Milk Projects is a London-based group of ex-agency design and broadcast creatives delivering advertising, art and design solutions to clients, with agency inclusion in projects an elective. Urban Myth Media is a New York production company tapping into direct-to-client work the Internet way. And, iNTELEFILM, the Minneapolis-based corporate owner of The End, Curious Pictures, Chelsea Pictures and Populuxe Pictures, recently opened DCODE with the aim of providing creative, production and media services to clients.

Elliott Schaffer, Steve Turner, James Hodgson, Dave Smith and Paul Ayre are the group of art directors, graphic designers and filmmakers comprising Milk. They first joined forces to put together Sneakers, Size Isn't Everything, a tightly designed book which visually and textually explores popular culture's fascination with sneakers.

Sneakers and the short film of the same name were well received, and the group was soon able to quit their day jobs (former employers include MTV, Wieden & Kennedy and design house Intro). The group brings in freelance creatives, designers and technicians as needed, but art directs, conceives and copes with its own creative from the ground up, and its resume of print and TV clients ranges from Budweiser and Nike to One2One and Playstation.

"We are equally happy to work on scripts from agencies but we are saying there are people like us who have got the experience to take the initiative ourselves," says Schaffer. " We can handle a whole campaign. When a new brand comes to us we design the packaging and the advertising, looking at it from all the angles."

One spot on the group's show reel (they are repped for spots through London's Stink) is "Boyski Battletanx." The 3DO/Playstation spot appears to be a Russian arms dealer's low-budget ad, showing a jovial Slav and his bikini-clad cowgirl assistants hawking heavy military vehicles before cutting to scenes from the video game. Milk and London PR company, Third Planet conceived and executed the idea with no agency involvement.

"The agency thing, the four-way conversation, is an outdated process. The closer you can get to the client, the better the understanding you have of that client; that's our philosophy," says Schaffer.

Turner adds: "As we get more global, the world gets smaller and there becomes more of a need for local communication, so clients are realizing that big agencies selling them global strategies for big amounts of money weren't working in so many markets."

Turner says Milk's process is simple, with all creatives presenting their own work and accepting responsibility for the strategy and planning. A project manager is brought on for each job and media buying is sourced out to a separate media company.

DCODE, on the other hand, maintains a skeleton crew and draws on president Bill Perna's extensive network of agency and production contacts, as well as the expertise of iNTELEFILM production companies to satisfy clients needs. The company has delivered direct-to-client creative to Pennzoil, Golden Books and ESPN, as well as working with DDB New York (an agency Perna says "likes to consider all the creative options").