Communication agencies and the challenge of breaking free from the crowd of generalists

In the communications and creative industry in Vietnam, there is a common paradox that is almost invisible: the best at building brands for others often let their own brand drift without direction. The international marketing consulting industry refers to this phenomenon as "cobbler's children." In the Vietnamese market, it manifests more specifically: hundreds of agencies use the same language, serve the same client base, and compete with the same lever, which is price.

When every agency is saying the same thing

Open any communication agency's website, and you will see a familiar phrase: "creativity, strategy, measurable results." You might also add "a passionate young team" or "partnering with businesses." These phrases are not wrong. They just do not differentiate one from another.

This is exactly the commodity trap: when there are no recognizable differentiators, customers will use the only remaining criterion to compare, which is price. If every agency chases that criterion, the entire industry will see profit margins shrink.

Ries and Trout wrote in 1981: "Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect." Positioning is the act of occupying a specific place in the mind of potential customers, not describing your entire capabilities. But most agencies do the opposite: they list every service, serve every industry, and as a result, fail to occupy any space.

The three most common types of invisible agencies

Not every agency is invisible in the same way. There are three common types, and each type requires a different approach to break free.

The first type is a generalist agency without a niche. They can do everything, from social media content to events, from design to media buying. For small clients who don't know what they need, this is a short-term advantage. For larger clients with real budgets, this is a reason not to shortlist. Large clients are not looking for someone who can do everything; they are looking for someone who understands their issues deeply.

The second type is a portfolio-driven agency. They do whatever clients need, accumulate case studies of all kinds, and call that diverse experience. But a portfolio without a focus does not create expertise signals. It only proves you can execute, not that you understand something deeply.

The third type is an agency dependent on its founder. All clients come because they trust a specific individual. When that person is busy, clients worry. When that person leaves, the agency disappears. This is a personal brand, not an organizational brand.

Sharp positioning does not mean narrowing

The most common concern when discussing niche positioning is: "If I only take one type of client, I will lose the rest." This is a misunderstanding of how positioning operates in practice.

Marty Neumeier writes in The Brand Gap: "A brand is not a logo. A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization." What potential customers perceive before meeting you is a signal of expertise. And expertise signals in a specific field often spread to adjacent fields much faster than general messages.

An agency clearly positioned as "specializing in branding for technology startups from seed to Series A" will be remembered immediately when someone has that need. They may also be referred to fintech, healthtech, or edtech startups because the signal is specific enough for the referrer to know who they are introducing to whom.

An agency that "does it all" cannot be introduced because no one knows how to describe them in one sentence.

Positioning is not what you do to a product. It is what you do to the mind of the prospect.

Al Ries & Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1981)

Four components that create a positioning that can hold

Positioning is not a tagline or a description on the About page. It is a set of consistent choices that customers recognize from afar. There are four specific components.

• Possible niche names: not "brand and communication" but rather "building a brand for an expanding F&B chain" or "repositioning for an agency wanting to escape price competition." The niche must be specific enough for the listener to immediately know if they belong to it.
• Proven differentiators: not claims but evidence. A named working method, a transparent process, or a portfolio with a clear axis are all stronger than any descriptive adjectives.
• Signature style is recognized by: writing style, presentation of thinking, visual aesthetics that repeat across all products. It is not declared, but recognized. Wally Olins calls this one of the four vectors of brand expression: product, environment, communication, and behavior.
• Consistency from the inside out: an agency that advises on branding but has inconsistent internal emails, proposal decks that vary each time, and a website that hasn't been updated since last year sends a very clear implicit signal to potential clients.

An agency works for clients, but first must work for itself.

This is the hardest part, not about technique but about psychology. Agencies often fall into one of two states: too busy working for clients to have time to build their own brand, or believing that "industry clients" do not need to look at the agency's brand but only need to see the portfolio.

Both are wrong in the same way. A portfolio only answers the question "what have you done?" A brand answers the question "who are you and can I trust you?" For projects with large budgets and high risks, the second question is more important.

An agency wanting to stand out from the crowd needs to do what they advise clients to do: start with strategy, not with a new logo or website. Identify what they truly do better than others, determine who really benefits from that, and build a system to convey that consistently across all touchpoints.

There is no guarantee that this will yield immediate results. But one thing is certain: an agency without sharp positioning will always compete on price, and that is a race with no winners.