10 Questions to Ask When Deciding to Build an In-house Creative Department vs. Hiring an Agency

One of the biggest challenges Marketing Leaders face today is developing, managing, and evolving their org chart to meet the needs of the business. Within that more considerable challenge, are the questions of in-sourcing vs. outsourcing, how to vet potential agency partners, and finally, how to manage them. Over the course of my career, I've managed various models in producing creative, and I frequently get questions on how to build an internal Creative team, as well as how to vet/manage agencies and I thought I would share some thoughts on this topic.

Over the next few weeks, I will break this topic into smaller pieces, but this week, we'll start with the insource vs. outsource decision.

Should we build an in-house Creative Services Team or hire an outside agency?

It is difficult to say definitively whether more companies are building in-house Creative Services teams or hiring outside agencies, as it can depend on a variety of factors, such as the size of the company, the nature of its business, and its available resources. However, as skills like graphic design and video production have become more commonplace, the trend is moving toward insourcing or implementing a hybrid model of mixing in-house and external resources for their creative needs.

Companies choose to build in-house creative teams because it can give them more control over the creative process, allow for closer collaboration, and potentially save costs in the long run. Other companies may prefer to hire outside agencies because they have specialized expertise, fresh perspectives, and the ability to bring in new ideas.

Ultimately, the decision to build an in-house team or hire an outside agency depends on the specific needs and goals, and here are ten questions to ask yourself as you sort through this important decision.

1) How many people do you have or can you hire?

It's a pretty simple decision if you don't have enough people on your team or the option to hire enough people to create and execute the work internally. Therefore you need to start by creating a vision and a plan. What does the future look like? What specific deliverables do you need to execute that vision and plan?

Hiring one person to take on your graphic design responsibilities may work if you're a smaller organization. It's unrealistic, however, to believe one person can take on packaging design, web/digital design, creative strategy, copywriting, social media, photography, and videography.

Suppose you want to create a full-service in-house creative team that can meet the needs of Marketing deliverables in today's world. In that case, you will need multiple people to take on all of those disciplines and hire a Traffic Coordinator to manage the briefing, reviewing, and implementation process.

When I led the Marketing Department at Dogfish Head, we managed 95% of our work in-house, and the quantity of output was pretty prolific. The team consisted of four Graphic Designers (one of whom served as the Creative Director), one Digital Content Producer (video and photo), one social media coordinator, one PR coordinator, and one Traffic Coordinator. Copywriting was a collaborative effort and was supported by a well-defined brand strategy.

By having a variety of people who specialized in specific disciplines and had a clear understanding of their responsibilities, we could deliver a high volume of work with a very high level of quality. The team was very collaborative and open to feedback on the work they produced, but overall this was a team of 15 for a fairly small company.

Insourcing is definitely an option if you have sufficient headcount or budget available to hire specialists in all creative disciplines.

I highly recommend collaborating with your CFO on building this model. Some CFOs hate adding overhead and prefer the flexibility that outsourcing provides. On the other hand, some CFOs understand how expensive agencies can be, view that as a wasted expense, and love the cost savings that insourcing provides. Take some time to understand their preferences and get them in your corner when you present your recommendation to the CEO or Management Team.

2) What is your access to talent?

Even if you have the budget to hire a bunch of specialists, you need to consider your access to the talent that meets your expectations. Are you based in a larger market with a large population of people who have the skillset and experience you need, or are you in a smaller market where finding someone with packaging design experience will be difficult? Is your compensation model one that will allow you to attract the right level of talent?

Finding GREAT talent is difficult these days, and it's much more challenging in smaller markets, especially for highly specialized skills. You may be able to find that "needle in a haystack" once, but what happens if that person departs the organization? Will you be able to find a replacement? Can you convince the right person to relocate? Are you open to remote work?

Some larger companies have decided to relocate their Marketing Team to larger markets to have more access to talent. It depends on your industry, but I'm not a fan of this approach as the Marketing Team needs to understand and contribute to a company's culture. When everyone is remote, that connection disappears.

These are all questions you should ask as you analyze your talent pipeline.

3) What is the best use of your time?

You're in charge of the department, and how you organize your team will dramatically impact how you spend your time and your productivity.

If you have budget constraints and can make up for that by allocating more of your time to providing strategic direction, writing/reviewing briefs, conducting 1x1s, etc., insourcing could be a great option.

