The Proof that In-Housing Works: Agency Inside presents Five Interviews with Brand Leaders Who’ve Already Done it

“The key to a good in-house creative culture is for creatives to become fluent in business"

Interview with Ivan Pols, Chief Creative Officer at what3words.

You spent over 20 years working at agencies such as Ogilvy and Adam & Eve DDB. What made you want to leave agency life and join what3words to as creative director? 

While working as a global creative director, I noticed two things. Firstly, that companies should be doing more of their own business-as-usual brand work in-house. And secondly, that award-winning agencies typically had really good clients, so maybe more businesses could be better at creativity. 

I left ad land to set up a consultancy to help companies be more creative, because I genuinely think this is important. One of my first clients was what3words. They had just closed their series B funding round and were looking to scale. I came onboard initially as their creative director to help form their brand and it went from there.

What inspired you to start in-housing creative operations at what3words? 

The initial ask was to create 10 videos that explained how what3words worked in 10 industries. We were still a very new company with a novel idea. The prospects we were talking to hadn't even thought there was an issue, let alone that they could use a new addressing system to help them be more efficient, save time, or save lives. 

After working with a small video production house for six months, we looked at what we would need to produce on an ongoing basis and hired accordingly, always seeking to bring talent in-house where we could. 

It wasn’t about building a specific type of in-house agency model. Rather, the approach was test and learn. We’d use external agencies, production houses or freelancers, and if that capability was something we would need on an ongoing basis, then we would look to bring that in-house.

And it just makes sense to control your brand because you understand it better than any agency, who just don’t have the time to get that same level of understanding that you do.

What do you do in-house today, and what do you outsource? 

As we scaled up the business, from 20 people, to 50, to 200 in lots of different countries making lots of different kinds of assets for lots of channels, the skills we required expanded. I run a studio, and that sits inside a marketing team, and the CMO, marketing directors and I work together to ensure marketing helps to deliver on the objectives of the company.

When we work with external agencies on campaigns, we still generate the ideas ourselves and usually write or co-write the scripts. We’re very open about how we like to work. We bring in agencies because they’re specialists and they’re great at what they do. We want to learn from them.

But we also need to coach them in the nuances of how the product works, because getting that right is hard. We’ve learned too much over the years about how to explain, pitch and sell what3words to waste time repeating our mistakes. So, the coaching is to help them learn from our knowledge and improve what we do. 

I should clarify that we don't think of ourselves as an in-house agency, because that way lies madness. When you treat creativity as a separate function – whether outsourced or in-house – it means no one else is allowed to play with it, which is limiting.

Another issue is you end up being seen as a cost rather than value add. An internal cost perhaps, but still a cost. Also, in agency world, because the creative department is siloed away and treated with kid gloves, you can be treated like a child. And I never wanted that for my team. I would like any one of my team to have the potential to be on the management board one day, and the only way that happens is by integrating creative people fully into the business. 

You’ve said businesses need to get better at creative. What do you mean by that and what are the benefits? 

Creativity is fundamentally important to the long-term health and value of a business. There are lots of studies about this. It’s a fundamental issue for competitive businesses. Creative cultures are more innovative because people feel safe enough to offer up ideas and management knows how to listen to and use those ideas. 

But also on a more fundamental level, if your business relies on content, then why are you farming that out? You should try to bring that in-house and own that intellectual property and those processes as soon as you can. And you should produce them in your style, your way.

Every business has its own way of making stuff and its own language. For us, finding a common language with the rest of the business made a fundamental difference to the impact we could make. 

How do you foster a creative culture in a tech-based, sales-focused business? 

My studio is physically situated in the middle of our London office, so that developers and managers can walk past at any time and see screens filled with video or images of the work they’re doing.

It’s a key part of our culture to see the company’s story beautifully told, to make it manifest and then push it out into the world.

At the same time, marketing needs to be able to understand and communicate with the rest of the business. When you come in as a creative, assume you know very little. Learn the objectives of the company. Learn the nuance. Look at the language you would normally use to describe marketing strategy or media buying. Look at it and break it down. Destroy all acronyms. Speak in plain language and ask questions about the business and its goals. Then become a coach for your discipline.

The coaching mentality is one of the most important things to adopt, because it basically says it’s not about me being good, it’s about us being good and working with what people are capable of or interested in doing. And that includes the C-suite. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how have you overcome them? 

It’s a culture challenge when you’ve got a business that hasn’t had a creative function before. Take the C word – creativity – and move it to one side. Don’t talk about creativity itself. Talk about the things people understand, what your team deliver, and coach them on how to unlock their innate creativity. In doing so you will help foster a more creative culture by making it less intimidating and more inclusive.

Early on, as the marketing team and studio grew, we invited everyone in. Open documents, open scripts, open video channels, open Slack channels to anyone who wanted to have a poke around. There’s no hiding away. The CEO may open any script and give feedback. That took a while to figure out how to take feedback as a maker, but also when and how to give feedback as a marketing director or sales director. 

For the creative output itself I would say the single biggest challenge was rapidly scaling up particular disciplines. We went from making a few digital ads to doing millions of pounds of media buying in eight countries, in the space of a few months. There’s no way to know that’s coming before it happens in scale-up world. 

At what3words we have a framework called Ready, Fire, Aim, which has been a big help here. We work on something until it’s ready enough and then we put it out into the world. The next time we’ll do better.

