Social distancing has radically transformed the way we live and work, forcing teams to collaborate with one another remotely and requiring brands engage with digital audiences in new ways. Despite this unprecedented moment of change, one thing remains constant: customers’ desire for connection, entertainment and content. How can in-house agencies keep up?

Meeting these needs will test the strategies and models driving brands’ in-house agencies. While IHA’s are known for their proximity to the client, cost efficiencies and speed of delivery, they must adapt in navigating the “new normal” we’ve all found ourselves in. Below offers some tips on where to focus your efforts in continuing to meet your audience’s needs without sacrificing quality and efficiency.

Double Down on Customer Obsession

Brand experiences thrive on inspiring an emotional connection by bringing people together and meeting customers’ needs where and when it matters most. With this, in-house agencies have a big advantage: they know the brand better than anyone else, often serving as a conduit between decision-makers and consumers. By aligning an understanding of customers’ needs and the brand’s purpose, in-house agencies are ideally positioned to recognize the new needs of their audience and enhance the customer experience.

“The first thing that brands are faced with is to go back and look at their brand purpose,” says Warren Chase, Chief Operating Officer of Firewood Marketing, which merged with MediaMonks late last year. “How are they anchored in that purpose and keeping their customers interested and engaged?”

At this time, having a clear dedication to purpose means recognizing how customers have been impacted by COVID-19—whether it’s a need for entertainment, managing stressors in their lives, a drive for connection or something else. “How can brands empathize with customers?” asks Chase. “Just be honest, transparent and open. Once you have that openness and transparency, people understand.” And that sentiment isn’t limited to customers alone; Chase mentioned how Uber, just as COVID-19 began spreading significantly in the United States, notified users of proactive steps the brand was taking to protect their drivers.

Next, consider how well set-up your in-house team is at acting fast in response to shifting customer needs. The mass push to staying at home might be only the first big change we see this year; as consumers come together through new ways of interacting and engaging, brands and their internal agencies must keep on their toes to realize opportunities for connection.

“All brands operate differently and say they involve the agency at different stages—some further upstream, some further down. When you’re in house, there’s proximity to leadership, to insights and data, and to decision-makers,” says Chase. “You get alignment super-fast when new needs or opportunities arise.”

Working From Home Doesn’t Sacrifice Quality

Having a brand strategy and to recognize opportunity is one thing, but how do you continue producing content when your in-house team is literally working at their houses? Production at home is still doable; even if mobility and personnel are seriously limited, you can still strategize around offering impactful content with just a single room, a single actor and a smart media plan.

This is an excellent opportunity for your team to heighten its creative efficiency through a fit-for-format approach to producing content. One of the simplest ways to do so is by refreshing or optimizing existing content in a way that quickly results in relevant assets at scale. We’ve taken a similar approach in transforming a handful of existing assets into a social awareness campaign that grew more effective week after week, using performance metrics to continually optimize and drill deeper into audience segments.

This same method could be incredibly useful for brands who must reassess a content strategy, optimizing it to better reach consumers at home via digital channels. When high-quality stock video is added to the mix, you can keep your creative content current by translating the brand narrative to different contexts with the footage available. And through fast, scalable digital animation techniques, you can continue producing fresh, new content without missing a beat.

Proactively Build Digital Maturity

While digital transformation has been slow and incremental over several years, brands have only begun to recognize the imperative to elevate the need for creative, differentiated digital experiences due to COVID-19’s rapid spread around the world. But for in-house teams lacking the digital maturity and skillset required to make such a rapid change, brands can fill in capabilities gaps through partnerships.

Marketing Dive notes that filling these skill gaps can be challenging amidst hiring freezes and cost-cutting in response to the pandemic. “My belief is that marketers and companies will not look to take on full-time employees in lieu of [third-party services providers] during the downturn, the reason being that there is a tremendous amount of costs with doing so,” Forrester Principal Analyst Jay Pattisall told the publication. “Companies will likely want to outsource those to the extent that they can, because in the long-run, that’s a more cost-effective way to deal with it than making significant investments in employee infrastructure.”

This is the time for brands to act boldly, with a need to reach customers like never before. Whether adapting production efficiencies or finding new ways to reach customers within a shifting digital landscape, there are many options available for in-house agencies to better respond to audience needs through customer obsession. Thankfully, in-house agencies are well-equipped to adapt, and despite these rapid changes one thing should remain: a dedication to solving consumers’ needs through creative expertise, a clear sense of purpose and unparalleled brand knowledge.

It’s time for IHA’s to reassess strategies and reactivate customer obsession.

