Creative Services vs. In House Agency
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Workfront Chief Marketing Officer Joe Staples described the steps to restructure a marketing agency during his presentation at the 2015 Chief Marketing Officer Leadership Forum: Spring Event in Chicago on March 3. In his presentation, Staples noted that revamping a marketing agency requires a business to change the structure of its operations and the way it processes work.
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Creative Services vs. In House Agency
- 2. Workfront Defined 2 Kill the chaos of work Delivering an enterprise SaaS application to request, prioritize, manage, and provide visibility to work projects.
- 3. Broad Customer Base 3 FINANCIAL SERVICES MANUFACTURING / HIGH TECH SOFTWARE/INTERNET HEALTHCARE MEDIA / ENTERTAINMENT AGENCIES NON-PROFIT / GOVERNMENT CPG / RETAIL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
- 5. CREATIVE SERVICES VS. IN-HOUSE AGENCY IS THERE REALLY A DIFFERENCE?
- 6. CREATIVE SERVICES IN HOUSE AGENCYVS • Little request discipline • Liaisons between clients and designers • Projects can be a mix and catch-all • Full-service, more strategic work • Ad hoc collaboration • Formal processes for production
- 7. 5 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE RESTRUCTURING … OR NOT
- 8. CREATIVE SERVICES IN HOUSE AGENCYVS 1. There will be a significant amount of change 2. Shift toward a strategic partner vs. an order-taker 3. The need to show the value of your creative team 4. Be prepared for the costs 5. The smaller the team, the less beneficial becoming an in-house agency could be
- 9. A TALE OF TWO TEAMS REAL WORLD EXAMPLES FROM DISNEY AND ELECTROLUX
- 14. For a custom demo of the creative workflow solution used by Disney and Electrolux: www.workfront.com
Editor's Notes
- Include brief introduction about yourself and your role at Workfront
- done
- The professional services clients look more like media clients! Can we replace this with a better segment and logos please
- Quite often the internal debate is whether or not to use an external agency or not… Nearly 45% of in-house professionals report that gaining respect from internal clients is one of their greatest challenges… It’s like there is this huge struggle for the cool work between in-house and external teams After all, nobody really knows what your department does And if that’s not enough, we have executive committees and clients to please, deadlines to meet, and budgets that usually make cut back on what our department can do because "there's never enough." And of course, there's always that "ROI" we have to deliver. We dream of the day that everyone is happy, we are delivering high quality work, on time and… Even winning awards! These are just some of the reasons we are hearing more and more whether or not the in-house creative services team should become an in-house agency or not
- It’s true, there are many in-house teams that currently consider themselves in-house agencies, but continue managing and executing work in the same way they always have. However, in order to win the respect your team deserves from the rest of the company, you’ll need to do more than just change the name of your agency. The key is to start viewing and doing work in a different way. This is a change that takes careful planning and a well-executed transition. The most notable differences between creative services teams and in-house agencies are team structure, service offerings, processes, and team branding.
- A typical creative services team sits in a convenient place in the business where any and all departments can make requests—big and small, relevant and pointless—at any time. Depending on the size of the organization this may not be a significant pain, but for many creative teams it creates a lot of frustration. A mature in-house agency, on the other hand, is structured similar to an external agency where account or project managers and, perhaps, traffic managers act as liaisons between the internal client and the writers and designers, thus helping to protect the time and resources of the creative team. With this structure, writers and designers only receive relevant and strategic work, allowing them more time to focus on creative execution. --- Creative services teams often work mostly on small-scale or one-off services such as collateral copy and design, corporate stationary and swag items, landing page copy and design, banner and print ads, etc., as needed. Project types vary depending on team structure, team size, and company goals. A mature in-house agencies has a set list of service offerings and perhaps even a specialization or two. This allows for a team that can deliver full-service integrated advertising campaigns and focus on more strategic work. A recent survey published by IHAF found that more than 80 percent of in-house agencies offer advertising and creative services, brand and business strategy, digital and interactive services, and direct marketing work. --- While a creative services team might use email and collaboration meetings to plan and coordinate projects, an in-house agency model requires more formal processes that regulate requests and facilitate collaboration between client and creative team; this typically includes a request management process, a creative execution process, and a production process all tailored to produce the highest quality deliverables possible. -- Many companies that have made the switch have distinguished the restructure with a separate brand for their teams. Disney’s in-house agency, for instance, dons the title Yellow Shoes Productions instead of Disney Creative Services Team. Differentiating a company’s creative group often includes a separate logo and even a separate website. I’ll get back to this Disney story in a little bit. In the meantime, let’s consider …