To manage the brand strategy, we do regular audits to adapt to current needs. We did an audit in December for the brand. 

We pulled out all the work for the past two years put it up on a wall, and worked with stakeholders to ask which work reached our objectives. What was good for our business? What did we want to make more of? What felt right? What did we want to make less of?

Then we were able to codify what we wanted to make more of and from that point on, you just adjust and keep making. And that works brilliantly for us, because it gives my designers and copywriters and editors space to push the boundaries and make new mistakes. And this rapid-fire way of working has really driven the momentum and growth of the company. 

That’s the thing about in-house. Because you’re very familiar with your product and your go-to-market strategy, after a while you can shortcut a lot of faffing around and go from idea to execution as quickly as possible. 

Attracting and retaining talent hasn’t been a big pain point for you? 

Not really, but that’s because I’m bringing in the right kind of talent. You want to find people with the right culture and personality fit, who enjoy feeling like they’re building a business rather than just working on a brief.

You need the right level of skillset, ambition and temperament, so they can do a lot of the same tasks repeatedly and get better at it. They are people with the ability to adapt to new problems and push themselves.

This can include agency people. I have some ex-agency people who’ve done award-winning work, and then I’ve got young people who have only ever worked in-house.

But it’s also important to be honest with ourselves as to the skills we really need. There’s no point hiring a hotshot TV art director when you only make one TV ad a year.

What benefits have you seen from your approach to creative work? 

The people who’ve stuck with us have stuck with us for a long time, partly because everyone knows how the business works and the impact they make. And this is a major benefit of in-housing – you get to build a team of creatives who really understand the business and the market, and their work gets better and faster over time.

Bringing creative in-house to reduce costs is the wrong mindset. Partly yes, you should track time and costs, and be able to benchmark internal costs against what it would cost to do externally. It’s important to prove the value of what you do to the company.

But really, this is about unlocking the power of creativity within the business and making the whole business more creative and innovative. By understanding the company and speaking in its language, you also get their respect and understanding. By treating marketing as just one tool amongst several to help the company achieve its goals and by not being overly protective of it, you get to be taken seriously when marketing does need more budget, or you come up with a possibly game-changing idea.

And you get instant access to the executive team. Because my CEO is right there, I can get his take on a script edit. We got direct feedback from our head of commercial vehicle sales this morning on a video edit, so having that access is useful.

What has been your biggest achievement at what3words and why? 

We’ve made some cool ads. I still love making them and the idea is still key but, as cheeseball as it sounds, it’s the quality of the team I’m proudest of. 

They are such a great, responsible group. They care about the work. They push each other. They support each other. It’s so rare for me to have anyone drop the ball, and it’s so rare for there to be any personal issues. 

So that means the communication’s good, that people feel safe, that they are pushed in the right ways so they’re not stagnant. That’s a big one for me.

And then the impact of what3words as a brand. It has a much bigger reputation than the size of the team that make it. 

If you had to start over at what3words tomorrow, what would you do differently? 

I would have learned real humility much earlier. Even though I tried not to be, I was that agency guy who came in and tried to tell everyone how to run the brand. If I had tried to understand the what3words way earlier, it would have made me a lot smarter and the people around me happier.

What are the key lessons others could learn from your experience of in-housing creative operations? 

Just because you’re creative doesn’t mean you own creativity, so we have no creative department. That was rule number one for me when I started. We have makers in the studio, and everyone at what3words is creative. We give everyone the tools they would like to have, and we coach them, because the brand belongs to everyone.

It took years of effort, relationship building, and admitting a couple of horrible mistakes to create that integrated culture where we were in a position where no one treated us differently from the BD, HR and finance teams. But you really need that respect if you want your peers to take your contribution seriously.

I also find that all the chat around in-house creative operations is getting the balance wrong and going too far in the operations direction. Remember, it’s creative AND operations. So, whatever you end up doing, just try to remember that operations is there to help creativity. You need the operational fundamentals, but it should be minimalist. The outside world doesn’t care about our operations. 

Don’t be perfect. Be as fast and high quality as you can. And remember to push it sometimes and have some fun.

- End of Interview. -

 Accidental in-housing? How a London-based property firm evolved its in-house creative operations step by step 

A Case Study with the Head of Creative Operations.

What inspired you to start in-housing creative operations at your company? 

In 2018 the company hired a new COO, who wanted to get a handle on the business’s operating costs. I had a career in magazine publishing and producing content at agencies, and I joined the company as part of that drive at the end of 2018, with the job of pulling together and managing publications.

I don't think anyone thought we were creating an in-house agency. I mean, I was taken on initially for just three months, purely to look at publications. It grew from there.

“We didn’t set out to become an in-house agency; it just naturally evolved over the last five to six years.” 

And for all that we have an impressive in-house creative operation today that encompasses publications, digital, data and social, I still think most people wouldn’t think of us as an in-house agency. To the business, we’re still the marketing team.

If anything, I would say the company started by rationalising its content generation to cut out duplication and unnecessary costs. Then we began to optimise process, and now we’ve got to the point where we manage most creative internally and work externally with a few preferred agencies for specific brand flagship campaigns. We didn’t set out to become an in-house agency; it just naturally evolved over the last five to six years.

Can you tell us how that evolution of in-housing creative operations came about? 

