Signal & Science vs the agency retainer
What the retainer buys,without the retainer.
Not the hours; your team executes from briefs. The judgment: Signal & Science runs the diagnosis, the weekly plan, and the measured outcomes that a retainer's strategy layer was supposed to deliver, at a published price.
01Side by side
| The retainer | Signal & Science | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $5,000 to $15,000, scoped in a proposal | $499, published |
| What you buy | Hours and deliverables | The operating system; your team executes from briefs |
| Time to first plan | Weeks of onboarding | The first read runs in minutes; the diagnosis follows |
| Where the context lives | In the account team's heads | In the system: diagnosis, files, decisions, outcomes |
| Measurement | A monthly slide deck | Business metrics logged per task, every week |
| When the plan changes | At the quarterly review | Every week, from what actually happened |
02When a retainer is the right call
You have no execution capacity in-house and the budget to buy the work done for you. The Operating Loop assumes someone can act on a brief: you, a teammate, a contractor, or the agency you keep for execution. Many members run both, the system for strategy and accountability, an agency for hands.
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