Every company looking to adapt and, ideally, perfect its communications strategy will sooner or later face the question: Is it better to hire an agency that specializes in one particular area, or one that offers everything under one roof?

For many companies, full-service agencies make perfect sense: a unified strategy and no need to juggle five different agencies at once. Nevertheless, at getpress, we believe that specialization delivers the best results. And there’s a good reason for that.

Everything under one roof: Why choose a full-service agency?

As is often the case, we need to take a brief look into the past to understand the status quo. Many full-service agencies were established as early as the 1990s. But the trend really peaked in the 2010s, when communication changed dramatically: social media suddenly became a huge phenomenon, web design was more important than ever, and everyone from corporations to SMEs was suddenly talking about SEO, SEA, brand building, or influencer relations. Companies found themselves, metaphorically speaking, in the middle of a jungle of new (digital) communication strategies—with no GPS.

The need was clear: orientation in the chaos. Many agencies stepped in to fill exactly that gap. And, to be honest, some of them did a pretty good job. This was particularly true of agencies whose individual units (PR, social media, event planning & co.) had the resources of 20 or more employees behind them. Smaller full-service agencies had a harder time. Naturally, the chances that everyone could do everything really well were lower. Yet, in order to keep up with the competition, they increasingly started offering services before they had fully developed them internally, let alone perfected them.

Unfortunately, not always the “best of all worlds.”

As you can probably imagine, this had an impact on the quality of the results. Not only were the services underdeveloped, but the necessary expertise was often missing, too. Suddenly, someone who had previously only worked in PR was also expected to take on social media management. Especially at smaller full-service agencies, it’s unlikely that a team of ten to 20 people can be experts at everything. At larger agencies with dedicated units, the situation is, of course, different.

That said, there are certainly companies that are perfectly happy with an average level of quality. They aren’t looking for the best possible results, but rather someone who gets the job done reasonably well—and, on top of that, saves them the hassle of coordinating multiple service providers.

For companies with higher expectations when it comes to results, specialized agencies have become increasingly attractive in recent years. Partly because many companies are now investing more heavily in their own communications departments. These in-house teams can then work together with a specialized agency to operate particularly efficiently. In many cases, comprehensive full-service support simply isn’t needed anymore.

And where does getpress stand?

We’ve set out to become the best in the business when it comes to PR. What that means in practice: right now, we don’t offer performance marketing, corporate films, or comprehensive social media strategies. What we do offer, however, is everything related to PR and everything that supports it: long-term PR strategies, CEO positioning, award applications and speaker opportunities, content creation, you name it. So, essentially, a full PR service.

Because of course, specialized agencies can offer more than just one service, too. After all, many disciplines are closely connected. What matters most to us is that the quality is there. As our CEO and amateur food critic Max likes to put it: “At the end of the day, it’s like a restaurant — I’d rather have a small menu with great food than a huge selection where everything is just kind of meh.”

And hey, never say never. Who knows what else we might specialize in over the next few years. We love a challenge. Got an unusual request? Let’s talk.

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