I think of it like peeling the onion. Once you start managing publications, you realise you need a digital asset management (DAM) solution. Then you need a workflow process and system. Each department in the business can call upon marketing for collateral to support them. All these demands could potentially lead to duplication and waste.

So, after the workflow, we took on more content writers and several designers. Covid was turbulent, but once we got through that we went right back to optimising creative operations. In 2022 we updated our workflow and brought in some campaign planners. Now, in 2024, we’ve brought in a new DAM that better suits our current needs, along with a new templating system. And we have a data team, which sits outside of marketing but supports tracking flagship campaigns.

So, we’ve got a new workflow, a new DAM, a new templating system, new data capability, content writers, designers, campaign planners. And we’re also on the verge of bringing on a new brand portal.

What are some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how have you overcome them? 

Operating within a sales business, the volume of work is definitely a challenge. With several departments each having their own budget and targets, we’re putting through about 200 jobs a month; it’s like a machine.

Linked to this is the challenge of being creative in a company that’s more focused on immediate sales results. As I say to my team, we’re here partly to translate briefs into creative language. We can’t negotiate with buyers and sellers or work out how to convert an office block into student accommodation. That’s what the business does, and in return they need us to turn their requests into effective creative. But it is challenging. It’s not unusual to be given a brief where the directions are vague and hard to interpret. 

“In an environment that’s not a media environment or a content-first environment, how do you keep challenging your people and developing their careers?” 

There are the times when it’s 4pm and the business needs three ideas for a campaign by 9am the next morning. And creating ideas just doesn’t work like that!

So, solving this has been partly about workflow and process, about evaluating which requests are more valuable and which are most urgent. And I often end up running interference for my team to ensure they don’t get distracted by requests when they’re working on other things.

Speaking of which, talent retention is the one thing I’ve struggled with, because most people in my team are one of one. If I’ve got someone who’s managing publications, they’re asking where they could go within the business. So that’s difficult: in an environment that’s not a media environment or a content-first environment, how do you keep challenging your people and developing their careers? 

Recently, we joined a group called Inside Out because it gave the team networking events to meet others in the same situation.

“Without process, your cost explodes.” 

Beyond that, getting everyone in the business fully behind the brand has been a challenge. Having multiple voices and international offices often results in a multitude of tweaks and idiosyncrasies, which can be death to brand value over time.

This was just how the culture had developed here, and recently we’ve been tackling that. The templating platform will help. On the emotional side, it’s about ensuring everyone in the business really believes in and celebrates the brand, which is one of the strongest in its sector. 

What benefits have you see from in-housing creative operations? 

The first is all about managing costs and cutting out waste. When I started, lots of people were employing freelancers or working with agencies without any real process. Now, I can say I know with certainty every pound, shilling and pence that goes through my department.

What has been your biggest success so far?

I actually think it’s process. It’s not sexy, but without process, your cost explodes, and your deadlines are missed. Your adhesion to brand goes out the window. The value of what you do reduces. 

Back when I started in 2018, those who shouted loudest got the most attention. Now everyone goes through a workflow and knows exactly how many of their jobs have gone through. Each team can see how many jobs we’ve done for them this year, and I can track all the time and costs involved.

“Being able to measure the amount of work going through has a huge potential value to the business.”

At the end of the day, being able to measure the amount of work going through has a huge potential value to the business, so I’m very proud of that.

What have been your key learnings from building this in-house creative operation?

Well, if I could go back to 2018 and start again, I would try to quantify what we were aiming for and how we would know when we got there. As far as in-housing creative operations, it’s something we’ve done without entirely realising that’s what we were doing. We’ve achieved a lot nonetheless, but had we realised at the outset and put some parameters or clearer goals in place we probably could have done it more efficiently.

What does the future hold for in-house creative operations at your company?

We still have one, maybe two, steps to make. Everything we’ve done so far has pretty much got us to the starting line, in terms of in-housing operations. We’re definitely not at the end. We’ve still got some work to do so we can prioritise all requests that come to us based on their potential value to the business.

In terms of process, we can still make further cost savings and strip out inefficiencies by quantifying requests against resources, and I think the new DAM, the recent workflow and the new templating will all help with that.

The last big step for the next couple of years is really making sure that everyone in the business believes in the brand, so we’re all pulling in the same direction. That will make everything we do just so much more powerful and impactful from both a sales and a creative point of view.

- End of Interview. -

“It’s a common mistake for brands to in-house their creative ops purely to reduce costs”

An interview with Kyle Rowe, Managing Director at Boots Opticians and formerly Chief Marketing & Digital Officer at ScS and Managing Director at Grenade.

You’ve worked in several significant roles for well-known brands. In your experience, what are the reasons a brand would choose to in-house its creative operations or develop a hybrid model, rather than outsourcing everything? 

There are two reasons. The first is to have a creative team that really understands the brand DNA or identity. This was important when I worked at Grenade, for example, where getting that brand identity right was crucial every single day with every tweet and ad campaign we did. 

The second reason is control of running costs. The more you can incubate talent and upskill employees rather than hire in 100% of that talent, that gives you the flexibility to scale up or down in line with demand without overcommitting costs-wise. You can make it more flexible and affordable to help you respond to market conditions.

Can you give some examples of where you’ve seen in-house creative operations or hybrid operations work particularly well? What do you think are the keys to success with these models? 

