We’re called Horse’s Mouth because clients told us they increasingly couldn’t see the value in talking to their creatives and strategists through intermediaries.
We operate a near zero-cost model providing top talent at an unbeatable price – essentially a freelance day rate with a basic 15% mark-up.Take a look at our case studies to see how we’ve helped brands from a variety of sectors over the past couple of years.
It’s a model that not only meets the creative and strategic demands of your marketing department but also the value efficiency demands of your procurement people (not to mention the work/life balance demands of our talent).
So here we are; a premium group of senior planners, creatives, designers and directors writing and producing cut-through ideas helping your brands thrive and bloom - straight from the Horse’s Mouth.
Broken models and the demands of a post-covid gig economy
We understand that the demand for fluidity has presented a serious challenge for agencies to offer a flexible and adaptive model – especially when they’ve been built on legacy processes and multiple layers of stakeholders. In effect, the old agency model was struggling, even pre-pandemic, to shift from lengthy retainers to more flexible, project-based relationships.
It’s been well documented how the network agency model has been unable to flex fully to the demands of the new economy. Nothing’s changed. Whilst still carrying bricks and mortar overhead and after years of acquisitions, consolidating creative, media and marketing businesses, they’ve created behemoths that are constrained by a need to charge excessive monthly fees to meet increasing staff costs as well as growing shareholder and instuitional investor demands for margin – and new hybrid working models won’t affect that in the slightest.
Working with us
The best relationships thrive on transparency and our simple processes are designed to ensure your project is accurately scoped, costed and delivered on time and on budget.
Cost and transparency
There’ll be no monthly retainer unless we both agree that makes sense. Once we’ve agreed and documented the requirements with you, we’ll provide an estimate of costs for your approval. We operate a near zero cost model which means the estimate will be free of the normal 100% overhead plus margin mark-up that most network agencies insist on. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised since you only commit to what you commit to, and only pay for what you get – no job creation schemes to justify costs and no meetings about meetings about meetings.
Project Onboarding
This is easy. Simply get in touch or email us with a brief outline of your requirements.
One of our Lead Horses will be in touch immediately.
To thoroughly scope your project, we’ll meet with you for a ‘requirements’ capture session. The deliverable from that meeting will be a scope of work document, cost estimate/timing plan and a recommended talent team.
Managing the project
Once we’ve agreed the scope of work, we’ll begin. The nominated curators will project-manage and coordinate with you throughout the project lifecycle.
If any physical meetings are required then this will be factored into costs and will take place either at a location of your choice, an appropriate remote facility, or even at our vintage caravan in Sussex.
Technology
We’re completely agnostic when it comes to working with any client’s project management and comms tools. We’re all highly experienced engaging with a variety of client systems whether they’re SaaS or proprietary. If any additional training is required then we’ll scope this into the project at the outset.
In terms of our own technology we have a proprietary system that manages our distributed talent network in terms of HR, scheduling and payments.
The Management Team
Each of our Department Heads not only has a wealth of practitioner talent, but also many years of experience operating in an advisory capacity at a C-suite level. All understand the new commercial reality of digital disruption facing clients and agencies and all are committed to developing new ways of working that benefit both brands and talent.
