POV: You’re a marketer from a mid-sized company with a lot on your plate. You’ve got ad campaigns, tradeshow banners, business collateral, and the list goes on. While you can take care of a lot of these things yourself, you’re only one person! You need an extension of your team a group of someone’s who can take that design load off your shoulders.
Where can you find the right local creatives to help you with this colossal task? Should you go for the traditional staffing agency, or to modern creative platforms like Designity?
What are staffing agencies?
These industry fixtures have been around since before the industrial revolution. From helping staff workers during the Great Depression to staffing software engineers in 2022, their specialties and processes run the gamut.
In a nutshell, their sole purpose is to recruit people for company clients.
What is Designity?
Designity is a virtual on-demand creative platform that matches creatives with your biggest projects—all under the supervision of an experienced creative director. The best way to think of us is as a direct response to the needs and demands of marketing in the digital age.
You might be wondering “how are you different from a staffing agency?”
We’re so glad you asked…
A comparison at first glance.
Although It’s easy to confuse Designity with a staffing agency, it’s fundamentally different. We’re going to make the decision-making process easier for you through this comparison.
Let’s take a closer look at how these two platforms work and what makes them so different.
The process.
Staffing Agencies
The first thing to keep in mind about staffing agencies is that they cater to many different disciplines, whether that’s secretarial work, sales reps, creatives, the list goes on. They don’t specialize in one particular discipline, even if they are a creative staffing agency.
This isn’t a bad thing; projects often require different talents so it largely depends on what you’re looking for to get a true perspective. In terms of the process that clients go through to obtain creatives for their projects, it may look something like this:
Designity
The very first step after requesting a demo or information is the initial discovery call. Like a staffing agency, we take the time to understand your needs before suggesting the right package. The difference is that before you sign the dotted line, we give you a two-week trial to make sure that we are a good fit for each other.
Your onboarding process includes a questionnaire where we ask you personality questions, industry-related questions, and deep dive into your needs. You are then matched with a creative director who has experience in your field (ie. healthcare specific, eCommerce, NFTs, etc).
Your trial begins when you meet with your creative director for the first time.
Creative Direction
Staffing Agencies
Once you are fitted with the right employee, you are in charge of training them, managing them, and directing them.
The staffing agency does not give you any creative direction or advice for your upcoming projects… and your deadlines may as well be tumbleweeds in the wind after you agree to onboard the person that they matched you with.
This can be a negative for marketers who already have a lot on their plate and don’t have the time to guide a team of creatives. On the other hand, if you have a simple project that only needs one creative, then managing them wouldn’t add too much to your workload.
Designity
We have creative direction down to an art. One of the most challenging parts of carrying a project to completion is finding the right talent and managing them. It’s time-consuming, stressful, and takes up more bandwidth than you have to offer.
The good news is, not only does your creative director go to market and pick the right talent from our pool of vetted US-based creatives, but they also manage and guide them so that you don’t have to.
With Designity, you get weekly calls with your CD, an interactive dashboard so that you can review collateral and provide feedback, and you can give us more than one project. Your creative director is your one POC and constant throughout the creative process.
Vetting Creatives
Staffing Agencies
The vetting process for staffing agencies varies widely depending on the agency and its specialties. Most of the time, however, staffing agencies keep a list on file of people and resumes from all disciplines and match them with you based on your project needs.
They do not source creatives or vet them based on particular criteria; they keep them on file for when they are needed.
Also, they are not specialized in vetting based on creating entire creative teams; it’s typically one-off placements.
Designity
Our vetting process for creatives is more intensive and exclusive. We only work with US-based creatives who have to pass an in-depth vetting process.
This includes a challenge that they are required to complete within a specific amount of time, ensuring that their talents are fresh, real, and reliable. To put this into perspective, we only accept 5% of applicants.
We forego the fancy alma maters in favor of real, raw talent. Sometimes, that freshness can be found in emerging designers who are typically overlooked because they don’t have years' worth of experience.
Your creative team is assembled based on your project needs and is also interchangeable as needed.
Switching Creatives
Staffing Agencies
What happens if you have a different project on deck and no longer need the creative that the staffing agency sourced for you?
Things get a little fuzzy here, but one thing is certain: you will be charged every time you need a new creative, an addition to your team, or even when you are simply switching for a new project.
This is one of the reasons why staffing agencies work best when you are trying to hire someone from temp to permanent, not so much for one-off projects.
Designity
With us, clients can change or switch creatives at no additional cost. Your creative director dips into our vetted pool of creatives and plugs them into projects as needed.
This is great for companies that have a lot of projects and don’t necessarily need a permanent in-house creative.
If you are looking for a permanent, in-house creative then the staffing agency would be the way to go in this case.
<div class="c-blog_comp-cta cc-component-1"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-wrap"><img src="https://global-uploads.webflow.com/61cdf3c5e0b8155f19e0105b/6369722e59155470b6840033_Potential-clients.png" loading="lazy" alt="" class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-img"></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-right"><div class="c-blog_comp-content"><div class="c-text-wrapper cc-mb-32"><div class="c-title-4 cc-bold"><strong>Want to save money without sacrificing the quality?</strong></div></div><div class="c-text-wrapper"><div class="c-text-2">Say goodbye to traditional, expensive agencies and unreliable marketplaces. Say hello to Designity.<br></div></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-wrapper"><a href="/pricing" target="_blank" class="c-button cc-primary cc-inverted w-button"><strong>Get Your 2-Week Trial</strong></a></div></div></div>
Pricing
Staffing Agencies
While there is no one cookie-cutter answer for this, one thing is absolutely certain: you have to pay a premium for the entirety of the project, even if you get a 90-day ‘trial’, you will still be paying for that.
Although staffing agencies come in many shapes and sizes, one thing to keep in mind is that staffing agencies are commission-driven. They will make a dime even if you don’t get what you want.
Designity
Our pricing model is simple and straightforward: You choose one of three packages based on your project and the number of creatives that you’ll need, start your 2-week trial, and pay a monthly premium.
There are no giant retainer fees, unpredictable invoices, or unwelcome surprises. The higher your package, the more creatives, and services you get. Let’s say that you decide on the Essentials package for the first month. Switching to a higher plan is as simple as pressing a button (literally).
The Verdict
Deciding on which platform would be a good fit for you is wholly based on your needs. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
