Most agencies hide their no's. Propaganda Inc publishes them. Below are the ten growth tactics we refuse to run, with the reason for each. If your last agency did any of these, your last agency was wrong.
If we can't tie our fee to a measurable outcome, we won't take the contract. Every Propaganda Inc engagement has a performance threshold built into the SOW — a number that means "we earned it" and a number that means "we didn't." Most agencies hate this. We require it.
WHY · Skin in the game beats credentials, every time.Brand is downstream of results. We won't run impressions-only campaigns, "engagement plays," or "thought leadership ads" that don't have a path to a closed-won deal in the next 90 days. If you can't trace it to revenue, we can't justify charging you for it.
WHY · Vanity metrics are the agency's friend, not yours.An A/B test that runs forever isn't a test — it's a vibe. Every experiment we ship has a written hypothesis, a kill date, and a numerical threshold that means "we were wrong." If a test can't lose, it isn't a test. It's theater.
WHY · Testing without consequences is just confirmation bias on a slower timeline.Most agency monthly reports are PDF documents designed to make the agency look busy. Ours show bad weeks in the same font as good weeks. The report is either the work or it's a distraction from the work. We won't ship the second kind.
WHY · If your dashboard hides bad news, your dashboard is the problem.Meta Ads Manager is not your source of truth. Neither is LinkedIn's reporting. Both inflate their own contribution by 30–50% on average. We reconcile every dollar to closed-won in your CRM via Hyros + Stripe webhooks. If we can't, we don't take the account.
WHY · Ad platforms are graders grading their own homework.If your conversion is broken, throwing more money at it just sets the money on fire faster. We refuse to scale a funnel that isn't converting — even if you ask, even if your board demands it. We'd rather lose the engagement than burn your budget.
WHY · The fastest way to lose $1M is to scale a $50K test that isn't working yet.Our roster cap is 8. Period. We've turned down clients we wanted because we couldn't run the 9th account with the focus the first 8 deserved. Taking the retainer anyway would make us every agency we swore we wouldn't become.
WHY · Nothing kills a good agency faster than overcapacity.We won't tell you to use Hyros if we're not using it on every account. We won't tell you to use Vercel if we're not deploying on it. If we recommend a stack to a client, we run it on our own books first. Affiliate kickbacks for software recommendations are also banned.
WHY · "Best in class" usually means "best commission."Most agencies write 5 ad concepts on day one, A/B them, and call the winner "creative intuition." We refuse. Every line of copy on every account starts with the data — funnel state, ICP research, prior winners, audience-level conversion rates. Then the copy. Never the other way.
WHY · Creative without data is fan fiction.If a test failed, the report says it failed. If a campaign underperformed, the slide says so in the same font as the wins. The fastest way for an agency to lose trust is the smallest exaggeration that survives 30 days. We don't ever round up.
WHY · Trust compounds. So does its absence.Propaganda Inc is the agency that publishes its no's. Two spots open on the roster right now. If any of the bans above made you nod, the call is below. No pitch deck. No follow-up sequence. No sales theater.