At ScS we went through a big rebrand and launch where the in-house team was responsible for strategy, research, digital and media planning and buying. We augmented their capability with an external creative strategy agency for the research and design elements. Then we worked with a couple of media agencies on the execution.

With Grenade, we had a core team for ideation and execution on social, and then augmented where there were skills gaps when we needed to work on bigger projects.

“ You can’t in-house everything you might need, because there will be specific skills it just doesn’t make sense for you to pay for all the time.” 

The flexibility of that hybrid model increases your chances of success because it allows you to scale and only increase your costs when you really need to. You can bring core creative operations in-house, but you can’t in-house everything you might need, because there will be specific skills it just doesn’t make sense for you to pay for all the time.

That’s where working with agencies on specific projects makes sense. You then benefit from their experience and scale, but you don’t need to necessarily have them on retainer. I would say to look at bringing in the skills you really need day-to-day, and build a network of agencies for execution when you need them. 

What do you see as the biggest or most common challenges or pain points regarding in-housing or working with hybrid creative models?

It’s a common mistake for brands to in-house their creative ops purely to try to reduce costs. You want to look at this as a way to de-risk and strip out unnecessary running costs; to improve efficiencies. If you approach it as a cost-saving exercise only, not only is the quality and effectiveness of your output almost guaranteed to suffer, but you’ll also get internal resistance to the costs of in-housing if that’s the dominant mindset.

“It’s more sustainable for the mid to long term to train existing staff and then bring in extra resource when you’re growing.” 

I frequently observe a real reluctance to invest in the right tools and technologies, like a good martec stack or CMS, or tracking tech. So, for example, a company can bring in people to do social and content cheaper than using an agency, but then they don’t give those people the tools they need to do the job effectively. This is a false economy, and you’ve just hamstrung yourself because all you were looking at was cost. 

On the other side, you can also hire too big and bring in expensive talent too soon. It’s more sustainable for the mid to long term to train existing staff and then bring in extra resource when you’re growing. Of course, this is not the go-to model for investors, who can often pressure the C-suite to hire in too much marketing talent too early. It’s best to try to resist that pressure when you can.

Do brands tend to have unrealistic expectations around the benefits they hope to achieve from in-housing? If so, are there any common ones? 

The real challenge here is around managing expectations from investors and the exco. It’s OK to try to run with a small and lean creative team if all you want to do is maintain your current output. This will limit growth, however. When it’s time to go big, you need to scale your creative operations, whether via agency support to augment your team or by hiring in some big guns.

“This is about having the right mindset and communicating expectations clearly at the planning stage.” 

It can be a problem to get the board to agree to the increased investment you need when it’s time to scale, and so you need to clarify this expectation, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. Again, this is about having the right mindset and communicating it clearly at the planning stage.

Hiring too big and too expensive too early in a small team in startup phase can also be a mismatch, so in that scenario you can work with agency support until you’re ready to bring talent in-house. It’s really all about keeping that flexibility, matching resource allocation to the desired output and resisting the urge to in-house too much too soon. On the other hand, it’s naïve to expect revenue growth from marketing unless you’re willing to invest in it.

Attracting and retaining top creative talent seems to be a big pain point for many brands when in-housing their creative ops. Are there any tactics for solving this problem that you’ve seen work well? 

Quite a few. First, hire and develop existing employees. Look across functions for people who have the desire and potential to do good creative work. They may not all be in marketing or be marketeers! 

Second, avoid immediately hiring creatives from big well-known agencies and in-house brand operations. Those people will be expensive, and you may be able to get people with the same talent if you look to freelancers and competitors. Don’t low-ball talent; you want to hire people who will be motivated to do their best for you. Just don’t confuse higher salaries with more talent. That’s not necessarily true.

“Make sure that you offer your creatives the ability to advance their careers.” 

When hiring, play on your brand. Some very talented people will be tempted by the stability and potential to learn from working for a big established brand. Some talented creatives will like the pace and mental flexibility needed to do well at a challenger brand. If you emphasise these features as benefits, you’re going to attract the talent that’s looking for those things in their careers right now.

Speaking of which, you also want to make sure that you offer your creatives the ability to advance their careers if they come and work for you. Highlight the opportunity for career growth and the variety and learning potential that comes from working within a hybrid model. You probably also want to ensure that digital is within the remit for any in-house creative hires, since digital is where all the growth is going to come from and where creatives are most likely to want to be in the years to come. 

Lastly, with good agency support you don’t need to overpay for some star in-house creative if the agency can do that for you for a more limited period. Plus, if you already have a network or ecosystem of agencies that you work with or have worked with, you can also reach out to them when looking for in-house talent and see if they can recommend someone. 

From your experiences as a Chief Marketing Officer, what advice would you offer to brands on how to foster a more creative culture if they don’t perceive themselves as particularly creative right now? 

There are three elements to fostering creative cultures. 

The first is to make sure that you allow everyone in the company to be and feel creative, and to be a stakeholder in the creative process. Encourage them to mix with your creative talent and look at being more creative when it comes to problem solving.

The second if you’re really struggling is to look at what creative work your competitors are doing. Monitor and report on the competition and follow adjacent industries and creative leaders within those industries. The best place to start is by modelling creative work that has been successful elsewhere and making it your own.

“Make sure your creatives get exposure to the rest of the business so they can understand how what they do fits with the overall strategy.” 

