+
A fractional strategy department for independent agencies

How much strategic thinking is your agency doing for free?

If your agency doesn't have a strategist on the payroll, the strategy still gets done. It's usually done by the managing director or the senior team, on top of their day jobs, and it often isn't charged to the client.

+Strategy gives your agency access to a senior strategist with 25 years' experience, on a monthly retainer or a fixed price project, without the cost of a permanent hire.

Book a 30 minute call → See the services and prices
+
The problem

There are six ways to work with +Strategy.

Three are monthly retainers for ongoing support. Two are fixed price projects. One is a training course for agency teams who want to build their own strategy skills.

Monthly retainer, 3 month minimum
+Hotline
Up to 2 days of senior strategy a month, used whenever your agency needs it.
£2,500a month
Monthly retainer, 6 month minimum
+Pitch
Strategy for your new business pitches, for up to 3 pitches a quarter, with Matthew at the pitch.
From £4,000a month
Monthly retainer, 6 month minimum
+Embedded
A part time Head of Strategy for up to 6 days a month. Matthew works under your agency's name and with your clients directly.
From £7,500a month
Fixed price project
+Sprints
A project with a defined result: a brand audit, a consumer insight project or a positioning workshop.
From £6,500
Fixed price project over 3 months
+Foundations
A project to set up a working strategy function inside your agency.
£30,000
Training course over 10 weeks
+Craft
Five training sessions to build your team's strategy skills, available on its own or alongside any retainer.
£6,000

All prices exclude VAT.

Case study

Five months after bringing in +Strategy, this agency is winning work on the strength of its thinking, and developing the culture and ways of working that will shape its future.

The agency has long standing, trusted relationships with its clients, but it had no strategy department. Senior client facing staff and the creative team gave strategic thinking away for free, and clients judged the agency's work on how well it was made rather than on the thinking behind it.

The agency works with +Strategy on a +Hotline retainer, with additional projects on top. In the first five months:

  • The agency won a pitch for a much loved British food brand. We set the strategic direction for the pitch. We challenged the client's original brief and reframed the opportunity for the brand, which distinguished the agency from the other agencies pitching.
  • Six to eight new projects have included strategy as a paid part of the work. The agency now sells its expertise, rather than only its deliverables.
  • We ran three workshops with the agency's department leads to build an AI roadmap. The roadmap covers where the agency should invest in AI, which tools to adopt and how AI fits into each department's work. It also maps the parts of the agency's process that should stay human led, and sets out one shared vision for how the agency adopts and uses AI, so that everyone in the agency works to the same view.
  • We have run two training sessions for the agency team, on writing creative briefs and on strategic thinking.
  • We are helping the agency write its own marketing plan, including its content plan and channel plan.
About

+Strategy is run by Matthew Ellison.

Matthew Ellison

Matthew has worked in advertising strategy for 25 years. For the last 8 of those years, he has worked freelance as a Senior Strategist and Strategy Director inside agencies, embedded within agency teams, and client facing as a member of the team.

He has written strategy for brands including Triumph Motorcycles, Coca-Cola, Heineken, EE, BT, Xbox and West Ham United, across brand campaigns, shopper marketing and new business pitches.

He holds the IPA Effectiveness Accreditation at Advanced level.

Matthew leads every piece of +Strategy work himself. When the work needs more people, he brings in a network of freelance and independent partners he has worked with and trusts, covering planning, strategy, research and creative, at different levels of seniority and with expertise in different channels. That means your strategy department can grow for a large pitch or project and get smaller again afterwards, when the work needs it and your budget allows.

+
Book a call

Book a 30 minute call with Matthew.

You don't need to prepare anything. We'll talk about where your agency is now, where you want it to go, and whether +Strategy is the right fit.

Send your details and Matthew will reply with some times for a call.

We'll use these details to reply to you. Our privacy notice explains how we handle them.

You can also email Matthew at matthew@plusstrategy.co.uk.