Here’s a brutal truth no big agency will ever say out loud:

They don’t really sell outcomes. They activate bodies.

Once you scale past a certain size, your number one business problem becomes utilization.

I’ve been there, and it’s undeniable.

You’ve got payroll to feed, office leases to cover, and growth targets to hit.

So, you stop asking “What does the client truly need?” and begin asking “Which team can we slot in? What skillset do we need to sell more of? How will we get this greasy one done and billed out?”

And that’s how great products often die.

By being handed off to people who don’t understand them, don’t care enough, or are just trying to move tickets so they can hit this month’s billable hours.

The big agency playbook is numbingly predictable: assign a senior strategist to win the business, then hand execution to junior team members who may have never launched a product, never felt the pressure of a failed launch, and treat your project as a stepping stone to something more lucrative.

Your revolutionary product becomes another case study in their portfolio, executed by people who see it as work rather than a passion-driven mission.

At Graphos Product, we stay deliberately small and nimble.

It’s not that we lack ambition. We work our freaking tails off, again and again.

It IS because we won’t pretend that deep thinking and sincere client care are scalable through headcount. They’re not.

Our team consists of experts who’ve been in the game for decades.

No layers of fluff. No junior proxies managing your account while seniors peace-out to land bigger fish.

Just a smart, highly efficient crew that lives and breathes product strategy and gives a damn about whether your product makes it or not.

In I Need That, I dig into how the best products emerge from passionate, focused teams rather than bureaucratic processes optimized for agency profitability.

When your success becomes someone else’s utilization problem, innovation dies in committees and gets executed by people who don’t understand what makes products really work.

Product Payoff: I admire how Wieden+Kennedy has deliberately maintained boutique scale for over 40 years, turning down growth opportunities that would compromise their hands-on approach. While competitors built massive holding company structures, W+K kept founding partners directly involved in major accounts like Nike and Old Spice.

This focus on expert involvement rather than scalable processes has generated some of advertising’s most effective campaigns because senior strategists remain personally invested in each client’s success rather than managing utilization spreadsheets.

Action for today: Evaluate whether your current partners are optimized for your success or their utilization. Ask who will actually be doing the work, how long they’ve been with the company, and what other projects will compete for their attention.

The strongest partnerships happen when your success directly impacts the pros doing the work, not only the ones presenting the results.

You deserve experts who deeply care if your product succeeds or fails.

You absolutely don’t need to hire my team to win — but you DO need to protect yourself from bloated processes and shallow or self-centered thinking.

Demand clarity about who’s really doing the work.

Look for people who lose sleep over your product, not ones chasing awards or billable hour targets.

Don’t settle for anything less than people who treat your product’s success as their own.

How do YOU evaluate whether an agency partner truly cares about your outcomes versus their internal metrics?

Tap that reply arrow and share your experience distinguishing between genuine expertise and scalable mediocrity.

I’d love to spend a moment in your head.

Or reach out to my team of caring and dedicated product specialists at Graphos Product.