Announcing My Teamlance

The Un-Agency Model of Delivering Marketing and Advertising Services

Brian Clark calls it the “teamlance” model.

As with just about everything in life, the old model is being democratized and decentralized in the world of marketing and advertising. While the big-agency model is still the right fit for many, others are discovering a new way of client service that offers the best of all possible worlds: experience, bandwidth, resources, flexibility and affordability.

Today we are announcing that we have entered into an informal (and even undocumented) partnership of the teamlance model with a long-time collaborator, Curtis Hays and his team at Collideascope. Meet the rest of the team here.

Look Through the Collideascope

Collideascope is a vast network of best-in-class resources that collaborate to augment in-house and agency marketing teams, as well as direct service to clients themselves. Working in concert with your internal resources, the Collideascope partnership of experienced specialists provides marketing teams with an A-Team of lead-gen support…as well as a deep bench.

Members of the Collideascope collective have been collaborating with each other for decades, building a keen understanding of each other’s strengths and assets. As affiliated but distinct entities, our team is able to scale up or down to meet any challenge, from supporting big brands with big ambitions to plugging in quickly to small, discrete projects as needed.

With virtually unlimited skill sets and resources at our disposal, the teamlance model has the ability to provide any possible area of discipline in the service of lead generation and brand building. The model delivers highly seasoned expertise and best-in-class capabilities — without the big-agency bloat, overhead and bureaucracy.

As a writer, I may not be the best coder in the world. But I know of someone who is. And he’s only a text message away. This allows me and my agency to focus on what we feel we truly do best while remaining “full-service” for those types of businesses that have multiple needs demanding specialized skill sets.

It’s the benefit of hiring a generalist that can do it all with the precision and deep expertise of a highly specialized tradesperson.

Don’t get me wrong. The agency model is not broken, necessarily. Boutiques and mid-sized agencies are still a great fit for a great many clients. As is the large mega-firm, for the large, mega brands. But for others, teamlancing offers a little of everything for those looking for a little of everything.

And there’s another reason to think of this in terms of Hollywood. Independent contractors are the norm in film and television production, even though teams often work together on project after project. Brands can turn to teamlancing to maximize the flexibility of their operations with self-managing creative resources that are specialized, right-sized, and timed to their changing needs, whether project-based or for the long term.

– Brian Clark