The state of agency relationships is changing. Brands need to produce great ads for every ad platform and asset type—what resonates today may fall flat tomorrow, leaving you scrambling to keep up. This is why putting all your eggs in one basket by relying solely on a single creative partner can be risky.

Ad creative is too important and complex to count on just one partner. When you rely on a single creative partner, you become vulnerable to their limitations. If that partner encounters a setback your entire creative output grinds to a halt. Removing the single point of failure can help mitigate this risk.

To stay ahead of the curve, brands will need to embrace an open and collaborative approach to creative agency relationships. By working with multiple partners, you not only gain access to a diverse pool of ideas and expertise, you increase your creative output to a pace that is necessary to be successful on today’s most powerful advertising channels. Even brands like Dove are utilizing various agencies depending on their needs, keeping a primary agency of record, but also collaborating on projects with other agencies whose expertise augments their AOR. 

New tools, technologies, and creative approaches are emerging faster than ever. Take Open AI’s Sora for example, which generates videos up to a minute long from a text prompt. A creative team that is nimble and can adopt new partners could adopt a tool like Sora more quickly. By working with multiple creative partners, you can also integrate new partners and tactics into your program as they emerge, instead of falling behind. 

It’s important to strike the right balance with how many partners you work with. We’ve found that the sweet spot for creative partnerships is generally around 3-5 partners live at any given time. Working with too many can cause an overcorrection where you find yourself with more creative assets than can be reasonably tested on the ad level.

At Bamboo, our Creative Service enables our clients to work with multiple creative agencies simultaneously—all with central billing, project management, and strategy. Many disruptor advertisers are choosing this setup, as confirmed by Cameron Mills, Head of Digital Growth at Rocket Money: "Testing multiple creative partners is a necessity. Having multiple partners allows you to hedge your bets and always have winning creatives."

Gone are the days of A/B testing two slightly different cuts of a single video. Your advertising ROI now hinges on your ability to optimize your ad creative across a diverse range of advertising contexts.

Learn more about our Creative Service.

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