For 20 years, I worked on the agency, production company and brand side of marketing. I wrote and architected agency fee budgets and scopes for nearly every type of engagement. I reviewed more commercial production and post-production bids than I can count.
Those are documents most people outside the agency world never build or review. They look simple from the outside. They aren't.
Then I moved to the brand side, and the seat flipped.
The first agency estimate that crossed my desk as a client read differently than it would have for most people in that seat. Every line made sense to me. I could see which parts were fixed, which were padded, and where there was room to trim.
That wasn't a special talent. It was years of building those same documents from the other side. Most people in my client-side role hadn't done that, so they didn't have the same view. They saw a total. I saw how the total was built.
There are many ways to execute brand work, and the cost changes a lot depending on the approach. A few levers matter most.
Duration and rounds of review. Time is the biggest driver in any agency estimate. Every week of a scope carries a team's cost. Every round of review adds time. Cutting from four rounds to two, or tightening the timeline, often saves more than negotiating the rate.
The size of the strategy phase. Some brands genuinely need a six-month strategy engagement. Many would get what they need from a focused two- or three-week sprint. The question isn't which is better. It's which one the problem actually calls for.
Whether you need the full agency model at all. A long creative ideation phase with testing, run through an agency, is one way to work. Another is to assemble the pieces yourself: a strategist, a senior art and copy team, a testing partner and a production company. Neither is right for every project. But knowing the second option exists changes how you read the first one's price.
The list goes on. The point is that the price of brand work isn't fixed. It reflects choices, and most of those choices can be made deliberately.
The estimate is just where I noticed it first. The same gap between how work looks and how it actually gets made shows up across marketing organizations.
It shows up in how marketing teams are structured: whether work has a clear path from brief to delivery, or every project invents its own.
It shows up in how in-house teams get built: whether the infrastructure is in place before the headcount arrives.
It shows up in how AI gets adopted: whether the workflow actually changes, or just the tool.
And it shows up in how agencies get chosen and managed: whether the brand knows what it's buying and from whom.
After a year of thinking about what to do with 20 years on both sides of the table, the answer was Throughline, a consultancy built around one idea.
Organizations that understand how the work actually gets made run better, spend less, and produce work that makes an impact.
That's what I'll write about here every week: what things cost, how work moves, and what it looks like from both sides of the table.
Time is the biggest driver. The length of the engagement, the size of the team and the number of review rounds determine most of the fee. Shortening the timeline or reducing rounds of review often saves more than negotiating rates.
No. Some brands need a six-month strategy engagement, but many get what they need from a focused two- or three-week sprint. The right choice depends on how big and complex the problem is.
Yes. Some brands assemble the pieces themselves: a strategist, a senior creative team, a testing partner and a production company. It isn't right for every project, but it's a real option worth comparing against an agency estimate.
Throughline is a marketing operations consultancy for brands and agencies. It helps organizations understand how their marketing work actually gets made, including costs, workflows, in-house teams, AI adoption and agency relationships, so they can run better and spend less.