The third is to remember that the effectiveness of your creative output is still paramount. So, you need to create some downtime, so your creatives don’t feel under huge pressure constantly. Most creatives are ultimately more productive that way. But make sure they get exposure to the rest of the business so they can understand how what they do fits with the overall strategy and business challenges. 

As part of this, I’ve found it useful to have creative hackathons, as software developers do, to help motivate everyone and get bigger projects done. And it also makes sense to bring in a culture of exploration and testing. Make sure your people have the ability to experiment and test on a small scale before going public. 

With these three guiding principles, most excos should be able to at least become more creative and become more attractive to creative talent.

- End of Interview. -

“Year on year, this evolving ecosystem has delivered multi-million-pound savings

A case study interview with Keith Gulliver, Brand & Marketing Leader at TSB. 

Can you tell us the story of how you brought agency work in-house at TSB? 

In 2019 we had hundreds of suppliers from a couple of big agencies and a long tail of small providers. So, we decided to do a review and look into how we could be more efficient, reduce costs and be more creative in how we operated our agency ecosystem.

We brought in McCann as our main creative brand agency, with the7stars as our media agency. Building up an internal solution was part of that process of trying to simplify and derisk the ecosystem.

Not having built an internal agency before, we opted for an off-the-shelf solution from Oliver. We hothoused that, meaning we kept the creatives apart from the marketing team and set them up in a WeWork. And we stayed with Oliver for a couple of years, slowly scaling and slowly growing, slowly learning, seeing what was and wasn’t working.

To be honest, I always had the ambition that it would transition to being fully internal, because although that fully managed internal solution initially saved us money, as we scaled it became less efficient and not far off the cost of a fully external agency. In the end you have to ask what you’re paying for, and effectively what they were doing came down to sourcing and managing creative talent. We thought: we do that better and more efficiently ourselves. 

We started by moving to a hybrid model, still with Oliver but with a leadership team around it that reported directly to us. One of those leaders was Trevor Chambers, who I’d worked with at the start of my career. I knew he had the skills to lead and scale an internal agency.

Once Trevor came onboard, we leveraged his connections, starting to scale down the Oliver resource and scale up our investment into directly employed capabilities, to the point where we then terminated the contract with Oliver. At that point we had around 12 people internally doing what Oliver had done. Today we have around 22 people, and we’re about to bring in several more. 

What creative work do you do in-house and what do you still outsource? 

Originally the internal agency – which we called Kindred – was just focused on digital and social media content. Now it's pretty much full service, doing everything from account management and production to creative strategy.

And over the last couple of years, as TSB seeks to become ‘a digital bank with a human touch’, we’ve added a big UX/UI element. This means Kindred also manages all the web and app content and has become very customer- and user-centric, totally aligned to the bank’s wider digital strategy. 

As of about a year ago, we ended our retained contact with McCann. So, we have Kindred as our internal solution, with McCann working with us on a project basis when we need specific above-the-line campaign experience and support. We have a production company called Sandstorm.

We still work with the7stars as our media agency, as well as working with a company called Studio Space. This is a network of around 300 small agencies, which gives Kindred access to very specialist skills we might not have in-house. 

And we work with Online Studio, who resize and format our digital assets, and The Fifth Agency, a social and creative agency we use for working with social influencers.

What have been the key benefits of bringing creative work in-house? 

Year on year, we've been able to show that this evolving ecosystem has delivered multi-million-pound savings. Today, delivering a personalisation strategy that keeps the customer at the heart of their experience with TSB has created demand for a huge volume of content to be available for every stage of the digital customer journey.

We see developing our content supply chain to deliver continuous efficiency, and our pathway to meet this explosion in demand.

Our investment in our partnership in Adobe is critical to our success here. Through digital asset management, workflow optimisation, real-time profile activation, management of digital journeys and delivering the insights our business needs to grow, Adobe is with us every step of the way.

“The efficiency, speed and quality of the content supply chain is crucial for us.” 

The efficiency, speed and quality of the content supply chain is crucial for us, and we can only optimise this by having those Adobe platforms working together with a well-functioning internal agency. The guys at Kindred do lots of testing as well as reviews of the effectiveness and performance of their content, because they are accountable for this, and they also earn performance bonuses.

What’s the difference between an in-house agency or in-house creative operations and a marketing department? 

Skillset. I treat Kindred as a technical skillset. In the banking world, we talk in terms of specific technical capabilities, and Kindred is seen as a technical capability for TSB – and a key one for the future. The content supply chain is so important for the bank’s strategy and the investment we’re making in Adobe alone is significant enough that the content supply chain is on the exec agenda. 

So, it’s fair to say that Kindred is seen as key to TSB’s strategy? 

Yes. The two areas where the bank is committed to going further is Kindred’s role in populating the content supply chain and the increased use of Agile as a project management methodology. And actually, another benefit of in-housing creative ops is there’s something powerful about bringing together business and creative people. When you have an internal agency, there’s much more opportunity to do that. 

It’s also helped foster more creativity across the business. When we first started out with internal creative ops, I think it was a bit scary for some in the business because they’d never had that technical capability before.

“There’s something powerful about bringing together business and creative people. When you have an internal agency, there’s much more opportunity to do that.” 

