full-service agency
An agency that offers a wide range of marketing disciplines, from strategy and creative to media and production, under one roof.
Definition
A full-service agency aims to handle most of a client's marketing needs without outside partners. Services may include research, strategy, brand creative, digital, social, media planning and buying, production and sometimes public relations. The appeal is coordination: one team, one contract, a consistent message. The trade-off can be higher overhead, and not every discipline is equally strong, so clients should ask which services are done in-house and which are subcontracted. Size alone does not guarantee quality in each area. A useful test is to ask for a single example project that used four or more of the agency's disciplines and who led each one.
In a sentence
The full-service agency handled strategy, filming and media for the launch.
We asked which parts of the full-service offer were really subcontracted.
Common mix-up
Full-service does not mean best at everything. Ask who actually does each task.
