Why have one brain when you can have 45?
Do you find yourself lacking drive and creativity? Certainly throughout the pandemic when each day you are staring at the same four walls and most of your inspiration comes from the weekly shop at BIG Tesco’s. It’s difficult, but do you know what keeps me going? Agency life. The fact that no two days are the same, that we are constantly challenged by the change in audience behaviours, clients expectations and ourselves, to think bigger and better, time and time again. So why do I hear that the agency model is dead? Surely not!
Back in 2018 there was a lot of chat surrounding the death of agencies. Did it happen? Of course not. Big brands proceeded to take creative and production skills in-house to better align their marketing strategies to their creative output, however, these divisions still ended up outsourcing to smaller agencies like ourselves. The research found that 72% of corporations have an in-house agency, up 12.5% year-on-year. However, these in-house agencies often lack the support that an external agency would get. This is because there is not the same preparation going into creative collaborations with in-house teams compared to external agencies. Which results in a lower standard of work output and cohesion between their in-house agency and marketing department.
It also seems that once the agency is in-house, the hierarchy of stakeholders seem to limit their ability to contribute fully, where by, external agencies will build these milestone conversations and amends into their project timeline, resulting in the work being produced on time and within the key objectives set out for them. This is not me saying that internal agencies/departments are useless, I just do not believe they are allowed the same autonomy as an agency that an external one would deliver.
Think about it, we have 45 employees all specialising in different areas of video, animation, content strategy and audio marketing, all adding their two pence to the concept brainstorm. Sounds like mayhem right? Some people may hate that but I believe that makes for creative genius. You just can't get that same level of diversity within one department. Also, we have already fleshed out our concepts internally before submitting to the brand for them to do the same, you basically get double the work, for the price of one.
Finally, we work with lots of different brands and audiences day in day out. We understand new trends hitting the market and research things like “Why Gen Z are different to Millennials”, then use this information to leverage the best results for your campaigns. Can you do that in house? Maybe… but we do this throughout all markets, not just the one, giving us a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
I truly believe that with our strong vision and creative autonomy within our agency, we will continue to support incredible brands to help develop their marketing strategies and reach their target audience, with no nonsense content. Shameless plug, I know.
