Traditional Agencies vs WithLore | Why Teams Are Leaving the Agency Model

The Limitation

Why the agency model fails creative teams

Agencies have existed forever. Some are genuinely great. But the traditional agency model has structural problems that hurt the work — especially for SaaS and tech companies that need to move fast:

The bait-and-switch. The pitch meeting has senior creatives. The actual work gets handed to juniors you've never met. This is the oldest trick in the agency playbook. The people who win your business are rarely the people doing your work.
Account managers are a buffer, not a bridge. You brief the account manager. They brief the creative team. Your feedback goes through them. Their interpretation goes back to you. Every layer of translation dilutes the creative intent. The people making your content never hear directly from you.
Timelines stretch endlessly. A project scoped for 4 weeks becomes 8. Then 12. Agencies pad timelines because their teams are spread across too many clients. Your project isn't their priority — their biggest account is. You're always waiting.
Creative by committee kills good ideas. Agency creative goes through internal reviews, client services, strategy teams, and legal before you even see it. By the time it reaches you, every bold idea has been sanded down to something safe and forgettable.
Project-based pricing that balloons. The SOW says $30K. Then there are revisions outside scope. New deliverables. Format changes. "Incremental" charges. By the end, you've spent $50K and you're not sure what happened. Agencies are structurally incentivized to expand scope.
No continuity between projects. Every new project means a new brief, a new kickoff, and often a new team. The agency doesn't build institutional knowledge about your brand. They re-learn you every time — and you pay for that learning curve.

Head to Head

Traditional Agency vs WithLore — honest comparison

	Traditional Agency	WithLore
Pricing Model	Project-based, SOWs that balloon ($20K-$100K+ per project)	Monthly retainer from $2K/mo. Predictable. No surprises.
Timeline	6-12 weeks per project (often longer)	First deliverables in days, not months
Team Access	Account manager buffer — no direct access to creatives	Direct Slack access to the team making your work
Who Does the Work	Juniors execute, seniors pitch	Small senior team — same people pitch and produce
Creative Ownership	Committee-driven, safe, forgettable	Creative director-led, opinionated, story-driven
Iteration Speed	Revisions take days, cost extra	Unlimited revisions, same-day turnarounds
Style Range	Usually one house style	3D, motion graphics, AI cinematic, character animation
Brand Continuity	Resets with every new project	Ongoing relationship, compounding brand knowledge
Strategic Input	Comes at a premium (strategy retainer)	Built into every engagement
Scalability	New SOW for every additional deliverable	Scale up or down month to month

Honest take: when an agency IS the right call

If you're running a massive integrated campaign across TV, digital, OOH, and social — with live-action shoots, celebrity talent, and media buying — a full-service agency with those capabilities is what you need. Agencies with deep media relationships and production infrastructure for large-scale shoots can do things a studio can't.

But if you need ongoing video content, fast creative iteration, and direct access to the people making your work — the agency model is a bad fit. You're paying for overhead (offices, account teams, new business departments) that doesn't improve your creative. WithLore gives you a senior creative team with none of the agency bloat.

See the Difference

What a studio produces — without the agency overhead

No account manager middlemen. No creative-by-committee. Just a small, senior team making work that actually performs.

Solstice Finance

2M+ Views

Redacted Coin

1.4M Views

Artefact

Brand Campaign

FAQ

Agency vs studio — common questions

No. Agencies sell process and overhead. We sell creative output. There's no account manager between you and the team. No internal approval chain before you see concepts. No billable hours padding. WithLore is a studio — a small, senior team that makes things. You talk directly to the people doing the work, and the work starts immediately.

Depends on what you mean. If you need 50 localized TV spots across 12 markets, you need an agency with that infrastructure. If you need consistent, high-quality video content for your SaaS product — launches, ads, social, product demos — we produce more usable content per dollar than most agencies, because we don't have the overhead they do. Our AI-accelerated pipeline means faster output without sacrificing quality.

Agencies scope each project individually, which means every new video is a new negotiation, a new SOW, and often a surprise on the final invoice. Our retainer gives you a predictable monthly cost with dedicated capacity. Content Engine starts at $2K/mo, Creative Studio at $6K/mo. You get ongoing production, strategy, and revisions — no scope creep, no incremental charges.

Run us in parallel. Many of our clients start by testing WithLore alongside their existing agency relationship. Once they see the difference in speed, directness, and output quality per dollar, the decision usually makes itself. We don't require long-term contracts — start month to month and see what happens.

Both. Agencies often charge separately for strategy (sometimes a $10K+ strategy retainer before production even starts). At WithLore, creative strategy is part of how we work. We develop concepts, not just execute briefs. We'll tell you what to make, why, and in what order — because we've seen what works across dozens of SaaS and tech brands.

The traditional agency model is broken. Here's the alternative.

Why the agency model fails creative teams

Traditional Agency vs WithLore — honest comparison

What a studio produces — without the agency overhead

Agency vs studio — common questions

Skip the pitch deck. See the work.