A high performing internal agency
We want your competitors to wish they had an internal agency like yours, and your designers and writers to feel proud of the work they do. We can support them as much or as little as you need. We can run creative workshops or embed a CD on call. We’ll raise creative standards and inspire your people. We’ll identify leaders and help them to progress.
Launch of Home Insurance product with Ageas with internal team read full case study here
Bringing creative inhouse is often the very logical step. Obviously there are cost efficiencies, and also authenticity, reactiveness, creative being closer to new initiatives means natural design thinkers are in the room from the beginning. If you’ve taken this step, there are three parts to consider: structure, product and culture. Getting all three right is what makes an internal agency out-perform the reassuringly expensive, annoyingly less reactive external creative agency.
Structure
This is about recruiting the right people with the right skills and identifying and mentoring leaders and everyone in the team. And also about process: ensuring creative briefs are thought through, review and delivery schedules are sensible, and sign off is robust. It’s also ensuring wash ups and learnings are found from projects that have gone well, and those that went not so well. This is the structure that creative teams need around them. In agencies account managers, traffic and producers do this, too often with in house teams this gets forgotten which is when stress levels rise and standards slip.
Product
We’re raising the creative bar. This means inspiring designers and writers to push themselves, rather than be be pushed. Agencies do this well having a creative heavy-weight leading. Someone who understands the market, audience insights and can deliver inspiring creative direction and who knows how to avoid stuck and staid. Staying fresh is what agencies do well, and being uncompromising and self-critical on quality is what they are paid for. Brands need to do the same.
Culture
Inviting creative in-house needs managing. There may need to be a shift in culture in the organisation to get the best out of them. And a shift amongst creatives too to see the opportunities of working in-house. Breaking down silos and understanding the creative process will pay dividends across the organisation. Because creatives are the natural-born design thinkers on your team.
Creative workshops
- Brief writing
- Proposition development
- Techniques in Creative Idea Generation
- Copywriting and tone of voice
- Design that works hard
- Email marketing workshop
- Brainstorming leading workshop
- Content Strategy workshop
Creative Director On-the-team
The support of an experienced Creative Director.
- Mentoring, support in-house teams, raise the creative bar
- Creative decision making – reduces ‘10 people around the mac’ syndrome
- Briefing and creative leading on projects with other external suppliers as your CD (freelance writers/designers, tech agencies etc)
- Creative concepts and supporting your people to deliver original concepts themselves and avoid stuck and staid. Creative reviews, concept development, brainstorming etc
- Overseeing and Creatively Direct delivery from your teams
- Approvals and sign off
- More efficient, more effective delivery
Creative Concepts
It could be that you don’t expect your internal resource to come up with campaign ideas themselves but they do have all the skills to execute them. It could be your social media team just need new ideas, but are more than capable of running with them once they have them. We can deliver just the concepts and creative strategies, brief your people on executing them and then oversee your designers, copywriters or tech teams in a more traditional Creative Director’s role to deliver them.
Additional resource
Capacity can be an issue. Or the specialist skills might not be there. Through our network (we call it the daisy chain, of course!) we can put you in touch with trusted professionals who can pick up the slack. Specialist copywriters, designers, branding experts, strategists and filmmakers. motion graphics designers or photographers. And when capacity frees up again and if the skills are there, the project can be taken back inhouse and we’ll take on a supportive role in the handover. It’s about being flexible, and getting the right creative solution as cost effectively as possible.
Discover
Understand the situation, and the problem we need to solve. Focus on the customer. Insights. Their needs, wants, behaviours and objections. Competitors and the market.
Design
The story we need to tell. Strategies planned, propositions, messaging and customer journeys mapped out. Concepts and wireframes and creative direction agreed.
Deliver
The deliverables. Everything made, signed, sealed and delivered. Designs completed and all copy written. Images created, pixel perfect artwork, all strategies completed. And sent live and hand-overs done.
Develop
Evolving the product. We’ll have agreed a testing strategy, but what comes next? We’ll review results and agree changes. Reset our KPIs and design and deliver the next stage