Jared Harman has spent eight years building One Group Agency in Vancouver and twenty-five years in marketing before that. His read on AI is contrarian in a useful direction. The value is in the back office, not the brand voice.
The people who ignore it are gonna end up being left behind. Where there’s a ton of value right now that doesn’t require a ton of investment or time is in the logistical side or the operational side of AI.
— Jared Harman
The distinction matters commercially. Operational gains are cheap, immediate and invisible to the client, which means they improve margin rather than becoming a discount conversation.
Creative gains are visible, and the moment a client believes the work was generated, the price is up for renegotiation whether the quality changed or not.
What we can offer you is an actual voice in the market that is on the other side of that phone or email thread.
— Jared Harman
I truly believe that there’s opportunity that comes from working across different industries.
— Jared Harman
Every piece of agency advice for a decade has said niche down. Jared deliberately did not, and his reasoning is about transfer. A tactic that is standard in one sector is often unheard of in another, and that arbitrage only exists if you are in both.
It is a genuine trade. He gives up the referral velocity and the pricing power a specialist gets, and buys a wider view.
His analogy for the core commercial problem is a good one. Sell someone an apple and the transaction is finished, because both parties can see the apple. Sell someone brand strategy and the negotiation never really closes.
The consequence is that intangible services attract haggling in a way tangible ones do not, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the work.
So like you’ve gotta go in and you gotta kinda like shave the dream down a bit to what will work with what you have.
— Jared Harman
That is the budget conversation, and it is the one most agencies avoid until it is too late to have well.
We’ve adopted the approach of, hey, our pricing’s our pricing, we’re gonna stick with it. Even if there’s a chance to price more just ’cause the client can pay more, we’re not gonna do that. But we’re also not gonna reduce the price just to get the business.
— Jared Harman
we’ve lost clients before because they’ve said we’re not charging enough.
— Jared Harman
That second line is the more interesting one. In a market with no pricing standards, a low quote reads as a quality signal rather than a bargain, and he has lost work by being cheaper than expected.
We we don’t practice what we preach all the time. It’s not because we’re ignoring it, we just literally don’t have time sometimes.
— Jared Harman
An honest admission that most agency owners will recognise. The client work always wins, and the agency’s own marketing is the thing that gets moved to next month, every month.
But if Joe Blow goes to your website or your social channels or wherever, are they gonna have any idea what you’re talking about or what you’re selling?
— Jared Harman
His same-day action is to strip the message back until somebody outside your industry can repeat it. It costs nothing, it takes an afternoon, and it is the highest-return thing on the list.
| Entity | What it is |
|---|---|
| One Group Agency | Jared’s Vancouver full-service agency, eight years old |
| Broad-spectrum positioning | His deliberate refusal to niche down |
| The apple analogy | Why intangible work invites endless price negotiation |
| Pricing stance | Not raising for wealthy clients, not cutting to win work |
| Operational AI | Workflow and logistics, where he says the value is right now |
Every link above goes somewhere different. These are the ones not already mentioned above.
One Group Agency is at onegroupagency.ca. Hosted by Jeremy Rivera. More at Unscripted Small Business.
Harman, Jared. Interviewed by Jeremy Rivera. “Running a Full-Service Agency in the AI Era.” Unscripted Small Business, 2026. https://unscripted-small-business.castos.com/episodes/jared-harman
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