Just what the world needs.
More agency.
Coming March 15
Let’s try something more original.
An open letter to busy business leaders.
The sales funnel has collapsed. The path through awareness, consideration, conversion and retention now happens within minutes. Yet marketing, sales and customer service are often miles apart while you’re trying to convince people in product that your customers are not your product and that everything is branding, even the transaction.
Meanwhile markets, culture and media are moving faster than the guy in procurement can reply to your reply-all. You’re wondering if AI is going to make the job easier for you or easier to replace you. And the lives of your customers have been sliced into micro-moments of attention that seem to last about 79-seconds, which happens to be the average length of a session on B2B eCommerce platforms like yours. That’s about how long you can hold your breath which sometimes you do until your watch reminds you to breathe. We’ve been there.
So now what?
Consider a new kind of agency, one in which you are the only client at any given time. One that helps your brand become the protagonist of its story and your business rewrite the tropes of its category. Now that would be giving your brand some agency.
How does that sound? We think it’s about time.
TLDR:
Creative solutions for big problems.
In record time. One client at a time.
We engage in many ways at four levels.
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Sparkler : five days
Typically a point of view, hot take, second opinion, short-form content, essay, speech, video script, product idea, etc. $10k
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Lantern : fortnight
Typical projects: messaging strategy, analysis, desk research, audit, white paper, naming, user experience, pitch decks, etc. $25k
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Lighthouse : four weeks
Typically campaigns, identity systems, product launches, event branding, fielding research, space design, short-form video, etc. $60k
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Solar : nine weeks
Typically combinations of multiple projects, product development, long-from video, book writing, etc. Can be booked in non-consecutive sprints at strategic times. $130k+
In the winter of 1963, the Mona Lisa visited America for the first time. The lines in New York City wrapped around the Met, down several blocks and deep into Central Park.
With just a few days to go, the organizers realized that at the current rate, thousands of people in line would not get see the Mona Lisa before she had to leave.
They took into account how much time was left, how many people were showing up each day. And from that point on, everyone was given 79 seconds with the painting.
Art and data. Problem solving, cultural salience, equity in access and the power of a story. These are all the elements at play at an original agency in Minneapolis.
That’s why it’s 79seconds.
New growth
A Model Problem
The influence of big lumbering agency networks was ironically shrinking. Their response was to get… bigger through mergers and acquisitions and killing off storied brands. RIP DDB. Creative talent migrated to clients and startups. The old model is broken, conflicts of interest are baked in.
Design firms are more relevant than ever. But they often move at the speed of a sloth taking it easy. Speed is the biggest difference maker in business today. So we made 79seconds independent and agile.
A New Focus
Perhaps the biggest difference is our one-thing-at-a-time method. Rather than juggling multiple deliverables for several clients—our teams can focus and make a lot of progress by working on one project for one client at a time. Don’t worry, we’ll fit you into the schedule.
Because of this focus, we don’t do speculative work in response to RFPs. Frankly, we believe it’s unfair to current paying clients when their agency turns their attention to someone new and works for free. You’ll thank us once you hire us.
A New Structure
Modular core teams depending on the project — strategist/writer, designer, producer, developer — rapidly prototype and scale up if needed. If the pandemic taught us anything, it showed us how vital in-person working relationships are. It also revealed the value of non-working time. So we made 79seconds operate in four-week sprints. We take every 5th week off in order to recharge.
A New Age
Everyone is throwing AI at everything. Off-the-shelf models are being white-labeled and marked up as proprietary magic for sale. We augment internal functions with AI in lots of ways. But for now, human insight and empathy are required. So we made 79seconds for people.
Our collective of experts
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Ross Phernetton
STRATEGY ORACLE & FOUNDER
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Coming Soon
MOTION WHIZ
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Coming Soon
USER EXPERIENCE SAGE
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Coming Soon
PRODUCTION SAVANT
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Coming Soon
DESIGN BEAST
Curious about working with us?
We’re always looking for trusted partners and talented people. Give us just enough to go on, and we’ll be in touch shortly.