A common challenge that in-house agencies (IHAs) have always faced is difficulty in training and hiring the talent they need to pull off excellent creative. Unfortunately, this strain doesn’t seem to be going away. According to a survey by the ANA, 44% of US IHAs cite attracting top-tier talent as a primary creative content concern. And it’s not just about merely acquiring talent: an even bigger challenge they face lies in keeping their talent energized.

It’s no surprise, then, that so many external partnerships for IHAs revolve around two key capabilities: executing ideas in new and interesting ways, or offering access to specialized skillsets. Both are key in today’s digital landscape, which is defined as an age of hyperadoption, in which users adopt and drop new behaviors at an unprecedented rate. In addition to all of the channels that are cropping up, you don’t even know which will stick around a few years down the line.

As brands gauge the next big channels they’ll use to connect with consumers, they must adopt new digital skillsets in lockstep. But given the talent concerns mentioned above, how can IHAs keep up with these shifting user behaviors? The answer lies in new breeds of partnership that give IHAs the skills and tools they need to fulfill the brand promise in ways that not only stand out and “wow” consumers, but make sense to them.

Stand Out by Innovating Strategically

In his talk at the IHAF Conference this week, which brings together and celebrates hundreds of in-house agency professionals, Forrester analyst Jay Pattisall discussed the importance of creative differentiation. Most digital experiences look and feel the same, opening an opportunity for brands to stand out through best-in-class creative. Fitting well within the conference’s theme of “Futureproof,” Pattisall set his focus on recent shifts in the creative landscape, and where IHAs fit within it.

IHAs have thrived thanks in part to their unrivalled brand knowledge; they understand the purpose, intricacies and nuances of their brand. As Darren Abbott, SVP, Creative at Hallmark said while noting the power of IHAs to their brands: “We’re not part of Hallmark, we make it Hallmark.”

Yet executing their vision in an environment that encompasses so many emerging channels can be tough. New partnership models that aim to augment in-house teams’ understanding of technology, or that push them to think in new ways, can aid in both forecasting future opportunities and identifying the best channels available today for bringing the brand experience to life.

If you’re intrigued by some of today’s emergent technology, consider putting it through what MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar calls the “trend lens.” Discussed in his skill session at the IHAF Conference, “Extending Beyond the Horizon,” ter Haar described the trend lens as a strategy through which you can gauge the maturity of emerging tech as it rises up—or drops off from—the hype curve. It’s how we help brands arrive at solutions that best fit their capabilities and needs.

Let Your Brand Story Drive Tech Investment

The assessment specifically measures how a technology or platform meets user behavior (what consumers are doing with it) and distribution (how widely it’s adopted). VR, for example, isn’t distributed among consumers as well as AR is; this makes the former more ideal for installations and trade shows, while the latter serves as a popular way for consumers to simultaneously connect with brands and communicate with friends on mobile.

The trend lens works because it asks brands to really consider how their audience naturally behaves on a given channel. But brands must ensure that the creative idea is aligned with a clear business goal. At MediaMonks, for example, we don’t strive to sell brands on whatever the hot, novel technology of the day is. Instead, we experiment to push technology to its limit ourselves, then pay those learnings forward to help brands approach emerging tech strategically and tell their stories the best way they can.

Again, an IHA’s strength stems from its passion and knowledge of the brand. External partnerships that challenge their approach to creative and assess new opportunities granted by emerging tech are essential for futureproofing and connecting with consumers as the digital landscape continues to evolve.

This week, New York welcomed not only foreign leaders and dignitaries at the United Nations headquarters—the city also embraced some of the best and brightest in the world of advertising, marketing and technology. Yes, Advertising Week New York—one of six Advertising Week events held around the world—came to offer thought leadership, workshops and more with 1,216 speakers and over 290 different events.

There was much to ponder and celebrate throughout the week. At the Clio Awards, eight awards were distributed among three projects that we contributed to: the Uncensored Playlist, Mind the Gap and the geolocation-based revamp of the “Runaway Train” music video. We also made placement on Adweek’s 100 Fastest Growing Agencies list, and our VP of Marketing Kate Richling was shortlisted for Advertising Week’s Future is Female platform.

But that’s enough patting ourselves on the back. What were the brands up to in all the fray? Our recap explores three big topics from one of the biggest weeks in advertising—namely what’s driving the in-housing trend, how brands are working creatively with data and the new collaborative partnerships that are helping brands respond to both those opportunities.

Getting Closer to Consumers through In-Housing

One thing that’s become undoubtedly clear across the course of the week is that brands are seeking ways to take back control. For many, this has manifest in a trend to take their creative and media capabilities in-house. Often attributed to goals like lowering cost or time to market, there are in fact many reasons why brands feel they can do creative better on their own terms and turf, as explored at the Brand Innovators summit, which coincided with Advertising Week.

