The smaller, the leaner, the meaner

In April 2012 photo-sharing start up, Instagram, was bought out by Facebook for a cool $1 billion in cash and stock. Not bad going for a company that was less than two years old and had just 13 employees. So how did an organisation that boasts a smaller team than our local camera store, Michael’s, go on to become a dominant force in photography?

When photographic giant, Kodak, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011 it had 17,000 employees. Their combined might was not enough to keep one of photography’s pioneers afloat. Yet Instagram’s tiny team of 13 launched the biggest phenomenon in photography since the introduction of digital cameras.

Smaller innovative companies outsmart their bigger, more established counterparts all the time. Think Apple vs Microsoft. Avis vs Hertz. Or pretty much any business Richard Branson has attached the Virgin name to.

It’s a similar story in the advertising agency landscape. Smaller, hungrier agencies pose a constant threat to the bigger firms who hold major accounts. What these challenger agencies lack in scale, they make up for in out-of-the-box creativity and sheer drive.

So how does an established agency or brand stay competitive? The answer is to search for ways to ‘disrupt’ entrenched ways of thinking or doing business. Start thinking like a start-up. Look at what has been successful and ask ‘what can we do to improve it?’

Even the most successful campaign will produce diminishing returns. The challenge is to identify the right moment to reinvent and to build a team culture that constantly looks to innovate. Resting on your reputation is recipe for being left behind – the moment we stand still, there is a leaner, meaner competitor ready to overtake us. Something Instagram’s can teach us all.