Hiring an offshore agency, objections answered
The four real risks of hiring an agency in another country, how to test for each one before you sign, and when the answer is simply not to.
We are in Karachi. A large share of the people who read this page are in the United States. That gap is the first thing on the mind of anyone considering us, and pretending otherwise would be a strange way to start a relationship built on saying the number.
Some context worth having, because the market has changed and most advice about it has not. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey found cost had fallen sharply as the reason organisations work with external providers — cited as the primary driver by 70% of respondents in 2020, against 34% now. And the State Bank of Pakistan’s balance of payments data recorded telecommunications, computer and information services exports of $4.6 billion in the 2025-26 fiscal year, up 21% from $3.814 billion the year before. Neither figure tells you anything about a specific agency. Both tell you that the category is no longer a discount aisle.
How many hours actually overlap?
This is the objection that is entirely legitimate and most often waved away. Karachi runs at coordinated universal time plus five. The United States eastern time zone runs at minus four or minus five depending on the season, and the Pacific coast is three hours behind that. Do the arithmetic and a standard working day in Karachi finishes roughly when a working day on the east coast is starting.
That gap is not fatal. It is only fatal when it is unmanaged. Somebody has to deliberately shift their hours, and the honest question is not whether an agency can overlap but whose evenings pay for it and whether that is sustainable past month two.
How to test it. Ask for the guaranteed overlap window in writing, as specific hours in your time zone, on your contract, with the days it applies. Then ask what happens outside it: who can approve an emergency pause on a campaign at four in the afternoon your time, and how long a message sent then waits. Then run the test rather than trusting the answer — send a non-urgent question at the edge of the stated window during the pitch process and see what comes back and when. An agency that misses its own stated window while it is still trying to win you will not improve after signing.
What happens when the person on your account leaves?
Turnover is a genuine structural risk in fast-growing export sectors, and it is worse in outsourcing arrangements than people admit, because the person who understands your business can be reassigned internally without you being consulted.
The mistake is testing for this by asking about retention rates, which nobody answers unfavourably. Test for it by asking what exists outside people’s heads. Where is the account documented? Who else has read it? What would a replacement receive on their first morning, and can you see a redacted example of that document from another account?
Ask one more: has anyone on our proposed team changed since the first call? Silent substitution between pitch and delivery is the version of turnover that costs you most, because it happens before you have any relationship to lose.
Will the copy sound like it came from your market?
This is the objection we take most seriously, because it is the one that cannot be fixed with a process. Fluent English is common. Fluency in a specific American market is not the same skill, and the failures are small rather than obvious: a price framed in a way that reads as cheap rather than fair, a holiday calendar half a beat off, humour that is technically correct and lands nowhere, a phrase that carries a class signal the writer could not have known about.
How to test it properly. Do not ask for a portfolio; ask for a paid test. Give a real brief for a real product with a real audience, pay for it, and read the output as a customer rather than as a buyer of marketing. Then ask the question that actually separates the two kinds of agency: who reviews the copy, and are they from the market it is aimed at? An honest answer is either a named reviewer inside that market or an admission that there is not one.
Our position, stated plainly and against our own interest: on work where the writing has to carry deep local cultural specificity — regional American humour, political or religious nuance, the internal language of a profession we have not worked inside — a local writer is a better instrument than we are, and the right structure is for us to run the media, the production and the measurement while a writer from that market handles the words. We would rather propose that than take the whole scope and hope.
Who is accountable when something goes wrong?
Cross-border accountability is weaker than domestic accountability, and no clause fully fixes it. Realistically, a small dispute across two legal systems is not going to court, because the cost of pursuing it exceeds the amount in question. What replaces the legal remedy is structural exposure — how much you can lose before you can stop.
So reduce the exposure rather than relying on the recourse. Hold every asset in your own accounts. Keep the advertising spend on your own card, paid to the platform directly, never routed through the agency. Insist on a short notice period. Pay monthly rather than in advance. Do all four and the worst outcome of a bad hire is one wasted month, which is a survivable number in any jurisdiction.
| The risk | How it actually shows up | Test for it before signing | Contract term that limits it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overlap hours | Decisions wait a day, then two | Message at the edge of the stated window and time the reply | Named overlap window, in your time zone |
| Turnover | A new name appears with no handover | Ask to see a redacted account document | Named team, notice on any change |
| Copy fluency | Adverts are correct and land flat | A paid test brief, judged as a customer | Named reviewer from your market |
| Accountability | A dispute you cannot economically pursue | Ask who holds the spend and the assets | Monthly billing, thirty days’ notice, assets yours |
| Cost framing | A price that is only about being cheaper | Ask what the fee buys that a local shop’s would not | Flat fee, not a share of your advertising spend |
When is offshore the wrong call?
There are cases where the answer is straightforwardly no, and an agency that will not name them is selling rather than advising.
- Your work needs someone physically present — retail activations, shoots on your premises, in-person sales support, anything where being in the room is the deliverable.
- Your decisions are hourly rather than daily. Live commerce, ticketing and breaking-news reaction all need someone awake at the moment, and an overlap window does not cover it.
- Regulated categories where the compliance knowledge is local and the penalty for getting it wrong is legal rather than commercial.
- The copy is the entire product and it depends on cultural nuance we have already said we would not be the best instrument for.
- Your only reason for looking offshore is price. Cost as the sole driver produces the cheapest bid, and the cheapest bid is not the constraint your growth is actually under.
If none of those describe you, the geography is a logistics question rather than a quality question, and it should be tested the same way you would test any other agency claim. Ask for the overlap in writing. Pay for a test. Hold your own assets. Keep the notice period short.
We’re not the cheap option and we don’t pretend to be.
Being in Karachi is not the argument for hiring us, and it is not the argument against. The argument is the same one we would make from anywhere: tell us the number, and we will tell you if we can.