Is Outsourcing Advertising the best way?

IN-HOUSE ADVERTISING TEAM

We all still remember the PR car-crash, which piled up around the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad. The campaign was supposed to be an example of edgy advertising crafted by an in-house team.

In the driving seat that fateful day was Kristin Patrick, senior VP-global brand development. Mr Jakeman, President of PepsiCo Global Beverage Group, praised the ad on Twitter shortly after it was released. Saying he was “super proud of the @PepsiCo #CreatorsLeague for producing this.” The tweet got deleted swiftly afterwards.

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WHY BRING ADVERTISING IN-HOUSE?

The way ad agencies approached creativity for brands died years ago. The “big” advert surrounded by a dribble of marketing comms is long gone.

But the constant stream of output needed by social channels and digital platforms stretches the many traditional agencies to breaking point. Is that the end of outsourcing advertising?

Clients want brief to completion time frames that don’t allow for the Chinese whispers of larger agencies. Brands looked for a more efficient workflow and came up with the idea of creating in-house creative departments to handle all needs.

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DOES IN-HOUSE CREATIVE TEAMWORK?

The answer to this question is generally sure! Building a brand new in-house creative team is great fun. You get to interview hundreds of creatives looking to join your business. That’s a lot of people wearing skinny jeans and bobble hats and waving their arms around.

Things will get off to a great start, ideas will flow, and the flexibility of having creatives ready to jump will validate your decision.

But, as the years progress, you might find a worrying trend appearing from your creative department. Everyone starts to get a little too comfortable. In the interviews, all those creatives talked a good game. How they want to break boundaries, dare to be different.

In reality, some just wanted a break from the constant pitching. Competing against other marketing agencies is tough. Having to kill your food (win pitches) before you can eat gets tiring. Some agency staffers long for the joy of being handed another in-house brief without having to win the business first.

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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE TALENT

The risk of a creative team becoming too comfortable is real. As the years fly by, how many of your bright-eyed creatives are still in their same positions? It’s not easy to fire people for doing just an OK job.

Does this lack of ambition start to show up in your team’s creative output? Do the same ideas get trotted out because they’ve worked before? Is it time to go back to outsourcing advertising again?

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TOAST THINKS THERE’S A THIRD WAY

For years we’ve worked alongside big brands as an extension of their marketing departments. This way of providing marketing services has worked well. Marketing campaigns get created in-house, and research fine-tunes the brief. The brief then comes our way, and we put together the best team to handle the project.

The joys of working this way are many. Brands know their marketing and sales needs, but they need a quick turnaround to realise the campaigns. Toast can provide immediate results or push-back if we feel a tighter brief is necessary. Like most small businesses, we go the extra mile because we can lose business for doing just an OK job.

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THE RIGHT MIX OF OUTSOURCING ADVERTISING AND IN-HOUSE

We think that having access to the broad talent pool offered by your outsourcing advertising to a small agency is ideal. Big global players see the advantage of having a roster made of smaller niche agencies who are quick, agile and cost-effective.

Toast can deliver outsourced marketing content at lightning speed. We can react to the consumer conversations already taking place.

Toast is a friendly, cost-effective boutique agency. We specialise in helping clients move to the next level by getting under the skin of a brand. We create genuinely effective TV advertising and associated marketing activity. We deliver against ROI targets set by our clients.

Much of our time is spent working closely with brands marketing departments producing outsourced marketing. It’s something we excel at. – Finally, as they say, small is beautiful.

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