If your time is already tight with frequent travel, managing up, and building relationships with peers or customers, you should think twice about insourcing or expect to hire additional people to fill that void. There's a reason agencies have Creatives, Account Services, and Strategists - they all do different things. Don't expect your graphic designers to suddenly become Account Directors or Strategists. In an insourced model, YOU need to fill those needs or hire someone to do them.

Being honest with yourself about how you spend your time, your skillset, and your capabilities as you make this decision is critical.

4) What are the deliverables?

This is pretty obvious, but you must be clear on what needs to be delivered. Does your plan call for a big-budget above-the-line campaign with multiple media deliverables? Or are you more focused on sales collateral and shopper marketing? If it is the former, you'll need to think through all of the different tasks necessary to create a great campaign, buy the media, hire talent, the list goes on. Again, don't just expect to hand this over to a Creative and call it good.

5) How important is it to get outside your own echo chamber of ideas?

Insourcing your creative WILL lead to an echo chamber of ideas, there is just no way around it. How important is it for your team to truly be disruptive?

The echo chamber inevitably happens for a couple of reasons:

1. Your team is working on one category and one brand full-time, so the same thought processes and ideas start to get recycled. There are ways to combat this, but they won't replace the different experiences an agency that works on multiple pieces of business have.
2. Your team is reading trade industry publications analyzing direct competitors, which influences their thought process.

Of course, being a specialist within a specific industry is also advantageous. An experienced team can be a significant advantage and substantially improve time efficiency.

What is more important to you? Again, be objective, assess what the business needs, and base your decision on that. You probably can't have your cake and eat it too here.

6) What is the cadence of your work?

Are there significant peaks and valleys in the cadence of your deliverables? If so, outsourcing makes more sense. If there are no valleys and only peaks, consider a hybrid model where you bring in some creative reinforcements to get through those peaks. Just make sure to plan and give yourself time to find the resources and properly onboard them.

I also recommend auditing and/or tracking the number of deliverables your team produces in a year. I managed a team that produced over 2500 deliverables in a year. This was an incredibly valuable data point as it helped me understand the average amount of time a person would spend on a project. It allowed me to think twice about our priorities and what was assigned.

Can your team feasibly take on ALL of the necessary work? For example, if you have two graphic designers and need to produce 2500 deliverables in a year, that is an average of 1.5 hours per deliverable. That's not setting your team up for success! Be realistic.

7) How important is it to have multiple options/solutions to consider?

Per the example above, one of the biggest challenges of having an in-house creative team is time. When a company has an internal resource like a graphic designer, they think it's free, and a bunch of frivolous projects are thrown their way.

This must be managed!

Even if it is managed, their time will still be at a premium; as a result, they tend to provide one option for review per project. It's not optimal but it's what happens when time is crunched.

If you're a marketing leader that needs to see multiple options before making a decision, I highly recommend outsourcing. Packaging design is a process that requires multiple concepts and usually multiple people working on it. This is why I chose to outsource packaging design even when I had an in-house design team.

8)?Do you want to be challenged?

As in, do you want someone to challenge your thinking? Most in-house Creative Teams will follow the direction of their leader. That's not to criticize those people and their competencies or strategic thinking; it's just a pattern of behavior that starts to develop when one person reports to another. Fostering a culture of productive dialogue will help prevent falling into this trap, but it will require ongoing management.

Good agencies will challenge thinking more often; some Marketing Leaders want and need this. If you fall into that category, outsourcing is the way to go.

9)?How much access to data and consumer insights do you have?

Most small companies are challenged when it comes to data and insights. Depending on their size, an agency partner can be an excellent resource for data and insights that you might not be able to access otherwise.

If you go the insourced route, I highly recommend creating a pipeline of information for your Creative Team to chew on. This might simply come in the form of a brief that clearly states an insight, or it might come in the form of sending them out in the field to conduct their research. No matter what, don't ignore the fact that your Creative Team needs strategy and insights to do their job best.

10)?What is the right decision for your company culture?

Building an internal team can help align the creative work with your company culture and values, but finding the right fit may be difficult. An outside agency may be able to bring a diverse range of perspectives and ideas to the table but may not have the same level of understanding of your company culture.

Marketing Leaders need to "read the room" on this one and possibly even build some alignment with their peers to make the right decision.

Hopefully, this list of questions provides insight into making the insource vs. outsource decision. Don't forget that a hybrid model might be the best option. In my newsletter next week, I'll dive into the process of choosing the right agency partner, and finding one that compliments your internal team will undoubtedly be a big part of that.