Creative agency, digital marketing agency, media agency, advertising agency, branding agency — there’s no shortage of great marketing agencies in Malaysia and it can get quite confusing. If you’re looking to launch a campaign for your brand, you’re probably deciding between partnering with a creative agency or a digital marketing agency. 

While both agencies can to deliver a marketing campaign in the digital era, the services they provide and the collaterals they’ll deliver are vastly different. 

To help you better understand and decide which type of agency will suit your needs best, here are the 5 key differences between a creative agency and a digital marketing agency: 

Big Picture vs. Details

Creative agencies are trained to look at campaigns from a broader perspective, creating a theme for the campaign and providing an overarching key message that reinforces brand recall.

As such, campaigns delivered by a creative agency tend to get results from a macro perspective, through engagement and branding. The collaterals that follow often complements and reinforces the overarching key message, with visuals and designs that are impactful and thought-provoking.

Digital marketing agencies, on the other hand, specialise in the details of the campaign by generating targeting strategies and attractive and eye-catching visuals. The messaging is often witty and brings out the best of the focused product/service while reaching out to as wide of an audience as possible. 

Fitting In vs. Enhancing 

When a creative agency receives a project and its corresponding Corporate Identity (CI), the focal point of the campaign will seek to play up the branding.

Within the various layers of strategy, the campaign highlights the best of the brand while tying in the main product/service feature. A creative-agency-led campaign will blur the branding guidelines as they seek to take your brand to another level. 

A digital marketing agency toes the line within the CI, coming up with an abundance of creatives and designs that stays within the guidelines. Strategies employed by a digital marketing agency often leaves a short-term impression on its target audience, pushing them towards taking action benefitting the brand (i.e. sales, conversions, leads) 

Best Tactic vs. Best Digital Tactic

Given the propensity for digital marketing agencies to rely on digital, tactics employed by them are similarly best applied on digital mediums. Whether it’s a website, Google Ads, social media marketing or LinkedIn Marketing, any effective online platform would be utilised for your campaign. 

Each collateral will be adapted seamlessly for each platform for the best user experience, and you’re ensured that the product/service will be seen by many. 

Creative agencies come from a macro-perspective, thus any tactic that best brings out the strategic message will be considered. Besides using digital platforms to reach a wide variety of target audiences, expect more diversity out of their proposal, which ranges from bus ads, physical banners, large scale events or even flash mobs. 

As a result, a creative agency often uses a combination of both digital and offline mediums to deliver the key message to your target audience, wherever they may be. 

From Scratch vs. On Something

Digital marketing agencies build on your brand. Using your logo, tagline and any pre-approved collaterals, they can craft one hell of a marketing proposal to wow you and your target audience. They can even design visuals that bring out the best of all your products. 

But, they need something to work with. 

The key differentiating service that a creative agency provides is the branding component. From the logo design to tagline copywriting, the creative agency has the ability to build something from practically nothing.

As long as you have a key idea in mind and a unique product on hand, a creative agency can launch a full-scale marketing campaign starting from the creation to the launch to conversions over an extended period of time. 

Lower Cost, Less Time vs. Higher Cost, More Time

Due to the nature of creative agencies’ work, extensive amounts of time is needed in the ideation stage to develop a message that sticks as well as corresponding strategies. The quality of work from a creative agency is much more refined and precise, and as a result, you’re likely to get wide-reaching results for your brand.

But you’ll have to pay for the quality of course. 

Digital marketing agencies have a much faster turnaround time and lower costing. They do deliver a punch of a campaign with the results to show for, just that the impact may not be as broad.

You do save quite a few bucks though!

Creative Agency vs. Digital Marketing Agency

Still can’t decide between the two? Why bother choosing when you can have the best of worlds!

I Concept is a digital marketing agency turned creative agency with ideas for the big picture and an eye for the details. Regardless of your requirements, big or small, we’ll work with you to create the most effective and impactful campaign for your brand. 

Drop us a note to get our partnership started!