Cut out the Middleman! Wait, That’s Us!

I've always loved the idea of middlemen. For me, the term evokes images of merchants trading ivory and gold for Arabic beads at bustling port cities on the East African coast. But whenever I hear someone speak about middlemen, they always talk about cutting them out. At first, it didn’t bother me, but then I realized Stratia is essentially a middleman, and so are all good creative agencies. So to all the YouTubers and businessmen in movies - here’s why you don’t just want middlemen around, here’s why you need them.

From Samarkand on the Silk Road to the invention of capitalism with the Dutch East India Trading Company, and through to today, where a few companies prop up the world economy, economies have been and are built on the backs of middlemen. Take today’s economy: Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, and Meta connect us to things we need. Nvidia and Apple connect us to manufacturing centers to get our fancy phones nicely packaged and running efficiently. Alphabet connects us to the information we need to prove our Scrabble partners wrong, and Meta connects us to one another. Being middlemen has made these companies trillions; why? Because we need them. It's not a stretch to say the progress we've made over the past 2,000 years is because of middlemen. So, why does everyone hate us?

People hate middlemen because they perceive an injustice when they see them make a profit for seemingly little effort. I mean, “I could do that myself.” Here’s the thing: Highly successful middlemen always add value. Google is so effective as a search engine and an advertising platform that you probably didn’t even think of it as a middleman until reading this article - you say ‘Google it,’ you don’t say ‘look it up.’ Middlemen have caught a bad rap throughout history and that won’t change, but the trick is to be so good at middlemanning that no one notices.?

Advertising agencies (all of them) are middlemen. Make no mistake: Their role is to connect you with talented people. But the legacy agencies that are slowly getting phased out of the market have got it wrong. Companies like Publicis Groupe and 奥美 see themselves as the end product. They are middlemen masquerading as the product they’re trying to sell - a successful brand. At Stratia we know the end goal is your brand becoming successful. So, we serve a simple function, connecting you to the people that will make that happen. And our value add? How we connect you. We pride ourselves on our fantastic producers and creative directors who manage the exchanges between you and our talent. Before you know it, you won’t be making creative; you’ll be Stratia-ing your creative.

So middlemen aren’t going anywhere, but the ones that aren’t going to catch that bad rap are the ones doing it well. So make sure to get in touch and see how it’s done!