merit
2021
NYC/PDX
Brand & Creative
3
Weirdo
The traditional agency model encourages defensiveness - a zero-sum game that incentivizes hoarding control at the price of results and relationships. As an indie agency territorial celebrates the freedom to collaborate. Our process is exploratory, designed to unleash our clients as our secret weapon and bring in like-minded partner teams with complimentary skill sets. A territorial project is not just more satisfying but also more successful because it's a journey we go on together.
Early in the formation of territorial we really struggled with how to create and share thought leadership. But instead of delegating to someone else or bringing in a bot, we asked ourselves what we love most about our work. Our podcast, Strange Coordinates, uses brands as roadmaps to discover the wild and compelling stories behind the companies we all know and love. As an independent agency we stay close to all the projects we take on, so you can see what it's like working with us just by tuning into our podcast or seeing our content. Strange Coordinates is a reflection of our indie roots because it shows not only our passion for advertising and branding but reveals a lot about how we think and how much fun we have together without worrying about offending our corporate overlords.
AI's prolific expansion happened so quickly that it created two opposite and self-defeating impulses in larger traditional creative organizations: an immediate refusal to engage or experiment, and a requirement from the top to integrate into as many workflows as possible. territorial's approach is aligned with our indie spirit; we play around and experiment, iterating early successes into offerings where AI unlocks proven multiplicative benefit. For example earlier this year we spun up a product called Bot-Friendly Branding. It's a process that helps businesses reframe generative AI as creative stakeholders in order to drive brand scale without sacrificing consistency. While big agencies are trying to figure out "everything" around AI, territorial is helping its clients achieve common-sense, low-investment wins in volatile times.
Our founders first met in an all-too-common industry scenario that doesn't often lead to a relationship founded in collaboration and mutual respect: as foes on an IAT. We've learned so much for our backgrounds in big agencies, but always thought it was crazy to be pitted against perspectives and talent from which we could learn so much. One of our core missions with territorial is enjoy every day we spend doing our jobs and constantly push ourselves to grow and improve by teaming up with the best in the business. From PR studios to AI consultancies, we pride ourselves on the industry relationships we build.
We're seeing AI distruption, volatile macroeconomics, and an ongoing focus on staffing efficiency give rise to slimmer and slimmer client teams, not just in the marketing departments but across the board. This means that their organizations are not just trying to do more with less, but they're also starting to lose the internal social cohesion and shared cultural convictions that make bold, powerful brands possible. Increasingly we are asking ourselves how we can help our clients use our projects as moments to create visibility and buy-in within their organization. We're betting part of the reason that independent agencies are more in demand than ever is our capacity for consultation and co-creation, combining depth of experience with agility and responsiveness.