Now they see the benefit of it. Often, the creatives at Kindred are pulled into other meetings when people feel the need for creative thinking on other business problems. So, there’s an element of creative thinking that we hadn’t even anticipated when we started.

“My job is to wake the company up to the opportunity of creative capability.” 

In that sense my job is to wake the company up to the opportunity of creative capability, not narrow-mindedly thinking that creativity is restricted to the creatives. Fostering creative capabilities is super important because of the business benefits of thinking differently.

So yes, it’s partly about helping to educate the business in the benefits of creative thinking, and helping everyone feel like a creative stakeholder, if you like. That’s a win-win.

Why has in-housing become more popular for brands in recent years? 

The drive for efficiency is one reason. And the traditional agency model has been struggling for a while to deliver value in a world where technology makes it easier to do more things in-house. At the same time, there’s just so much freelance talent in the market that would previously have been locked up in agencies a decade ago.

Plus, I remember the old arguments as to why internal agencies could never work. They wouldn’t get the creative talent. They would stagnate. All that. But I’ve not seen that at all, and I think others are waking up to the fact that these arguments just don’t hold up in reality.

How do you attract and retain top-tier creative talent? 

I’ve worked in this industry a long time, so I have a lot of great connections, which gives me access to great creative talent at all levels.

I think there are lots of creatives for whom the idea of going deeper and really understanding a brand is very appealing. I feel like most of the creatives we’ve hired are empowered by having a direct understanding of the business challenges and direct access to the businesspeople.

“The idea that in-house agency work is repetitive and dull doesn’t wash at all.” 

And the idea that in-house agency work is repetitive and dull doesn’t wash at all. Our Kindred creatives have daily contact with our media agency, and with McCann when working on big projects, and many of them are doing things now like working with influencers that they’d never done before. So, they’re constantly learning and developing.

We encourage our people to take part in the wider industry – by becoming judges of industry awards, for example. It’s important to empower your people in whatever ways you can. Like, when working on the vision, I got the Creative Director involved and asked him to help me create that vision.

It’s also worth noting that creatives in agencies don’t necessarily get paid an awful lot. So then when they go in-house, particularly at a bank, costs and pay are very transparent, and suddenly they can also qualify for performance bonuses. All of that is very appealing.

Of course, some people have left over the years. And actually, you often do need different people at the start versus the people you need long term to scale. You often need people with different energy and mentalities at different points of your development. So, you do have to account for that.

What does a successful in-house creative culture look like and how do you go about fostering it?

This traditional agency idea that you need to keep business and creatives separate has been exposed as a myth now, thanks in part to the shift to remote and hybrid working. Technology has changed what I once thought was important about fostering a creative culture.

We’ve just moved into a new HQ. We were involved in the design of the space, and so it’s almost all collaboration space and hobby holes. And the creatives love it. They can work somewhere different every day. They can work from home. But, more than that flexibility, encouraging them to be more integrated into the organisation has been pretty important.

“Fostering creative culture has in part been about aligning the creative mindset with the business strategy and growth mindset.”

In that sense, fostering that creative culture has in part been about aligning the creative mindset with the business strategy and growth mindset. And we’re just going through a process at the moment with the team about how to manifest that mindset in our agency. I’m encouraging them to work out how they want to manifest it. Because that’s the thing with creative people, right? They’re great at coming up with brilliant ideas. Of course they are, that’s the whole point of hiring creative people. 

It’s important to hire the right people at the right time. But once you have the right creative people in place, then you need to trust them to solve problems creatively.

Speaking of creativity, how are you using generative AI in your creative work? 

We are working in partnership with Adobe to review how generative AI will fuel our content supply chain, allowing us to create closer and deliver deeper moments that matter for our customers. Strict governance is a key factor in our review process. Gen AI has allowed us to maintain our customer-centric strategy and enhance our customer experience, while meeting our regulatory requirements. We are closely monitoring incremental improvements through governance.

We have started trials to improve customer experiences, for example with social engagement. When customers query on social media, we’re trialling the use of gen AI to pre-populate answers, but it’s still hybrid. It’s still a human being who decides whether or not to use those pre-populated answers. That sort of co-piloting mentality, where AI is offering options, but it’s the human that’s making decision, is where the bank is. 

If you could start again from scratch with in-housing creative ops, is there anything you would do differently?

No. We purposely started with a low-risk approach, but we always had the ambition. Looking back at my career, I’ve always looked to create some internal creative capability, all the way back to my first job at OneTel back in 2002.

“Hire the right people at the right time and then trust them to get on with it.” 

But the biggest inspiration I had before I came to TSB, when I was interim Head of Brand & Marketing for Specsavers in Guernsey. And that was a big catalyst to see how they do it. Specsavers’ internal agency is an actively full-service agency. And while I never planned to go that far – I always envisaged a model with more flexibility – that was a key inspiration for what I’ve done here at TSB.

It's important not to have a fixed mindset with this and to learn as you go. And to trust the people that you bring on to help shape it. Hire the right people at the right time and then trust them to get on with it. We definitely made a couple of mistakes on the journey, but I wouldn’t change the way we’ve done it. 

What does the future hold for in-house creative ops at TSB?

I think it’s continuing that journey for Kindred to be a core capability to deliver the bank’s strategy, enable that growth mindset, and stimulate creativity and creative thinking across the organisation.

- End of Interview. -

“This in-house agency model is very exciting!” 