A major goal behind the in-housing trend is a need to get closer to the consumer. As traditional brands grow with widening product lines and more channels to communicate through, they risk losing coherence or consistency within the brand-consumer relationship.

At a panel on in-housing, Spencer Gordon of Anheuser-Busch discussed how going in-house ensured that a dedicated team in the brand would always be thinking about creative. This enabled them to pursue consumers with greater relevance and brand understanding. But Gordon noted that the initiative achieved big results by first starting small; with four employees focused on providing social assets solely for the Michelob Ultra product, the team has since scaled to 63 members that deliver for all of AB InBev’s brands.

In the same panel, Ryan Riess, Director of Social Strategy and Content at the Hershey Company, similarly discussed how supporting such a large variety of brands (15 of them!) drove them to become more consumer-centric. Hershey felt they could do creative better on their own—particularly in creating platform-specific content that would better connect with their customers. That’s a very specific way that brands can better drive relevance by maintaining an always-on relationship with their consumers, requiring brands to have a clear idea not only of themselves, but their consumers as well.

Purposeful Use of Data for Empathy and Impact

How brands can gain that understanding of the consumer was another major topic of discussion throughout the week. But businesses have come up with interesting ways to accomplish this; a notable example is Target’s internal media company Roundel. In the Advertising Week panel “Climbing Over Walls: Real People Data in an Automated World,” Roundel’s VP Dave Peterson noted: “The data is extremely important, but it’s as much on the human side as it is on the data. We call it the IQ side for data and the EQ for the human side of things.”

This purposeful interplay between both the technical and emotional sides of data provides Roundel with learnings they can use to strengthen the relationship between the retailer, their customers and the CPG partners whose products line the shelves. “Going back to our enterprise view at Target about putting our guests at the center of everything we do, our goal really is to enhance the shopping experience,” Peterson said. “Media works best when it’s in everyone’s benefit.”

And that’s a point that resonates well with MediaMonks founder Wesley ter Haar, who gave a keynote address at the Brand Innovators event on Tuesday afternoon. Exploring the challenge between what he calls “personalized pleasure versus personalized panic”—that delicate balance between consumers’ desire for relevance and concern for privacy—he honed in on the need for empathy to become a driving force in everything you do. “We can never stop prioritizing empathy,” he said. “Empathy and engineering must work hand-in-hand in the future.”

Closing the Creative and Data Divide

While Roundel is an interesting example of bridging together the intelligent and emotional quotients in data, they’re not alone: several brands noted the need for marketing and IT to come together to deliver unforgettable customer experiences that build brand love. On the panel “Rethinking TV: Driving Growth, Relationships and Experience Through Data,” Sir Martin Sorrell joined GM’s Global CMO Deborah Wahl, where the two examined how brands must look beyond the typical TVC approach for more scalable, personal and relevant creative.

Wahl gave her brand’s perspective on how impact and effectiveness are table stakes today, and how she works closely with data to achieve it. “We have a chief data officer at GM. We spend a lot of time together, really understanding: ‘What are you learning, what are the insights, how are we going after it?’” she said. “That helps you form better creative briefs so you get a big idea, and then really make sure we can execute that across different channels.”

It sounds like GM has a good rhythm going, but for many brands, closing that IT and creative gap can feel like a struggle. Showing teamwork in action, the S4 family—Sir Martin, ter Haar and Emily Del Greco (President of the Americas, MightyHive)—came together the following day to join Joana Coles (Founder and CCO, Boudica) in a panel discussion about the S4 Capital model and its place within the future of advertising. Coles set the scene for discussion: if you’re not a holding company, she asked, “What the hell are you then?”

The trio’s responses became a multi-faceted examination of collaboration and partnership. Sir Martin drew a line between how S4 operates versus holding companies that impose constraints around the businesses they contain. Instead, he suggested, S4 took inspiration from tech companies who are disruptive by nature. Ter Haar added: “With traditional work, there’s a conservatism that you can’t marry data with being creative.” It’s precisely that challenge that brands are grappling with now, driving that need for control examined above.

Del Greco noted how aligning data and creative so closely together enables brands to take more risks with confidence. “MediaMonks is about taking the risk, and MightyHive comes quickly with feedback [backed by data],” she said. As iteration and agility have become key to success in today’s always-on environment, this ability to experiment and take learnings will become crucial for future-focused brands.

As Advertising Week draws to a close, we’re energized by the creative wins that brands have have been able to share. Looking at the next year into the future, it will be interesting to see how the landscape further evolves—and how new partnerships will enable brands to achieve a more customer-led focus by closing the gap between data and creative.