The number of businesses turning their creative efforts in-house is on the rise. So why do so many of them continue to work with external agencies?

Despite the rise in businesses turning in-house, about 77% of them continue to work with external partners. While that might sound like an oxymoron, external support is hardly obsolete in this new landscape—rather, the business relationship has changed. From lowering costs to boosting engagement, global reach and turnaround time, there are plenty of reasons in-house agencies are looking outside for assistance.

They need digital expertise.

Last year, digital work accounted for more than half of U.S. agency revenue. Still, explosive growth of platforms and data can cause challenges for some internal teams trying to realize their creative ambitions digitally.

Imagine you’ve published some really awesome findings in a whitepaper. There’s some good stuff in there, particularly for a younger audience, but there’s a problem—young folks don’t typically have the patience to read through a whitepaper. That’s why Prudential turned to us to help reimagine their “80 Year-Old Millennial” study as an engaging, interactive digital aptitude test.

“Creating an experience enabled us to spark that thought in the minds of millennials in a much more impactful way than simply handing them the results of our study,” said Niharika Shah, VP and Head of Brand Marketing & Advertising at Prudential. In addition to the digital test, we built a 3D printing arm that constructed an explorable, 3D landscape of participants’ futures.

They seek a global perspective.

A key challenge global brands face is tailoring their message to local audiences around the world. 67% of internal teams operate out of just one central location, making it tough to deliver upon local communities’ needs with a culturally relevant message. Organizations with global offices and talent can therefore provide some much-needed perspective when it comes to reaching audiences around the world.

Few things unite the world like football, so when Adidas strove to build an ecommerce platform for designing custom team uniforms, their creative team required a partner who could understand the diverse global markets that enjoy the sport. Our one-stop platform opened first to European markets and is rolling out to others around the world—just one of many localized projects we’ve collaborated on with the brand.

They want to cut costs—but increase quality.

Cost is a big challenge businesses face, and is often what prompts them to go in-house in the first place: 46% of internal agencies mentioned reduced costs as one of their top benefits from working with an external support. But it’s important to brands that their partners don’t cut corners, as quality of work and adherence to brand standards are just as, if not more, important to an IHA.

One example of how internal agencies can attain better-quality work is by working with a partner that can take an integrated approach to production. This is a process and framework for developing dynamic content catered to several specific user personas, including local markets, at greater efficiency, allowing for increased relevance without complicating the production process. For example, we were able to quickly roll out email campaigns to 25 global markets in 15 different languages using this method for an Adidas campaign. It’s an approach that not every partner is equipped to take, showcasing how internal agencies can–and should–be discerning even when costs are a concern.

They need good work—and fast.

Many businesses turn in-house so they can deliver on work more swiftly. That means anyone they work with must likewise have a fast turnaround time, particularly in the production phase of their campaign, which requires smart use of resources and technical know-how.

Made for Digital helped Hunkemöller cut costs in time and finances (but not cut corners) for their Bra Party campaign using an integrated production process. This allowed Hunkemöller to create 118 different deliverables for several platforms (TV, print, radio and social) with just one production budget and shoot. Because the campaign would go live across the world, Made for Digital included diverse sets and models to easily frame content across markets. As you can imagine, this approach doesn’t just involve production resources, but also some savvy scheduling.

They want extra advice or guidance.

One of the most important benefits that external partners can provide to internal teams is extensive experience on strategy, creative and production. While internal teams know their brands better than anyone, external support can provide an outside perspective that helps businesses free themselves from preconceived notions, diagnose any challenges they might face and help them better deliver on their audience expectation.

A good partner’s value extends beyond narrow requirements like simply reducing cost or production timelines. “Cost efficients are important for in-house agencies,” Wayne Barringer, director of creative services at the Boeing Co., told Adweek. “But they are not the silver bullet. Why? Because most external agencies aren’t chosen because they’re the cheapest—they have superpowers. We should emphasize our superpowers more.”

External agencies have experience and knowledge from working on a variety of projects across markets, industries and business units. Internal agencies can have a lot to gain from tapping into that breadth and scope of experience: a strategic organization can gauge your digital maturity, then find the right solutions that fit your needs. From there, an external agency can provide advice and leadership on how to grow that ecosystem.

It’s clear that internal agencies have their own strengths: a clear understanding of the brand, lowered operational costs, fast turnaround time and more. With external partnerships, these internal agencies can enhance the great work they do without slowing down production or adding significant cost. We Monks are all about helping others put their minds at ease, so that setup sounds good to us.