The Seven Deadly Sins of Agency-land: Greed
Simon Culley • 1 July 2025
What I don’t do as a ‘Suit’ owning my own agency – the Seven Deadly Sins of Agency-land.
💸 Greed: Why squeezing every penny out of your agency, or your client, leaves everyone poorer.
For those who missed last week’s instalment…
This year marks my Silver Jubilee with agency-land. To celebrate my life sentence (without parole) in this wonderful, crazy, soul-munching, heart-rending industry, I’ve decided to reflect on the things I’ve learned not to do.
Why? Because when Chris, John and I set up Animo, we didn’t want to just reskin the same old ways in a brand of our choosing. After nearly a century’s worth of combined experience in the supposed Ivy League of global ad agencies – like BBDO Worldwide – working on blue-chip clients such as Procter & Gamble, Gillette, Mars, Diageo, and SABMiller (now AB InBev), we felt it was time for a different approach.
Last week, we rummaged around in the underpants of Pride (not the glitter-and-feathers kind), that glorious work-blocking quagmire of egos clients and agencies both can sink into. If you missed it –and for some reason want to read it -you can find it here.
This week, we’re casting a cynical eye over the second sin on our Seven Deadly Sins of Agency-land sh*tlist...
Greed
💸
It’s Not Just for Wall Street
After 25 years in Adland, you get familiar with how agencies charge and how clients negotiate (badly). There are, in essence, two typical dynamics when it comes to the “ungentlemanly” topic of fees:
The False Economy
Client wants the most work for the least money.
Agency wants the most money for the least effort.
So, the agency gets greedy.
The client plays hardball.
The agency caves—but swears they’ll claw it back through scope creep, change requests, and that magic book balancing tactic (that only works for the agency C-suite and it’s shareholders) “unpaid overtime.”

The result? No trust, no goodwill.
High churn. Low morale.
And a client that ends up paying more—because every tiny request outside of scope now comes with a neatly itemised invoice.
The Relationship
Client genuinely wants a partner.
Agency genuinely values long-term relationships over short-term wins.
They agree a fair scope and a fair fee.
The agency doesn’t take the piss. The client doesn’t play games.

The result? Trust.
Great teams want to stay on the account.
Knowledge is retained.
And when scope does expand, the agency helps without nickel-and-diming the client to death.
Unfortunately, too many inexperienced clients and greedy agencies mistake the first approach for clever business. In reality, it’s just self-defeating.
In my experience, the second approach always works better. That’s why at Animo:
- We charge a fair price for the work we do.
- We’re completely transparent about how and what we charge.
- And we never, ever mark up third-party costs (yes, including print).
By not being greedy, we’ve built long-term, profitable relationships with amazing clients—who always get more than they bargained for (in the good way).
Next week, we take a slightly more serious look at the skeleton in agency-land’s closet... Wrath. (Which has nothing to do with flames or pitchforks, and everything to do with a complete lack of emotional control on both sides of the brief.)
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