- More and more benefits to a team rebrand are becoming apparent as the trend picks up steam. Consider these five benefits:
- You will have to restructure your team and, most likely, the way they are used to doing work. This will include some change management within your existing team regarding new processes, new service offerings, and new team structures. It will also likely require changes in budgets and spending to invest in additional headcount to fill in any gaps in agency structure. The increased austerity of an in-house agency means no more drive-through abuse for the creative team. When a resource is free (like a creative services team), the resource is often overutilized. With an in-house agency, teams can have more control over which projects they take on and where those projects will fit among other priorities. Plus, requestors are more like to self-censor which projects they request from an in-house agency if they know that they are going to be “charged” for the work in some way (whether that is chargebacks in their budgets, etc.) A full team transformation will attract the attention of the entire company. In a way, it will give you the chance to start fresh with your reputation; it’s a time to prove the talents and abilities of your creatives by producing your best work for every project . Those you’re doing work for within the company will begin to trust your team to deliver agency-grade results and will recognize you as an organized, talented group that consistently delivers high-quality work. And regardless of which path you take, if you use a quality work management platform to track all of the projects you work on as either a creative services team or an in-house agency, you can build data Increasing headcount (such as if you don’t already have traffic managers or liaisons between internal requestors and the creative team), implementing new processes, and other expenses will add up quickly if you decide to transform. You’ll need to make sure you can project the ROI of making this change . If a successful transition brings in an abundance of new business, can your team handle the increased workload? Almost 75 percent of in-house pros already work more than 40 hours a week, and managing heavier workloads is the biggest challenge for almost 60 percent of teams. If your crew is already understaffed and overwhelmed, transitioning may not be in your best interest. Most CS-to-agency shifts work best for teams of at least 10 or more, although supplementing with freelancers is also an option. Take stock of your existing capabilities and capacity.
- I’ll talk about a couple of case studies to illustrate the paths they took and how it worked out for them
- Created in 2005, the team at Yellow Shoes creates award-winning work for all of the global Disney Destination brands, including: Disney Parks, Adventures by Disney, Disney Vacation Club, Disney Cruise Line and Aulani–a Disney Resort and Spa.
- Created in 2005, the team at Yellow Shoes creates award-winning work for all of the global Disney Destination brands, including: Disney Parks, Adventures by Disney, Disney Vacation Club, Disney Cruise Line and Aulani–a Disney Resort and Spa. The team at Yellow Shoes is made up of artists, writers, and designers that have produced graphics, advertisements, promotional campaigns, and more that have made people want to connect with the company. From branding and design of new Disney resorts… Print campaigns like this one for Disney World’s Star Wars Weekend. (Star Wars themed activities in Disney World during the summer months.) To integrated campaigns for Disney Parks including print, media, and social campaigns. They’re all created by the in-house agency on-site at Disney World in Orlando, FL. ---------- Testimonial from Will Gay — creative director of Yellow Shoes Creative Group: “Becoming a branded, in-house agency has helped us to be more visible within the Disney brand network, to have greater creative license, added respect and the ability to say “no” to projects that we just don’t have the time for. We’re an award-winning agency that creates breakthrough stuff, and now more people in the organization know it than did before.”
- Electrolux Home Products is a global leader in home appliances and appliances for professional use, selling more than 40 million products to customers in 150 countries every year. In 2010, Electrolux’s Small Appliances Division (North America) stopped out-sourcing all of their design work to outside agencies and brought those services in-house. They hired a senior art director and charged him with building an in-house creative team. The team soon tripled — to a team of 3 full-time designers. Team creates assets for 9 brands including Electrolux, Eureka, Frigidaire, Sanitiare, Beam, Arm & Hammer and 3M vacuum accessories. We focus primarily on packaging, point of sale materials, product photography, but we also create magazine ads and web assets. We manage assets for well over 1,000 SKUs.
- In 2013, the team received 1,032 requests for work and completed 708 projects. Those numbers are pretty raw, but those numbers got the attention of the global VP of the Electrolux small appliances division, who commented, “Wow. That’s a lot of work. I see the value in having an in-house design team.”