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.

Today’s marketing ecosystem relies on always-on content shared across many channels and tailored to individual user preferences. With new ways of delivering and consuming content comes a need for new ways of working and building partner relationships.

A Forrester report released in early 2019 explores the unique challenges that digital transformation poses to brands and CMOs in particular, who must ensure a better customer experience through the process. But that experience is impacted by a number of factors across the digital landscape, prompting organizations to rethink how they do business at every level. This can manifest in pivoting to new platforms, supporting new content channels or optimizing the production process for deliverables at scale.

Engaging in these challenges, brands are sure to highlight specific needs in their ongoing digital transformation. Once they’ve elevated this need—an optimized transcreation process, for example—brands require a new partnership model that can provide the needed expertise over the long term. According to the Forrester report mentioned above, “CMOs should challenge traditional agencies and insist on new pricing models — asking for a shared risk/revenue approach to test the willingness of their strategic partners to commit to results.”

Rising to meet this need is the integrated partner model, in which we custom-build teams centered on solving key challenges and specific needs for brands—a relationship so closely aligned that we don’t call them “clients,” but rather partners. In the center of this relationship (a unique blend of agency, consultancy and semi in-house/semi-global studio) is the brand ambassador, who cements the relationship between us and our partners.

Strategizing with Shared Risk and Goals

A key benefit of the integrated production partnership is that your custom-built team can reside in-house on a permanent or partial basis. The proximity that the brand ambassador has between an organization and the larger MediaMonks network allows for more quick, agile response to the brand’s needs, whether it be a need to scale up operations, offload some bandwidth or strategize new opportunities.

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This is particularly useful for established or legacy brands seeking to adapt to something new—a need that’s become all but required in our fast-changing digital landscape. The digital experience is a primary pillar for any brand, and today’s environment requires they explore and adopt entirely new ways of thinking and working. This is especially important for brands that are beginning to embark on a journey of digital transformation, as an integrated production partner can provide both creative and technical expertise to help organizations execute their goals while protecting their brand.

For example, one sector that’s been dramatically altered by digital disruption is that of ecommerce, wholesale and retail. One of our partners is heavily experienced in offline retail, but found an opportunity to step into the digital wholesale space. Because this was a new environment for our partner to play in, it was important that they had easy access to a UX strategy expert to whom they could consult for help in designing and implementing the digital purchasing experience.

This resulted in the team’s Lead UX Designer serving as a key brand ambassador in the partnership, whose primary responsibilities are to lead workshops, sit down with product owners and draw up a roadmap with key stakeholders in the company. “These talks become much more regular and prominent throughout the development and execution process, as opposed to getting a brief and then building a solution,” says Louise Martens, Executive Producer at MediaMonks LA. What results is a close, long-term partnership focused on future-proofing and sustained success.

In researching how to implement the best UX for this partner’s platform, we recommended conducting user interviews—something the partner was originally reticent about.

But our brand ambassador was able to understand, relay and engage with those concerns to eventually make the case for the interviews’ usefulness. “The insights gleaned from those interviews shifted the course of the project for the better,” says Martens. “Thanks to the embedded model, the brand could quickly pivot to respond to new insights without taking the project off-track.

Safeguarding Brands with Design Acumen

We’re well aware of how essential it is for brands to safeguard themselves, whether it be ensuring a consistent experience across markets and touchpoints, or placing work in hands they can trust to understand and execute the brand’s voice. This concern is right at the heart of the integrated production partnership, which is dedicated to upholding and protecting design standards while lightening its workload.

This is achieved by having the production talent and experience on the ground to inform the strategy provided to partners. Traditional consultancies may be focused primarily on business strategy and its technical implementations, but our brand ambassadors provide partners with an open door to the vast creative talent available in our network. With our own high visual standards, we strive to be proactive in seeking new opportunities to showcase partners’ brands with best-in-class design.

While preparing for its annual keynote presentation, for example, one partner sought out bold, flashy animations to ensure its points stuck. While this work was outside the scope of our typical, day-to-day deliverables with the partner, our flexible setup connected them with an animation team capable of bringing their design needs to life. Because the partner had a very specific look and feel in mind for the project, fluid communication between both parties—a process streamlined by the ambassador at the center, who has a clear understanding of their brand’s design philosophy—ensured it could be done quickly and to standard.

A Long-Term Partnership Designed for Success

One of the reasons why an integrated partnership brand ambassador can facilitate these projects so easily is because they work so closely with the brand, often partially in-house. This proximity provides complete transparency on both sides of the aisle, and helps the brand ambassador gauge what bandwidth is available for finishing projects or optimizing the workflow.

The integrated production partnership model means that both parties have skin in the game and have a shared desire for success across the board. For the partner whose ecommerce platform is discussed above, we found an opportunity to optimize its B2B platforms as well. This process began with optimizing the existing UI and creating a new design system informed by continuous user testing. From there, we’re looking forward to implementing new features into the platform to improve customer experience worldwide.

This goal for a more holistic brand experience drives home what makes this nature of partnership so unique: it might be designed to specifically tackle one goal, but over time capabilities can evolve with a brand’s needs, with the brand ambassador available at arm’s length to kick off talks and help source talent. From there, organizations are better equipped to adapt to any need that crops up in the fast-changing digital landscape they seek to carve a path through.