A case study interview with Pete Markey, Chief Marketing Officer at Boots. 

How do you manage your creative operations at Boots? How much is in-housed and how much is outsourced? 

We have our own in-house agency called The B-Hive. It was set up before I joined Boots as CMO in February 2021, but it’s at least double the size now than when I started. The initial idea was that there were certain services – like producing email templates, website banners, our Christmas gift guide and our health and beauty magazine – we could do ourselves, so we brought them in-house from external agencies.

“The question we asked was, if we control it ourselves, can we be faster and more agile given that we’re all in the same building and working together?” 

The ethos was that we could do this work at a lower cost while keeping the quality bar high enough and attracting talent to build a creative operations base in Nottingham. It’s also about speed to market. The question we asked was, if we control it ourselves, can we be faster and more agile given that we’re all in the same building and working together?

We thought we could make briefing faster and execution speedier, and I think that’s largely been borne out.

When it comes to big-ticket items like TV spots, what's the interaction between your in-house and external agencies?

Pretty good. We have Hogarth, an agency run by WPP, that acts as our production arm. And we also work with an external provider, an in-house agency specialist that does some of our brand-identity work and our in-store creative. This external in-house agency is in effect another studio with a separate office, also in Nottingham housing their people. They run all that on our behalf.

So, we have this separate internal agency who do the brand visual identity and the install. You have The B-Hive that does most of the content and social media, and then WPP takes the creative lead. They do the big idea, the brand strategy, the big creative work, the TV execution, the VOD and everything that goes with it.

“The end result is like a swan. It looks graceful on the surface, but underneath frantic paddling is going on!” 

If you look at Christmas, for example, WPP come up with the big idea, then The B-Hive articulates that in our Christmas guide, and the internal agency interprets that into a brand visual identity that flows through our stores.

I often think the end result is like a swan. It looks graceful on the surface, but underneath frantic paddling is going on! So, I’m really pleased with where we get to, but it’s a journey to get there. 

What are the key challenges or pain points you’ve experienced?

The ways of working is the biggest pain point. It may sound an obvious point, but it’s important that the people that work for me and the people who work for them, and the people work for them, are really clear where to put each bit of work. 

Are we clear on how WPP are taking the lead on an idea? At what point does it go to the other two studios? And then, are we clear that it works on the various channels at the moments we need it to? The pain points are mainly in these processes. 

There was a worry when we moved the work from a regular external agency to the external-in-house agency we have now. We had to move many of the same people across. The worry there is that you’ll lose people during a period of change. And while some staff attrition can be healthy because you want new people and new ideas, in the main you want to keep the skills and brand knowledge. And the worry was whether the transfer would affect the quality of the work. 

“I’d argue the work got better and more consistent and we have a more engaged team, while the costs went down.” 

This is always a major consideration because in retail, nothing ever stops. You’re aways working on the next thing: spring season, summer season, Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas. You just can’t ever drop the ball.

Thankfully with our in-house agency, we dropped nothing. I’d argue the work got better and more consistent and we have a more engaged team, while the costs went down.

The other pain point is attracting talent. The external-internal agency doesn’t have this issue. They could attract talent with their eyes closed, because they have a big network, they’ve got a big name. But that’s always been my worry with an internal studio like The B-Hive. I think there’s still this stigma attached to working in-house for many creatives, rightly or wrongly.

We need as an industry to elevate the quality – or at least the perception of the quality – of the work these studios do, so they are seen as on a par with agencies.

“I think there’s still this stigma attached to working in-house for many creatives, rightly or wrongly.” 

Specsavers is a great example of this. Their in-house work is definitely on a par with any external agency. But still, for many, working at an internal studio is a good thing that aligns with their career goals. It’s just that at the moment, for top talent, they still might need to think about whether it’s right for them.

With your in-house studios based in Nottingham, does location prove a problem when attracting top talent?

We haven’t found that to be the case. Even at a quite senior level, people have been quite happy to move to Nottingham. Of course, Boots is a great brand, and that’s part of the attraction. But we haven’t seen location be a major issue. And the quality of work has certainly not been affected.

In fact, we recently insourced our social and paid search and set up a base in Manchester for that. We found we were able to attract higher-quality talent in Manchester for paid social than anywhere else.

Have you had any issues with retention?

On the internal side, retention is good, but this is where location may play a role. There are certain places – Nottingham being one – where your work becomes your life and lifestyle. And if I lived in Nottingham, I’d be Boots for Life, because living there largely ties me in. It’s also a brilliant company. So, there are many people who’ve been with us 20-plus years. And why wouldn’t you? Boots offers lots of opportunities, but it does mean you’re cycling through the same business.

“There is a debate to be had about when you want a bit of healthy attrition to cycle in some new people and ideas… this is why the outside-internal agency model is so good, because they do that for you.” 

So, there is a debate to be had about when you want a bit of healthy attrition to cycle in some new people and ideas. Again, this is why the outside-internal agency model is so good, because they do that for you. They rotate people through for you on your behalf. They move people on to keep the account fresh. 

And that gives you this balance, which is why I think this in-house agency model using a specialist agency is such an exciting model. Working with a partner like this is so good because they manage all these staffing issues for you.

So, what you've got there is an agency where they’re rotating people through. They can move staff on when the time comes, and that’s really useful. The quality bar stays high. You pay a bit extra than you would for a fully internal studio, but not as much as a fully external agency.

