Escaping the Borg Agency Collective
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"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
In Star Trek, the Borg's efficiency is terrifying in its perfection. One mind. One purpose. No inefficiency. No individuality. Just results through total assimilation.
I've watched this exact model spread through dental marketing like nanoprobes. Agencies connecting 2,000+ practices with Borg-like efficiency. They've "perfected" the system. They have the templates. The processes. The proof.
And here's the thing...they're not lying. Their collective genuinely works for:
- Rural practices with little competition
- Established practices needing basic maintenance
- High-volume insurance providers
- Anyone competing primarily on price
Their templates are devastatingly efficient when you already fit their mold.
When SMD-047 Used To Be Smith Dental
Like all dental marketers, they promised uniqueness. But from your first day in the collective, everything feels engineered for efficiency, not individuality.
The designation appears immediately: SMD-047. It's in every email subject line, every internal reference. You're practice number 17 in the San Diego market. That's who you've become.
The onboarding is impossibly smooth because it's been refined across thousands of practices. Welcome packet. Strategy template. Campaign launch. Check, check, check. Your account manager is talented, overwhelmed, juggling 94 other practices and delivers perfectly crafted responses that sound personal until you realize they're reading from a screen.
Even the ways they suggest you "stand out" are standardized. Get professional photos (Package A or B). Create social videos (here's the format). Write blog posts (from this list of topics). Your competitors two miles away received the same checklist.
The system works through elegant efficiency. Every touchpoint templated. Every process documented. Every interaction scripted. It has to be, at 2,000 practices, there's no other way to operate.
And that's fine, if efficiency is what you need. But you signed up believing someone would finally see Smith Dental as more than a designation in a database.
Signs You've Been Assimilated
- You're SMD-047 in every email subject line, not Smith Dental
- Your website could swap logos with 47 other practices and no one would notice
- You've discovered they manage 3 competitors within 10 miles of you
- You can't access your own Google Ads data, it's "proprietary"
- Your contract auto-renewed while you were trying to figure out how to leave
The 6 Stages of Collective Consciousness
- The Courtship: "Join 2,000 successful practices! Our system is proven!"
- Honeymoon Phase: Quick setup. Templates deployed. You feel taken care of.
- First Glitches: Wrong info on pages. Competitor names in your ads. Generic campaigns for your specialty practice. "We'll optimize."
- Blame Shift: Performance lags. "Your team needs training." "Your market is saturated." "You're not following the process." Never the template's fault.
- The Revelation: Every practice gets the same treatment because that's all they can deliver at scale.
- The Lock-In: Try to leave? Website's proprietary. Data stays with them. Start from scratch or stay assimilated.
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"I am Hugh." - The former Borg drone who chose identity over efficiency. Sometimes the most efficient system is the enemy of the right solution.
De-Assimilation Is Possible
At Alien Artisan, we built our entire model as the anti-collective. We keep our client roster small because you can't truly customize at scale. We'll work with your existing platform when possible because starting over shouldn't be mandatory. And if you ever leave, you take everything, your full Google Ads data, your website, your history.
Because you're not a designation to be processed. You're a practice with a name. And resistance? It's not futile. It's the first step toward actually growing again.
Ready to Talk Over a Cup of Coffee? It's On Us
