The Agency Model Is Changing — Go Big or Go Home

I've spent a few years inside the agency world.

At BR-ND People — a small creative change agency with big ambitions — we were often slightly too lean for what was on the table. Roles shifted constantly. Everyone jumped in where needed. Strategy, facilitation, design, production, client care — all of it shared rather than handed off from one specialist to the next.

There's something I genuinely love about that. People showing up for each other. Caring enough to flex. Making work happen no matter what. It fits a mindset of nothing is impossible.

But it also showed me where the model cracks.

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When a team is small and the work is complex, the pressure doesn't always look like long hours or bad clients. Sometimes it's subtler: the constant coordination, the context-switching, the invisible care work that keeps everything running. Over time, that eats the space you need for actual craft.

And meanwhile — AI is changing what's even possible with a tiny team.

So no, I don't think agencies are doomed. But I do think the in-between is getting harder to justify. You either need real scale, with deep specialization and operational maturity. Or you go the other way — stay tiny, stay focused, stay fast.

I pick the latter. And in my case, go small means go home. Building with Sinyo. My twin brother.

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We ran the numbers before we started eyay. Not to prove a point — just to see if it made sense.

Traditional agency: 5–8 people in the loop. 4–8 weeks to first deliverable. Office rent, salaries, benefits, slow months to cover. Context lost every time work moves between roles.

eyay: Two people. Same thread, start to finish. First deliverable in 1–3 weeks. No office. No back-hiring. No saying yes to projects just to make payroll.

We're not against agencies. We just didn't want to build something that required compromising on the work to cover overhead we didn't need.

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People talk about collectives replacing agencies. I think that's right, directionally.

For us it's simpler: we keep the duo as the core, and bring in trusted people when the work calls for it. Research, brand, motion, domain expertise — whatever's needed. But always deliberately. Always the right person for the job, without adding permanent layers between client and craft.

Sinyo and I come from completely different worlds. I started in mechanical engineering, moved into design and strategy. He went from economics to software engineering and data analytics. We think differently. We push back on each other constantly.

But we've also known each other our whole lives. The collaboration is unusually low-friction — shared context, direct feedback, no politics. You talk to us. We build. That's it.

And because we use AI at every stage — research, design, code, QA — two of us can do what used to take ten.

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People assume "AI-native" means colder. More automated. Less personal.

For us it's the opposite.

Because we're a duo, you get continuity. The people you talk to are the people making decisions and shipping the work. That builds trust. Fewer misunderstandings. Faster loops.

And because AI handles the busywork — first drafts, explorations, QA — we protect time for the stuff that actually matters. Listening. Judgment. Taste. Honest conversations about trade-offs.

Less process. Fewer layers. More attention.

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I want to be honest: this doesn't scale the way agencies do.

We can't take ten clients at once. We can't staff up overnight for a massive rebrand.

But that's the point.

The agency model promised stability and scale. What it often delivered was overhead, burnout, and a race to the bottom. The duo model strips that away and gets back to what actually matters — talented people doing good work, getting paid fairly, with the freedom to say no when something isn't right.

That's not the death of creative work. That's creative work freed from a structure that was quietly suffocating it.

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eyay is two people. Design and development. Strategy to shipped product. No handoffs.

We're twins. We're based in Amsterdam. We use AI at every stage because it makes us faster — not because it replaces what we do.

Small by choice. AI-native by design.

eyay.studio

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Madison Utendahl recently wrote a piece for It's Nice That about closing her Brooklyn agency — voluntarily, enthusiastically — because the model stopped working. Reading it felt like seeing our own logic, written by someone who learned it the hard way.

Curious if others are seeing the same shift. Is this the future, or are we just rationalizing our choices?