Small by Design: Miles Marmo on Building a Boutique That Actually Wins
ABOUT EPISODE
Miles Marmo spent years managing creative, media, and PR agencies from the brand side at Mark Anthony Group. The pattern he kept seeing was the same at every scale. Beautiful creative work that had no real connection to whether the business was actually growing. Agencies would pitch big ideas, win awards, move on. Meanwhile the brand team was left trying to figure out if any of it moved the needle on shelf presence, trial, or retention. So he built Agency Squid to close that gap. Based in Minneapolis, Squid operates as a hybrid: part business consultancy, part creative agency.
In this conversation with Adam Weil, Miles walks through what it took to build that model and why he chose to stay small on purpose. The goal is a team that's happy, work that's strong, and a business that's sustainable. Miles leans into Midwest work ethic as a genuine differentiator, not a talking point. His team operates with two expectations: when you're here, you sprint. And you communicate openly about what you need. That combination of intensity and transparency is how a flat organization moves fast enough to go toe to toe with shops three times their size.
Miles also talks through the turning point of embracing domain expertise instead of fighting it. Once he stopped resisting and started owning that depth, the business grew into adjacent categories naturally. The knowledge transfers. That domain credibility gives them a seat at the table that generalist agencies rarely earn. His closing take is a bet on the next three to five years: the real power shift in advertising will move toward disciplined independents. As holding companies keep acquiring smaller shops to prop up margins and bulk media buying loses its leverage in a digital landscape, boutique agencies that know their ceiling and execute at that level consistently will have a genuine moment. The future belongs to the ones who chose craft over scale.
GUEST BIO
Miles Marmo is the co-founder of Agency Squid, a Minneapolis-based creative brand agency that blends business strategy with creative execution for lifestyle, CPG, and adult beverage brands. He describes himself as "a brain guy playing an advertising guy, playing a business guy," and the description holds up.
Before launching Squid, Miles spent years on the brand side at Mark Anthony Group (the company behind Mike's Hard Lemonade and White Claw), where he managed relationships with creative, media, and PR agencies at national scale. That experience gave him a firsthand view of where the agency model breaks down: creative teams producing work disconnected from business outcomes, and brands paying consulting firms and production shops separately for work that should happen under one roof.
Over the past decade, Miles has built Agency Squid into a boutique shop that punches well above its weight class, competing against larger coastal agencies while staying intentionally small. His team works across wine, spirits, ready-to-drink cocktails, CPG food brands, and hospitality, bringing deep category knowledge that comes from thousands of hours inside the industries they serve. Miles is also a co-founder of Stage Seven Tequila and Noonan Golf, two in-house consumer brands born out of the same entrepreneurial energy that drives Agency Squid.