Our story

We redesigned our business using an ancient Chinese martial art.

Tai chi is the embodiment of yin and yang. The principles of this martial art can also apply to business. If you listen first, stay grounded, maintain balance, are fluid about solutions, and open to outcomes, you can remove friction and harness energy.

The past
The founding team from 2001 from left to right ...

Traction was founded as an agency in 2001. We did some great work. Hired amazing people. Partnered with incredible brands. Even won an AdAge Small Agency Award. But at some point, we started to feel the market change.

We listened to our clients and heard they were taking work in-house to create speed and efficiency.

We listened to our people and heard they wanted more flexibility without losing that feeling of being part of a high-performing team of great people.

We looked inward and saw that the old way of running an agency wasn’t conducive to balancing between the experience clients need and the experience talent wants.

So we changed. Everything.

A new approach

Brands need to deliver experiences people love at the speed people live.

Meeting clients where you are.

The notion that great talent only lives at agencies is old thinking. Today, that’s simply not true. But every in-house team has its own unique challenges, restraints, gaps, and frankly, opportunities to do things smarter. We meet you where you are to lend our marketing expertise and production know-how to solving your biggest challenges.

Our liquid workforce is our secret weapon.

We curate teams from our liquid talent collective of over 250 experts. This allows us to reduce overhead and reinvest in more senior, specialized talent to actually do the work. This makes us very good at a lot of things and delivers a ton of value to our clients.

The average agency overhead is between 80% and 100%—ours is a quarter of that. That means our clients get more senior people for the same price.

We’ve sat in your seat.

Accounts are led by Client Partners with brand-side leadership experience at companies like Google, Nordstrom, Citi, Lululemon, Unilever, and Hilton that collaborate with our clients to deliver business solutions; not relationship managers who take orders and sell services to them.

Say goodbye to “Ta da!”

Our agile approach gets rid of the agency “Ta da!” as a construct. You not only get to see how the sausage gets made, you can help make it if that’s your jam.

No babysitting required. No whining guaranteed.

More senior talent delivers quality work faster with less unnecessary processes that agencies put in place because their business model is based on having to manage junior people who do the actual work.

Sounds great, right?

We think so too. Let’s hop on a Zoom and talk about how Traction could accelerate your business.

See the work

Traction is a new breed of consultancy—a marketing accelerator for brands and their in-house teams.

© 2000 – 2023

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5214F Diamond Hts Blvd #1052 San Francisco, CA 94131 415.962.5800

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