Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The U.S. women's soccer team has a roster of stand-out stars, but their individual strengths work best when they play as a team. That's the gist of a new, minute-long "American Woman" ad Nike launched as part of a bigger #NoMaybes campaign designed to elevate the team's profile during the FIFA Women's World Cup this week.

"We didn't want to go into this trying to make a women's spot—we wanted to make a soccer spot," said Michael McGrath, partner at Thousands Creative, the Portland, Ore., agency that created the ad.

Thousands Creative's own profile is getting a boost because of the work. The two-man shop was founded just a year ago by a pair of former Nike employees and currently has neither a website (just an empty Tumblr) nor publicly listed contact info....

... If you drill down into the top 500 agencies, you’ll find that the fastest-growing and most profitable firms are those that are devoted to specific areas of expertise. Social media, experiential marketing, and customer relationship marketing account for many of today's competency specialists. Other types of successful market specialists include travel/tourism, agriculture, food, pharma, and senior living.Solutions, not servicesUltimately, marketers aren’t buying a service from an agency. They’re buying a solution. And effective solutions spring from deep areas of expertise, not a from a “wide range of experience” as most agencies are prone to tout....