A comparison desk from Ichnos
Locked Out: Agencies
Our other journal, Locked Out, writes one industry an issue for the people inside it. This one is for you — the firm holding four or six of those industries at once, with a retainer running on each.
Every issue compares two categories. Not because comparison is a format, but because the divergence is the finding: two industries can be shut to almost the same degree and the doors that remain point in opposite directions. That is invisible if you read either one alone, and it is precisely what breaks a plan when a team carries the playbook that worked for one across to the other.
Every figure comes from the live Ichnos map: 65,043 places examined across 250 restricted industries, 5,597 confirmed as publishing a way in, updated several times a day.
The first issue is being written
One issue a week, on Wednesdays. Two categories, what they share, and the point at which their channels stop resembling each other. The first is in progress.
In the meantime: see how much of your roster is actually mapped →
What this will and will not be
- A pair an issue, never a round-upTwo categories compared properly beats twelve listed. When no two are far enough apart to be worth reading, we publish nothing that week.
- Figures, not adjectivesEvery claim comes from the survey with the count and the date attached, and every destination in it carries the sentence we read it from.
- No workaroundsThe advice to open a second ad account is everywhere and it is what ends clients. We will keep saying so.
- Written for the firm, not the platformFor the strategist who has to sequence four restricted categories this quarter and justify each channel to a client.