You can’t just have a strong rolodex — you need to have taste
A conversation with Plenty&Co. about our industries’ futures
CHERRY ON TOP 🍒 is our monthly newsletter exploring the ins and outs of everything that modern businesses need to truly shine. We dive into topics that live at the intersection of our two companies – ORCHARD STREET, a venture studio + angel fund & DALY, a comms+ agency – as both help founders get the best ideas out into the world, through outstanding operations, comms, and culture-building.Alex & Ally here! Last month, we dove into what drives brands to make smart (and not smart) agency selections, with AUFI’s Nick Bell.
As a continuation of that conversation, this month’s issue explores how the agency model itself needs to evolve to meet the changing needs of brands (and the media!) today.
ICYMI, we recently launched Plenty&Co. in collaboration with our pals at Six Eastern, and Care of Chan, as a way to meet those evolving needs.
After the launch, we sat down to trade musings and wax poetic about how each of our respective work with brands is being reshaped in real time, and why Plenty&Co. has struck such a resonant chord with the brand, marketing, and PR pros in our orbits.
The below is an edited narrative transcript of that spirited conversation between the two of us at Daly, Emilie of Six Eastern, and Sue of Care of Chan. We hope you enjoy!
Increasingly, the traditional agency model feels out of sync with how brands actually operate today.
Retainers are shrinking. Expectations are expanding. Teams are expected to move faster, think sharper, and deliver more meaningful outcomes with less bureaucratic bloat.
That shifting landscape is exactly what brought together three very-different-on-paper agencies under Plenty&Co: a founder-led collective built around specialization, collaboration, and a shared belief that the future of agency work looks far more interconnected than siloed.
“We’d been noticing for a while that clients were no longer coming to us with the same standard list of PR goals,” Alex (Daly) explains.“The remits were becoming simultaneously more all-encompassing yet also more focused and specific.”
At first, the instinct was to absorb those evolving needs internally: expanding capabilities through new hires, subcontractors, and increasingly flexible workflows. But eventually, a larger realization emerged.
“We’re proud generalists,” Alex says, “but we can’t possibly meet every need a client could ever have, while still offering the depth of expertise we pride ourselves on. And we realized — we didn’t have to.”
That realization became the foundation for Plenty&Co.— a collective through which Daly could align itself with other agencies who were like-minded in values and approach, but distinct in services.
For Sue (Care of Chan), the appeal was immediate. “Clients are often asking if we have communications capabilities, but we don’t have any desire to build out our own comms department because I believe it takes away from us becoming real experts in experiential. So when Daly approached us about Plenty&Co., it was an easy yes.”
All three agree: the timing couldn’t feel more relevant.
“The age of indiscriminate brand spending around ‘nice to haves’ like comms and marketing is over — for now, at least,” Ally (Daly) says. “Brands have become more intentional about what they actually want their hired agencies to achieve.”
That shift has exposed what many see as a widening disconnect between legacy agency structures and modern client expectations.
“Clients are desperate for speed and outcomes, but agencies are too bulky to make that happen,” says Emilie (Six Eastern). “They need teams that are Slack-native, used to doing more with less, scrappy and fast.”
To Emilie, outdated deliverables are really just symptoms of a bigger issue: agencies still operating like it’s 2017. “No one wants to pay an extra $10k / month for coverage tracking anymore, but most big agencies still have that auto-baked into their offering.”
Sue sees a similar contradiction playing out within experiential. “Clients want the expertise and specialization of a boutique agency but the range of services of a large firm,” she explains. “Plenty&Co. offers the best of both worlds.”
What makes the collective distinct is that it intentionally avoids the kind of top-down integration model that defines many modern agency networks.
“A lot of agency collectives are basically mini holding companies in disguise,” Alex says. “Plenty is the opposite: no shared ownership, no forced integration. We’re a bottom-up, founder-led network.”
The agencies remain entirely independent — financially and operationally — but collaborate closely where it makes sense to.
“We aren’t connected from a business perspective at all,” Emilie adds. “We just genuinely want to work together. That’s important because we aren’t incentivized to push each other’s services on clients or offer bloated retainers.”
Instead, Plenty&Co. operates through a mix of shared projects and strategic referrals, allowing clients to access a broader ecosystem without sacrificing the intimacy or agility of working with smaller firms.
“From the client perspective, it feels like one cohesive team, not three separate firms,” Ally says.
Underlying the model is a shared belief that smaller, highly specialized teams are now better equipped to navigate a media and culture landscape that increasingly rewards specificity over scale.
“The media landscape has evolved to favor niche specialists,” Alex explains. “Think Substacks over legacy media. Social-first creators over staff writers. The industries that work with media have to adapt the same way.”
Big agencies are still overly attached to slow strategy cycles and oversized teams, while modern brands increasingly need rapid execution and cultural fluency.
“Clients won’t wait six months for wins until you get your messaging 100% right,” says Emilie. “With how fast tech moves, that messaging will already be outdated by the time it’s finalized.”
Sue sees the same issue cropping up when it comes to activations. “Most events fail because they lack purpose and a clear point of view. Too many experiential agencies focus solely on aesthetics instead of storytelling.”
Because the Care of Chan team comes from a communications background, they’re able to help clients shape events with greater intention, ensuring the experience not only looks good but actually resonates — because it’s easier to make something look beautiful than it is to make it meaningful and strategic.
That emphasis on intention — and taste — is something all three agencies keep coming back to.
From Daly’s POV, taste has become one of the few truly irreplaceable forms of value in an increasingly automated landscape. As brands move away from scale for scale’s sake, they’re increasingly searching for partners whose instincts they trust: people who understand not only where culture is, but where it’s headed. “They need agency partners who can tell them where they should be showing up — and how,” Alex says.
Part of Plenty&Co.’s advantage comes from the fact that the three agencies operate in different worlds with different networks, media relationships, and cultural reference points.
“Our client bases, media relationships, and cultural touchpoints don’t overlap,” Emilie says. “So clients get access to a much broader and more diverse ecosystem by working with us collectively. It’s not just expanded services — it’s expanded reach, access, and taste.”
For Sue, credibility comes down to clarity and honesty. “Taste comes from experience, and credibility comes from having a clear point of view,” she says. “We’re never shy about being true thought partners to our clients, even if it means talking ourselves out of a job.”
That mentality — collaborative rather than competitive — is ultimately what defines Plenty&Co.’s broader ambitions.
“I believe the future is ‘we,’ not ‘me,’” says Sue. “There’s only so far we can go alone. Building together allows us to go further, bring more expertise to the table, and ultimately create stronger work for our clients.”
Ally agrees. “We’re excited to keep pushing the envelope on what comms can be, and we’re humble enough to know our limitations — and when we can achieve better, more impactful work together versus alone.”
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The Cherry on Top: At a moment when clients are increasingly seeking depth, agility, and genuine partnership over scale alone, Plenty&Co. is betting that the future probably belongs less to giant agencies trying to do everything, and more to tightly connected specialists who know exactly what they’re good at — and who they work well with.
Plenty&Co. is a collective of independent agencies delivering modern, multi-disciplinary comms—without sacrificing specialization, taste, or impact.