If you were going to in-house creative operations from scratch, what would you do differently?

I think maybe there’s a better way to phrase that, which is ask the question: do I want to make it or buy it? In my career I’ve done more buy than make. The B-Hive is probably the first thing I made, actually. And I didn’t start from scratch, I built on what I had. But previously, it’s all been buy.

At the Post Office, I used a bit of the Oliver agency and a bit of Livy. I brought Oliver into TSB and Keith Gulliver, and I created the TSB Studio there. Then after I left, he TUPEd all the Oliver people to TSB. Over time, he learned from Oliver, worked out how to do it, then brought it all completely in-house so he could manage it himself. I think he saved 40% of the costs doing that, while also keeping the people and the quality bar high.

So, what would I do? I’d ask those questions. Do I want to buy it? Do I want to make it? You want to ask yourself where you’re aiming in the long term. Our ecosystem at Boots is the best it’s ever been, but we could still benefit from simplifying and improving it.

How are you intending to evolve in-house creative ops at Boots in the next couple of years? 

I think it’s about deepening what we did in The B-Hive. We’ve obviously got into a lot more work on social content, and I think it’s going to be about that and speed to market, doing things faster and smarter.

And then I know everyone says this, but I have to mention AI. I don't ever want fake people in Boots adverts ever, because of what we do. But I don’t mind fake beaches, fake sunrises. That’s fine. As long as it’s real people. 

“Given the proliferation of channels we’re now in, from the resurgence of Snapchat to Meta to TikTok, we need more variants of content than ever before. If AI can help me do that, faster, smarter, better, that’s very exciting.” 

I think AI is interesting. In retail, we have to be always a step ahead of our competitors, and always in step or a step ahead of our customers. To do that, we need to be really fast at what we do. And actually, given the proliferation of channels we're now in, from the resurgence of Snapchat to Meta to TikTok, we need more variants of content than ever before. If AI can help me do that, faster, smarter, better, that’s very exciting.

So, for me, it’s how do we get more competitive edge, by getting to market faster with more work to meet the demand of those channels, and also to meet the needs of different segments, because we now have such amazing tools to become far more personalised and targeted.

For me, that’s really exciting. I can do so much more now. If I need more assets and need to get out there faster, then for me, the studio’s got to go in that direction.

What other benefits have you seen with in-housing, besides speed to market and cost reduction? 

As I mentioned, I think it’s definitely about competitive edge and speed to market, particularly in retail.

I should add that cost reduction is not about making cuts, but about taking out unnecessary costs. If you’re doing it just to cut costs, you’re looking at the wrong thing. You’ve got to look at it multi-dimensionally.

“If you’re doing it just to cut costs, you’re looking at the wrong thing. You’ve got to look at it multi-dimensionally.” 

Yes, you can always hire someone with a Mac to do something for you for 50 quid. But actually, you want to do it by going, I can guarantee the quality is the same and the work is cheaper. We’re going more productive. We can produce work faster and smarter, and we can win in the markets and be more personalised with comms to our customers. 

And actually, we’ve got a competitive advantage because The B-Hive doesn’t just produce work for Boots. It provides creative for our supplier base, too. That’s a brilliant resource, being able to turn stuff around for big suppliers, too.

Removing some of the barriers also means happier staff, which leads to more productivity. 

Do you think it also helps to foster a sense of creativity across the business and not just in the creative departments? 

I love that thought, that in-housing brings the creative craft closer and makes it less mysterious. I think when you when you’ve got people sat alongside you doing the work, it makes it way more accessible.

The B-Hive studio in Nottingham is brilliant. You go down and you can see photos being done for the gift guide and stuff, and you can feel like you’re living and breathing in Christmas. You wouldn’t get that otherwise. Having that proximity is amazing.

What does a successful in-house creative culture look like, and how do we build it? 

You need really strong leadership to start with. I mean, someone really great to run it, who has the right background, the right drive and passion, enthusiasm, and can run it with the same rigour. This isn’t time for amateur hour. You give it to someone who can run an agency, because this is an agency we’re running here. So, I need someone to run it with the same mindset. 

“This isn’t time for amateur hour. You give it to someone who can run an agency, because this is an agency we’re running here.” 

And then I think it’s all about setting a very high bar for creative excellence, which is: how are we going to deliver the best work for the right cost? And that’s how you set it up. You go, right, we’re going to deliver amazing work, very cost-effectively, run as efficiently, as effectively as an agency, with strong focus on processes, governance and getting things done. 

 - End of Interview. -

How far are YOU in your in-housing journey?

If you’re a CMO and the subject of in-housing creative operations isn’t already on your radar, it soon will be. Which is why The River Group has developed a new service solution: Agency Inside. 

Agency Inside is a strategy framework and turnkey solution for brands looking to set up or scale up their in-house creative operations. Within 12-24 months, Agency Inside will have a business case for board approval and a full team recruited and trained for a model that’s tailored to your needs. At this point, Agency Inside will withdraw, leaving you with no ongoing managed service costs.

Talk to us about our audit phase to find out if in-housing is right for you, your brand and company. We’ll be open about the perspectives, potential pain points, planning and process. 

If you’d like an informal chat about Agency Inside and its relevance for your company, please email Chris Ward at cward@therivergroup.co.uk or call 07973 548766.