The most dangerous number in marketing isn’t your CPA, your CAC, or your churn rate. It’s £15,000.
Specifically, the £15,000 per month retainer. For years, this figure has been the gold standard for mid-market agencies and their clients. It’s a number that feels substantial enough to signify a serious engagement, yet manageable enough to get past a CFO without too much fuss. I should know. I’ve built a career on retainers. And now I’m here to tell you we must kill them.
The entire model is a comfortable lie. The agency pretends to be an extension of the client’s team, and the client pretends to have a dedicated group of experts working tirelessly on their behalf. Both sides quietly agree to measure effort instead of impact, celebrating vanity metrics in monthly reports that signify activity, not results. It’s a system that rewards inefficiency and penalises speed.