Positive Agency
Positive Agency

In an industry where traditional marketing agencies typically carry overhead costs of 100% or more of their direct salary expenses, two Peruvian entrepreneurs have spent 17 years building a model that challenges conventional thinking about where marketing talent should be located and how it should be deployed.

Miguel de la Roca and Hugo Rodríguez, co-founders of Positive Agency, operate with teams distributed across Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile while serving clients in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Their approach has enabled the agency to manage over $10 million in digital media investment for global brands, including Canon, Volvo Trucks, and Sodimac, while maintaining lean operational structures that prioritize senior-level talent over layers of management.

Rethinking the Geography of Expertise

The cost differential between U.S.-based and Latin American marketing talent is significant. Senior marketing specialists in the United States earn between $110,000 and $140,000 annually, while their Latin American counterparts with comparable experience earn $55,000 to $80,000, representing salary savings of 40–60%. However, de la Roca and Rodríguez argue that focusing solely on cost savings misses the larger strategic opportunity.

"The conversation shouldn't be about finding cheaper resources," says de la Roca. "It's about accessing senior-level talent that would be prohibitively expensive if you tried to build the same team in New York or San Francisco. A strategist with 15 years of experience managing regional campaigns across Latin America brings capabilities that most U.S.-based agencies simply don't have on their roster."

This distinction becomes particularly relevant for companies operating across multiple markets. While a traditional U.S. agency might staff an account with junior to mid-level employees supervised by senior management, Positive Agency's distributed model allows for senior practitioners to work directly on client accounts at a fraction of the cost structure.

The Overhead Problem in Traditional Agencies

Traditional advertising agencies have historically operated with overhead rates of 100% or higher, meaning that for every dollar spent on direct salary costs, an additional dollar or more goes toward indirect business expenses. These costs include office space, administrative staff, account management layers, and corporate infrastructure that clients ultimately pay for through higher fees.

Average monthly retainers for U.S. digital marketing agencies range from $2,500 to $12,000 for small to mid-sized businesses, with many enterprise-level engagements exceeding $20,000 monthly. A significant portion of these fees covers overhead rather than the actual creative and strategic work clients value most.

Hugo Rodríguez explains how Positive Agency approaches this differently. "We eliminated the expenses that don't contribute to client outcomes. No expensive headquarters, no layers of account management that exist primarily to justify billing rates. Our model puts resources toward senior strategists, creative directors, and performance specialists who actually execute the work."

The agency operates with established business entities in both Peru and Florida, allowing it to contract directly with U.S. clients while leveraging the talent and cost advantages of its Latin American team structure.

Senior-Led Teams versus Junior Execution

A key differentiator in the distributed talent model is the ability to staff projects with senior-level professionals rather than relying on junior team members to execute work designed by higher-cost supervisors. In traditional agency structures, clients often pay premium rates while receiving execution from less experienced staff members who require oversight and quality control.

"When you remove the geographic constraint, you can build a team where the people actually doing the work have 10 or 15 years of specialized experience," de la Roca notes. "For a U.S. tech company expanding into Latin America, they get direct access to someone who has managed launches in six different countries, understands regulatory differences, knows the platform ecosystems, and speaks the language natively."

This approach has proven effective in the agency's long-term relationship with Canon, where Positive Agency manages social media strategy and creative execution across seven Latin American countries simultaneously. The complexity of coordinating brand presence across Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador on platforms including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok requires senior-level strategic thinking and cultural intelligence that would be difficult to replicate with a less experienced team.

Cultural Intelligence as Cost Efficiency

Beyond direct salary comparisons, the distributed team model offers cost efficiencies that emerge from cultural and market proximity. Latin American marketing professionals working on regional campaigns bring contextual knowledge that reduces expensive missteps, shortens approval cycles, and improves campaign performance from the outset.

"We've seen U.S. agencies spend months and significant budget trying to understand why their campaigns don't perform in Latin America," Rodríguez says. "Meanwhile, they're paying New York rates for people to learn what our team already knows from having lived and worked in these markets their entire careers."

This cultural fluency extends to language capabilities, platform preferences, and consumer behavior patterns that vary significantly across Latin American markets. Teams based in the region can identify opportunities and risks that might not be apparent to marketers viewing the market from the outside.

Proving the Model at Scale

The effectiveness of intelligent talent distribution becomes evident in the agency's ability to serve enterprise clients with complex multi-market requirements. Managing Canon's social media presence across seven countries requires operational coordination, quality control, and strategic consistency that would challenge any agency regardless of structure.

"Global brands don't accept compromises on quality," Rodríguez notes. "Canon could work with any agency in the world. They choose to work with us because we deliver results that meet their global standards while operating more efficiently than traditional alternatives. When a company like Canon trusts you with their regional brand presence year after year, it validates that the model works at scale."

Implications for the Industry

The success of Positive Agency's approach suggests broader implications for how marketing services will be structured in the future. As remote work capabilities continue to improve and companies become more comfortable with distributed teams, the competitive advantage may shift toward organizations that can access top talent regardless of location.

"We're not arguing that every marketing function should be outsourced or distributed," de la Roca says. "But for companies that need specialized expertise in specific markets, or senior-level talent at efficient cost structures, the old model of concentrating teams in expensive cities doesn't make strategic sense anymore. The talent exists globally. The technology exists to coordinate it effectively. The only barrier is organizational willingness to think differently about where work gets done."

For businesses evaluating marketing partnerships, the cost-to-value equation now includes factors beyond simple price comparisons. The question becomes whether paying higher fees for prestigious agency addresses delivers better outcomes than working with distributed teams of senior specialists who bring direct market expertise and cultural intelligence to the work.

After 17 years of building their model, de la Roca and Rodríguez have demonstrated that intelligent talent distribution can deliver competitive advantages that go beyond cost savings. By eliminating unnecessary overhead, prioritizing senior-level expertise, and leveraging cultural proximity to target markets, their approach offers a blueprint for how marketing services can evolve to serve global brands more effectively.