In-House Creative teams Vs Outside Agency?

Having an in-house designer or team does not necessarily contribute to faster & cheaper production. It’s a myth to assume that having an in-house designer or team allows for faster production while saving costs. It can be true if you’re willing to budget a lot for hiring. In almost all other cases, it’s costlier and slower to rely on in-house teams if you’re looking for delivering a top quality brand experience. Staying on top of technology and software upgrades can be expensive too. On top of that, in-house teams/or designer may not have a broad experience of dealing with multiple brands or sectors, which can limit the creativity of what they do for your business. In many cases their work can become stale and repetitive in a very short space of time.

If you want to get it right, you need a senior creative team, and that’s expensive if you set one up in-house. Bear in mind, I’m not talking about a team of one. One person may not have the years of agency experience and broad range of skill to call on, in order to deliver the high quality output your brand deserves. This is merely wishful thinking and fails to factor in the whole dimensions of reality. Fact: no one can do it all alone, particularly to a consistently high level and innovative standard.

On the plus side, you can hire an agency project by project, or even have them on a retainer. Both are within the control of the company to manage. With an internal staff, the costs are also fixed, but what if there is a lull in work? You are paying for someone who isn’t adding to your bottom line.

On the other hand, a cutting edge creative agency taps into a continuous stream of fresh perspective and inspiration, which can only come from working with multiple brands and disciplines on a daily basis, backed with years of experience behind them. You get the depth of experience of the senior executives, which isn’t typical of an internal team/designer. Working with creative agencies can save you from becoming another Copy-Paste or Me-Too business. Internal politics can also have a negative impact on the work in-house creatives produce. It is often the case that creative agencies end up rescuing and improving work that had originally been done in- house, (often by juniors or amateurs), bringing a fresh perspective that is not stifled by in-house politics.

Hiring is costly and time-consuming and there’s no guarantee that the new hire doesn’t leave tomorrow. However, if you work with creative agencies, you don’t have to worry about letting people go because the business takes a sudden downturn for four months. You can quickly scale the engagement up or down with an agency. Also, by reducing the number of iterations to get the concept right, you save cost at the end — assuming you’re working with a competent agency – like Artefact Ltd. Agencies often work until the job gets done, where as an internal team adheres to a standard work day. In fact it is usually the case that we are asked to take over or re-do a project from an in-house designer(s) because it simply was not professional enough or up to par. A hugh percentage of business owners and companies, do not fully appreciate the importance of projecting a top class, professional brand image, cohesively across multiple channels, but are happy to throw some marketing materials together in-house, often by amateurs. It is like asking an trainee doctor to do brain surgery – a very costly mistake!

If you would like to discuss solutions to the creative and communication challenges your business and brand(s) are facing, then please contact
Wil Lyons TODAY on 01 8330081, Mob: 086 2750662, or info@artefact.ie