Tag: in-house design

In-House Creative teams Vs Outside Agency?

In-House Creative teams Vs Outside Agency? Having an in-house designer or team does not necessarily contribute to faster, better or cheaper design production. It’s a myth to assume that having an in-house design team allows for faster production while saving costs. It can be true if you’re willing to budget a lot for hiring, pensions, PRSI etc. In almost all other cases, it’s can be costlier, slower and less creative to rely on in-house teams if you’re looking for to consistently deliver top drawer creativity and a better brand experience for your customer base. Staying on top of technology and software upgrades can be expensive too. On top of that, in-house design teams may not have as broad an experience of working with multiple brands or sectors day in and day out, 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, therefor deminishing your brand identity and client experience. 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 skills to call on, in order to deliver the highest 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 your organisation 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/designers. Working with creative agencies such as Artefact Ltd, can save you from becoming another Copy-Paste or Me-Too organisation. Internal politics can also have a negative impact on the work in-house creatives produce. It is often the case that Artefact end up rescuing, fixing and improving work that had originally been done in-house, (often by juniors or inexperienced designers), 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 Artefact team, you don’t have to worry about letting people go because the business takes a sudden downturn or some other issue arises. 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 an internal team adheres to a standard work day and generally downs tools at 5pm sharp! . 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 junior or mid-weight designers. It is like asking an trainee doctor to do brain surgery – a very costly mistake! I wouldn’t risk it, would you? If you would like to discuss solutions, budgets, strategy etc to help your brand succeed consistently to its target audience, then please do the smart thing and.. contact Wil Lyons or one of the team TODAY on 01 832 5683 or  Txt/Mob: 086 2750662, or info@artefact.ie  

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