A NEW TYPE OF AGENCY THAT GIVES CLIENTS WHAT THEY VALUE MOST - GREAT IDEAS - WITHOUT ANY OF THE UNNECESSARY (AND COSTLY) EXTRAS.
None of the nonsense. More of what matters
None of the nonsense
More of what matters
Most brands have outgrown the traditional creative agency model (you know, the one where the agency insists on making all the ideas they come up with). They have their own in-house teams and specialist agencies, or are working with social creators and AI tools.
Unsurprisingly many are asking why the agency model hasn’t caught up.
How we work
A core senior team delivering channel agnostic ideas.
Ongoing strategic and creative leadership.
A flexible approach to production that’s faster and more cost effective because we plug in around the client’s needs to make the ideas happen.
Catbird Seat founders, Larissa Vince and Andy Jex.
Between us, we’ve run and worked at some of the best creative agencies around - TBWA, Saatchi & Saatchi, Fallon, Mother - and created successful work for some of the world’s best brands.
It’s given us a clear view of what the old model got right. And a clearer view of what to leave behind. Now we’ve built the agency we always wished we worked for.
Who we’ve worked with
How it works for clients
Senior people. Doing the strategy, doing the ideas, doing the actual work.
Which means a sharper read on the problem, a clearer view of what to do about it and better judgement on the way.
The process is built to be quick. Fixed timelines. No layers. No handoffs. No waste. No time wasting. We use the tech that helps and avoid the tech that exists to show off on a slide.
The model is designed to get to properly integrated work. Because we don’t make our money from making all our ideas ourselves, we’re built to play nice with others. If we are the best people to make a piece of work for you, brilliant - that’s what we’ll do. But if the best people are at your specialist agency, your in-house team, or your AI production setup, equally brilliant - we'll plug our thinking into their talent instead.
*No need to pick two
Better, because our talent has more experience.
Faster, because the process is fixed and we're as motivated to get there as you are.
Cheaper, because we don't have a junior army to feed or a production margin to defend.
Questions we've heard so often we've made a page for them
-
Essentially, we’ve removed the waste. Traditional agency structures have big, fixed teams that move like a flock of birds. Everyone in every meeting, even when they don’t need to be. That wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t paying for their time. We only offer you what you need, when you need it. We’ve also streamlined processes and brought in new technology where it’s most useful.
-
We asked 30 of them ourselves, and we’ve had access to research that asked hundreds. The answer was unanimous - senior partnership and quality of talent delivering breakthrough strategy and ideas that shift business fortunes. Everything else - not so much.
-
There are a few new agencies starting to emerge with different models - and we’re excited about that, because the industry desperately needs change. Unfortunately though, most agencies are still chasing scale - networks need it for their global bosses, independents need it because they want to sell. Ours is not a scalable model. We need to stay small to offer this level of service. That’s why we’ve committed to never selling the agency and to capping the number of clients we work with.
-
We don’t do full creative pitches - our model means that we offer faster work, better talent, and charge considerably less than a traditional agency, so we don’t find that we need to. Instead, we love meetings designed to work out chemistry, or workshops that provide insight on how we think and work.
-
We offer on tap senior resource via an annual partnership subscription, which starts at £30k per year. We then charge project costs based on the individual client need. We don’t charge by the hour - it actively incentivises agencies to take their time, to resource the work with more people than they actually need, and to rework work that doesn’t need to be reworked.
-
AI makes us quicker - it gets us to the “best practice” answer in a matter of seconds. What we add is the human breakthrough that elevates your brand beyond what everyone else is doing (which is what AI alone will give you).