Brands seek ways to deliver content faster, at-scale and at a lesser cost—all without diminishing quality. Pulling off each of these might sound impossible, though the integrated production partnership model is ideal for meeting these needs by lending organizations with the support and resources they need. Still, brands will have to take some initial steps to ensure success when working in these partnerships.

An integrated production partnership provides brands with a core team custom-built to their unique challenges and goals, whether it be producing content, optimizing work streams, easing workloads or platform support. Designed for the long term, integrated production partnerships start small but can easily scale up and flex out to meet new challenges and opportunities (for example, localizing in a new market). But despite the convenience of an integrated team, no major change is without growing pains. If you’re considering investing in an integrated production partnership for your brand, take some time to mull over these considerations for success first.

Be Open to Change

Because integrated production partnerships are built from the ground up to support brands’ unique needs, each one begins with a discovery phase that identifies key challenges and their solutions. This process raises questions that can range from fairly basic to quite specific, prompting brands to lay it all out and take a long, hard look at the way they operate.

One major step within this phase includes a data boot camp. Throughout this data audit, we work with the brand to understand what data is available and how it can be used more efficiently across levels of the organization. “Instead of letting data go into a black hole, we can choose a handful of the most necessary data points to focus on,” says Louise Martens, Head of Embedded Production at MediaMonks.

Unlocking data potential often involves revising work streams across an organization—for example, breaking down departmental silos—which requires a brand and its stakeholders to be open and honest about the challenges they face. But nothing is off-limits, and any challenge raised should be viewed as an opportunity.

Look Toward the Future

Once we’ve discovered the most relevant or needed key data points available, we can put them to action by cementing key KPIs that result in success. This takes us to the next major step in discovery: developing a forecast calendar. It can be difficult for brands to extend their view six months to a year into the future, especially when business decisions or priorities can change at a moment’s notice.

Ter Haar asks this all the time: “Will we be relevant in X?” That X could be years, months, or even weeks in the future. While it once was easier for brands to forecast far ahead, that distance is rapidly shrinking, which can be scary for an organization to process. “Because some brands face challenges that far into the future, they may have a fear of locking in a group of people for long-term tasks,” says Martens, “so we keep our core team lean. Flexible and able to tap into the larger MediaMonks talent pool when needed, this new model alleviates any retainer fear that brands might have.”

The process also helps us learn whether the nature of the work is more ad-hoc or rigid in scope. This is where the benefits to an integrated production partnership become clearer to brands: it allows your organization to become more agile and adaptive for when the going gets tough. Forecasting can help map out possible opportunities or capabilities that might become needed in the near or distant future.

“We don’t do this to nickel and dime our services, but to establish a plan that tackles a key issue with the opportunity to scale out organically,” says Martens. While this might sound like typical program management, what makes our partnership unique is the closeness of both parties involved. “Any efficiency we enable benefits us just as directly as our partners,” says Martens. “We want them to be better at their jobs.”

Learn to Love Automation

You can’t push for greater efficiency within your organization without talking about automation, but teams often bristle at the thought of it. And it’s easy to understand why: for creatives, automation can often feel limiting. “Marrying the systematic approach with creative freedom is a general challenge and a natural point of friction,” says Martens. But automating rote tasks and processes can allow for more cost-effective creative without sacrificing quality.

Partners who seriously want to increase their efficiency should view automation as a creative advantage, not hindrance. With automation, says a Forrester report detailing the AI marketing renaissance, “CMOs will be able to let their teams refocus their energy on core marketing activities such as brand strategy, creative thinking, new product innovation, and business models.” This allows creative teams to devote more time to complex, rewarding creative tasks rather than repetitive ones.

As discussed above, an embedded services team can help you define the data most essential for optimizing your output. But how effective that strategy will be boils down to whether your team is prepared to embrace new creative frameworks using automation. For what it’s worth, pushing the limits of machine learning to make creatives’ lives easier is a key motivation for our experimental creative technologists at MediaMonks.

Include Stakeholders from Across the Organization

Forming an integrated production partnership means altering the way your organization works, and therefore requires input from people across departments and levels of the business. “The more colorful the room is, the more points of view you have for building the operation in a tailor-made way,” says Martens. A diverse range of viewpoints also makes it easier to pinpoint problems and KPIs for the core team to tackle.

Often, this places your brand ambassador into the role of mediator, ensuring that all sides of the equation are kept happy or being heard. A great example of this is the point raised above about automation: procurement might love the cost-saving benefits of the initiative, while creatives may push back. But by distilling everyone’s concerns to arrive at a solution, brands can end up with a creative framework that allows for cost-effective, insights-driven content that engages consumers at scale on an individual level—a win for everyone.

“A typical agency might say ‘It’s my way or the highway,’” says Martens, “though our view is that the plan is only relevant when built for the brand.” Gauging pain points among several stakeholders from across the organization allows us to work with brands to prioritize the most pressing needs for efficiency.

Whether your brand struggles to support a continual stream of content or needs long-term platform support, an integrated production partnership helps to zero in on goals, discover opportunities for efficiency and plug in any talent gaps your team might face. After considering the points discussed above, you’re ready to begin envisioning how such a partnership can enhance your organization.

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