We may not always be the right fit... but we probably know someone!

It seems that I often hear the term "full service agency" used a lot in the advertising/design/marketing/development world.

Ten years ago, this meant an agency that could do branding work and get your business cards printed, and also build your website. As the web world has become increasingly complex, it's meant that to truly be "full service" now means that you know everything about everything - including:

• design
• marketing
• printing
• advertising
• video
• mobile
• email
• hosting
• database
• programming
• web services/APIs
• CMS
• SEO
• analytics
• Facebook
• Twitter

...that's already an impossible list for one company to be good at. And because the web keeps becoming more complex and because every company's needs are different, the list of required expertise is always changing. The result is that "full service agencies" often outsource much if not all of what needs to be completed on a project - they often just don't admit it.

At Metal Toad, we're not a full service agency, meaning we don't have all of that expertise in house. And we're also not a fit for every RFP that is submitted to us. That said, we know a lot of really talented people.

In the Portland area alone, if you need design we might partner with Dave Selden at Pop Art, Eric Hillerns at Pinch,Todd Moritz at Substance, Rob McCready at Blue Collar Interactive or another in area designer that might be a better fit. For SEM I might recommend Anvil Media or for site analytics Swellpath. Need hardcore UX - how about Pinpoint Logic? That point of all of this is that not that these are the only companies that offer these services in Portland (although they are all very talented) but rather every project is different, with different budgets and different requirements, and would warrant a different group of talented people who are very good at what they do.

In case you're wondering what Metal Toad does, we specialize in web development: Drupal, PHP, Python, Rails - you name it. If your project includes web development give us a call. We may not always be the right fit, but we can probably always help you... with a little help from our friends.