Apr 2025
It’s not who fits the label but who fits the work.
In April 2024, Stephanie McCarty, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Taylor Morrison Homes sparked a viral LinkedIn conversation by boldly stating what many marketing leaders had been thinking:
“The whole idea of an agency is broken.“
Her frustration centered on agencies spending months conducting research when clients already know their customers intimately. As McCarty put it:
“What I need from an agency is creativity. Fresh ideas. Out-of-the-box thinking...not deep, months-long dives into the brand.“
McCarty’s perspective hit a nerve, and we found it a refreshing and familiar perspective. We've seen similar frustrations in our own work. Vendors may excel in their specialty—whether creative, digital, or strategy—but struggle to provide integrated, flexible solutions.
McCarty's viral post tapped into a shift happening across the industry. Traditional boundaries between agencies, consultancies, and development shops have blurred beyond recognition.
Consulting firms are snapping up creative studios, tech shops are building strategy teams, and agencies are acting more like product companies. The old labels just don't stick anymore, telling you little about what a partner can actually do.
How do you identify partners who can truly deliver what you need when category distinctions no longer provide meaningful guidance?
Hybrid partners move fast, thinking alongside you, bringing the creative insight and technical muscle needed for the job at hand. They excel by focusing on solving your actual business challenges, adapting quickly without being boxed in by predetermined service labels.
We often collaborate with clients who have a clear vision and solid groundwork. They aren't looking for reinvention; they need a partner to guarantee the finish line, embed within their teams, and help everyone develop the organizational muscle to transform together. This kind of successful collaboration hinges on several key traits:
One of the clearest markers of a hybrid partner is their involvement in problem framing before any formal scoping begins. Rather than waiting for a finalized brief, hybrid teams participate in shaping the problem itself, asking foundational questions like “What’s the real opportunity here?“ and “What assumptions are we making?“
Hybrid partners embody multiple disciplines through teams composed of genuinely diverse professional backgrounds. Team members include actual category breakers who may draw from unique vantage points across their careers and skill sets. An engineer with a consulting background approaches problems with both technical rigor and creative exploration. A designer who is a professional photographer also excels in brand identity.
In addition to scalability and elevated quality, this approach creates a unique advantage in navigating emerging technologies like AI. Hybrid teams don’t need to translate between technical and creative worlds because they inhabit both simultaneously.
A hybrid partner doesn’t just deliver what’s asked for but what truly serves your long-term goals, even when that means having difficult conversations. For example, when a client insists on pushing a new feature live before completing usability testing, a hybrid partner grounded in user empathy might pause launch to run lightweight testing—uncovering that users misinterpret a core call-to-action. The result: stronger adoption and fewer support tickets post-launch.
Hybrid partners excel at decoding what you actually need beyond what you request. They can move fluidly between strategic thinking and hands-on implementation, bringing both vision and practical execution to the table without artificial handoffs.
Hybrid partners prioritize tangible outcomes over process adherence. They're committed not just to strategy or ideas, but to delivering working products that achieve business goals and create genuine user value.
To uncover how a partner thinks, ask questions that reveal how they handle tension, ambiguity, and disagreement:
This question reveals whether they recognize the limitations of initial briefs and requirements, their approach to uncovering deeper needs, and how they handle the tension between following specifications and meeting actual needs. Look for answers that demonstrate proactive efforts to understand underlying needs and comfort with respectfully challenging client assumptions when appropriate.
This question reveals how they navigate complex trade-offs. Look for answers that demonstrate nuanced thinking rather than rigid methodological adherence and specific examples of how they’ve helped clients navigate difficult decisions with transparency.
This question reveals how they balance their expertise with client preferences and their approach to constructive disagreement. Look for answers that demonstrate respect for client perspectives while offering informed alternative viewpoints and focus on outcomes rather than being right.
Looking for the right partner may appear to start with category selection—agency, consultancy, boutique—but those distinctions rarely reflect how a team actually works.
In an increasingly complex landscape, it’s more helpful to look for signals of how a potential partner thinks, learns, and adapts. Expertise still matters, but so does how someone handles ambiguity, pressure, and unknowns.
Rather than asking, What kind of partner is this? It may be more useful to ask how they approach problems that don’t have easy answers.
78% of CMOs plan to review their agency relationships in 2025 (Campaign CMO Outlook). This shift is about reimaging what kind of collaboration delivers real value.
It’s not who fits the label but who fits the work.
InspiringApps is a digital product firm that blends the depth of a boutique specialist with the strategic chops of a consulting partner and the execution strength of a product agency. This hybrid is a competitive strength for clients who need both strategic thinking and hands-on execution but don’t want to work with massive firms.
Let’s get started.
If you have aspirations and goals that you’re passionate about, we would love nothing more than to have a conversation with you. Drop us a line today, and let’s embark on an extraordinary journey together.
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