These days, I’m fortunate enough to work with a ton of great creative agencies. Turnstyle Studios, Don’t Blink Media, Angelvision, and PanBuilt are four that immediately come to the top of my mind. 

It’s a world with more start-ups, where more companies (and the VC’s that fund them) are demanding more work for less money from a talented team that isn’t part of the "big agency" experience.  In a world of thousands of agencies, the question is, how does one small agency stand out?

Well, the answer is to create compelling materials that market yourself.  And that doesn’t mean one-sheeters and direct mail pieces anymore. 

Brisbane Creative launched a funny site last week called Useless Account, in which they mock start-ups around the globe.  I found it through TechCrunch, and it’s likely Brisbane sent a link to Michael Arrington.  From a revenue perspective, they gain nothing.  In fact, the server capacity may even be an expense. 

But now you know who they are.  When you are in a meeting, you may say something like, "We need an agency as creative as Brisbane."  This is a long post to say that this we’re all trying to figure out what the "new" forms of marketing will be in the net 5 years.  But the creative agencies really should be the ones driving that.  They’ll come up with genius guerilla tactics, we’ll notice them, hire them, and we’ll want the same type of genius when we start cutting them checks.

Update: Turns out Brisbane Creative is actually a University student in Australia named Jim Whimpey.  His blog details the story of Useless Account, and pretty much makes everything I said, well useless.  He wasn’t trying to create buzz for his agency in the way I imagined, but it certainly worked out that way.