freelancers to adopt a temporary employee status.” Read more about Selected Works’ model Hollywood know-how Some agencies are using freelance talent to put a Hollywood spin on brands’ creative. The Room Service works with roughly 30 comedy writers from some of TV’s top shows—from recent hits like “Ted Lasso” to classics such as “The Simpsons.” More: The Room Service emerged from the writers’ strike Led by Rob Hirst Hermans, a former creative at Forsman & Bodenfors and KBS, The Room Service creates a “writers’ room” for brands based on the brief. These are typically composed of two to six writers, including what the agency describes as joke machines (think “Late Night” writers) and story writers (think “Modern Family” writers). It also offers collaboration sessions, dubbed “punch-up rooms,” in which a team of TV writers sits with agency creative teams to add a Hollywood perspective to ongoing ad projects. The Room Service’s first brief was the launch of Paris Hilton’s self-tanning line with Tan-Luxe. The agency created a brand film for the airbrush self-tanning mist called The Future. While many agencies have recently invested further in entertainment, others such as Panay Films have long worked with full-time and freelance Hollywood creatives. Atlanta-based agency Dagger frequently uses Hollywood talent as freelancers, including some who moonlight at the agency while maintaining their full-time work at entertainment companies, Al Patton, Dagger’s chief creative officer, said. Non-traditional creatives Multiple shops are looking beyond the realm of advertising to bring a fresh creative perspective to brands. Not For Hire, which bills itself as a creative collective, is composed of artists, photographers, fashion designers, gallerists, musicians, comedy writers, sculptors and more. The collective, part of global creative studio Stink Studios, is designed to help brands create, develop and execute creative. In August 2023, SuperHeroes, which also operates Gen Z specialist The Robins (above) launched Jimmy, a 20-person digital street art studio that operates on a freelance/contract basis. Jimmy artist @shutterauthority recently helped Netflix promote the fourth and final season of “The Umbrella Academy.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Umbrella Academy (@umbrellaacad) Similarly, creative agency Palette Group has a freelance collective of designers, art directors and creatives. Curated and crowdsourced Some are using networks of freelancers to compete against agencies. In May, We Are Rosie, a company that connects independent and freelance marketing experts with brands, established Run by Rosie. For a flat fee, Run by Rosie pulls from We Are Rosie’s network of more than 30,000 people to create a dedicated team for the client’s brief. Creator platform Tongal operates relatively similarly—allowing its members to pitch for open projects for brands. Nearly 100 Tongal creators worked on “Piece by Piece,” an upcoming biopic about musician-producer Pharrell Williams’ life told in Lego animation. Freelance pools Many new shops are using pools of freelancers to service clients. Murder Hornet, an eight-person agency launched in 2023 by veteran advertising creative leader Noel Cottrell, works with 30 freelancers—a group it calls the “Swarm.” Some Swarm members are fast-fix freelancers, but most are on retainers of up to four months. Murder Hornet’s agency of record clients can change their Swarm twice per year. In February, Murder Hornet helped Zoom introduce an animated character, “The Gruntle,” to market Zoom Contact Center.

7 niche agency freelance models and specialties

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