Little Big Engine

To the small and scrappy shops popping up everywhere— WELCOME to the show! Here's some unsolicited advice: (Feel free to ignore.) In our experience, people who leave big agencies to start smaller versions of those same agencies, will quickly face the same problems kicking their old agency in the teeth. It's not about just being small. Or scrappy. It's about evolving how you do everything. It's about making work that actually works. And can be tracked and proven to work. The companies we've worked with don't want a smaller WK. Or a cheaper BBDO. They don't care about shiny pencils or lions. And they're sick of being pitched by an executive team then passed down to newly promoted CDs and junior creatives to manage their business. CMOs hate paying agency markups on markups on markups—just to produce a single film they have to force through their media plan. When they really need 5 spots that do different things abut align with their brand and budget. CMOs don't want to pay for a whole agency, they just want access to a team of seasoned pros who can plug in, fill gaps in their team and work along side them to create ideas that'll deliver the results they're being held accountable for. This is why Little Big Engine exists. We are project based. We own the entire process from concept through production. We plug in and play nice. You work with the leadership at all times. This is how we can deliver so much MORE than other agencies for the SAME budget. (Often times for less budget.) This is how we've created everything for last six years. And it's just now starting to catch on. So for everyone opening up shop, remember, it's not about being small and scrappy, it's about evolving how you do everything in order to meet the demands that modern clients are facing. #SmallAgency #Creativemarketing #Advertising #Scrappy #Branding #Marketing #CMO

Quiet on set! New work coming sooooooooon! #B2B #funnyFTW

So happy to announce that this year's winner of our paid tuition to The Audacious School of Astonishing Pursuits Creative Mega Machine for young POC and women creatives is... **Drum Roll** Kelsey Williams!!!!!!! She joins the awesome Nikhil Rajagopalan and Alyssa Roundy Phillips as the newest creative we're sponsoring and hoping will kick butt and lead our industry into the future. Kelsey is a super hungry young copywriter working in the business and trying to take her work and career to next level. Hopefully this small contribution will help you get there! When Kelsey's done, you'll want to hire her, but too bad. She's taken by Highdive. Which I'm sure will want to hold on to her now that she's getting mentored by the awesome Jason Bagley and his amazing leaders associated with his program. Massive congrats Kelsey! The notes we got from our other grads make us so grateful to be able to help. This is better than any award you could ever offer us. #Stayhungrymyfriends

Ridge came to us and asked if we could help with a promotional video for their big sweeptakes. When we found out it'd include take a Hennessy Velociraptor and 24 Karat gold plated cyber truck in the dessert and spin donuts, we said, "We're in." The idea was to shine a light on the challenging relationship between creatives coming up with ideas and the finance team that has to approve the budget for the ideas. Hence, "Creative VS Finance" was born. Congrats to Connor MacDonald and his amazing team at Ridge for letting us play. Hopefully there's more to come! Oh, and you should definitely enter to win. These care are insane. #Stayhungrymyfriends

We can finally share some of the work we made this year with Get Biofuel. Thanks ADWEEK for the love!

Once Again, we're giving back to the creative community we love so dearly and offering our annual scholarship to attend Jason Bagley's course The Creative Megamachine at the The Audacious School of Astonishing Pursuits—paid for by Little Big Engine. Our scholarship this is for female or POC creatives. Congrats again to Nikhil Rajagopalan who won it last year! Our hopes is that by paying for this course, we're giving a historically overlooked group a chance to grow their skills and become the next generation of leaders in advertising. Here's how it works! For You: Visit LittleBigEngine.com and contact us via email. For someone you know: Tag them below. To get awareness for someone you don't know who needs a little help, like or share this post. We will announce the winner by July 31st! #stayhungrymyfriends

You won 25 Gold Lions at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity?! Cool. We gotta shoot a 24KT gold plated Cyber Truck. Stills from our last shoot. Can't wait to get this out there.

Remember when advertising was fun? We do. And James Bradley along with the brilliant team of designers and animators at Skyscanner under the direction of Andre Le Masurier and Remco Graham backed by the amazing writer Fiona Cain and producer James Rose is the absolute dream team to make advertising FUN! Thanks for the shout out!

For agencies struggling to stay profitable because of shrinking budgets and clients wanting to move from retainer to project: Clients don't want what you're selling. (Some do, but the new ones don't.) Advertising used to be all about awareness. You'd show how ideas could live on TV, OOH, and "Digital." But with so many content options— consumers don't care about your 90 second, multi-million dollar brand film. They don't want to watch it and and they don't have to. So really, you're making these big budget brand films for AdAge. Or awards. Or you're making them with the hopes of attracting the shrinking number of clients that still invest in big budget brand creative. You're pushing to make this work because it makes you money, not because it'll make them money or help them look good when it comes time for them to answer to their boss/board. To really be the creative partner they're looking for, you have to change how you concept, present and produce creative. Clients don't need to see every single execution we can think of to show how our idea can "come to life." "This is what it looks like as a wild posting!" Or, "This is a your single 60-second TVC we can cut down to 1-30, 1-15 and 1-06sec pre-roll for your ENTIRE media buy." This is what our industry is struggling letting go of. Because this is what their billing model is based on to stay profitable. And I'm sorry to say it, this is the old way of doing advertising. This new generation of CMOs and SVPs of Brand or Marketing need to see how your idea can scale vertically. They want ideas that can work from top funnel awareness through mid funnel loyalty and low funnel conversion. They need multiple films doing different things so they can test and see if it works to justify further investment. This doesn't mean they don't value your creativity, it means they need to see how it fits with what they're trying to do to hit their business goals. And if you can't plug in and help them hit their numbers, they're willing to sacrifice your creativity to someone who can. They're willing to sacrifice expensive shoots with famous directors and expensive production companies—if it means they get more content for their investment. This new crop of clients don't care about Lions or Pencils, they care about scalability, accountability and data. But here's the catch, you can still be creative! You can still make award-winning work. (We are.) You just need to pivot your thinking from big disruptive brand awareness ideas to ideas that are just as disruptive but can fly at different altitudes of your client's marketing funnel. Bottom Line: Clients NEED AND WANT ideas that can build brand without sacrificing performance. You can't keep ignoring or resisting data & performance, hoping you can convince clients to keep investing in 100% in brand awareness. The speed at which you can pivot to embrace this new reality will determine how long you keep struggling financially. Thoughts?

Something's a brewin' in the shop. Can't wait to show you all what we've been up to.