There’s some terrific content out there on what great in-house creative is all about: Articles, blogs and seminars on everything from improving collaboration among/between teams to inspiring greater innovation.
Most of it’s very informative, and all of it’s well-intentioned.
The truth is, however, not everyone’s inclined towards sharing insights and enlightening others.
Don’t get me wrong: Most people are great.
Some, though…well, they suck. They may not necessarily be mean or nasty (although that certainly seems to come with the territory); they just seem to revel in making a mess of things.
Like the preschooler who doesn’t so much like building with Legos, but is insanely psyched about destroying other kids’ creations. Or the driver who just throws stuff out the window because, really, isn’t it all going to just biodegrade eventually.
These people tend to get short shrift. They’re marginalized. Avoided. And because most information is specifically geared to people who don’t leave flaming bags of dog poop on their neighbor’s doorstep, people who such don’t always get the guidance they need.
So, in the spirit of inclusion, following are five simple, easy-easy-to-follow steps for doing real and lasting damage to your internal agency.
Discount their opinions
After all, they work in the same company as you; how smart could they be?
Everyone knows the big external shops have more to offer. You just feel the energy when you’re in their gleaming, mod offices packed with awards, a foosball table with smurfs instead of soccer players, and one of those incredible 3D printing station! Now those people are creative.
So disregard the fact that your in-house crew probably has many of the same credentials, skills and capabilities as those folks.
And ignore that, as creatives, they approach problems in entirely different ways than your company’s marketers, product managers and other resident experts.
Instead, just let the designers and writers talk themselves out in meetings and type their fingers down to nubs writing emails.
Then do what you damn well please. Trust me, it’s a lot easier than engaging them and taking the chance they might add some value.
Make sweeping value judgements.
To be clear, a Maserati’s superior to a Hyundai. Prada’s better than Payless. NY strip beats ground chuck.
It’s obvious because the more something costs, the higher its quality.
Same goes for creatives. They were brought in-house in part because the company can pay them less on a per-project basis than any of its external agencies. Much less. And if the cost of their services comes out of some mysterious central budget as opposed to being charged back to your group, you might as well think of them as working for free.
So it stands to reason that their work just isn’t as good as that of those from outside the company.
Never mind that they understand the brand better than anyone and can therefore cut down on rounds of revisions and review.
Or that they have institutional knowledge about the company’s products and services that takes external shops years to develop.
Or even that, given all the other options available to them, they actually chose to work in-house, where their output could be judged by clients themselves, rather than quashed by the agency machine.
Yeah, put all of that aside. Bottom line: They’re cheap.
Give 'em the grunt work.
Based on the first two points alone, it’s clear that in-house teams can’t be trusted with work that’s either challenging or interesting.
But they can absolutely handle everything else: Sell sheets, flyers, brochures, static gifs, minor page updates… The kind of work that helps internal clients to not only justify their existence but also to say things like “look at all the marketing work I’ve done this quarter,” while pointing to a truckload of collateral.
Given the number of those internal clients, and the pressure on them to perform, the stream of this sort of work is steady. So steady, in fact, that there likely won’t be time for the internal creative team to do anything else.
This is really the perfect scenario because it allows you to claim that you’d like to keep some interesting projects in-house, but the team just doesn’t have the bandwidth.
Briefs, schmeefs.
The cornerstone of great creative work is the input that informs it. And no self-respective agency would do work without getting all the details up-front in the form of a brief.
But we’re not talking about just any agency; we’re talking about in-house agencies. And since they’re right down the hall next to accounting, you don’t have to be as buttoned up as you do when going out-of-house.
Just schedule a meeting with someone from creative, and give them a verbal description of what you’re looking to accomplish. Don’t limit yourself to goals and objectives, though. Feel free to wax poetic about technical details, version histories, the geneology of your mother’s maiden name and other information that has absolutely nothing to do with the request. The creatives should be able to get all they need from a quick 30-min. chat.
If they can’t, it’s just further proof that they’re not up to handling the work.
Pay down to your expectations
If you’re going to treat them as a sub-species of colleague…
dismiss them and their value…
give them unchallenging, soul-crushing work…
and offer terrible input…
then why in the name of all that’s mediocre would you spend any more than the bare minimum in salary and benefits?
You wouldn’t, of course, unless you wanted to send up a flare that creative was somehow important to the business. And I think we’ve pretty much established that that’s patently absurd.
So when you see a need to bring on creative “talent,” first consult with your HR team to make sure there’s no position in the corporate structure that resembles creative, design, copy or any of that artsy stuff.
Then, pick an existing, generic title — Marketing Specialist is a solid go-to — and the lowest possible salary band because, really, who’s going to know the difference?
When the resumes start coming in, scan them for links to portfolios and just choose the prettiest ones. Or have your kids do it. Same difference.
Finally, interview until you find the person who seems willing to do the greatest amount of work and accept the least amount of comp.
When they get worn down, switch ‘em out for a new (or old) model.
Rinse, repeat.
Caveat emptor
This is business, and it’s anything but predictable.
You should be prepared for any or all of the following:
Creative leaders who use their grit, intellect and sheer determination to do incredible work that drives results.
Talented designers who have no desire to pay their dues at the agency of the moment when they can see the fruits of their labors in-market in a fraction of the time
Smart, insightful copywriters who get the brand’s tone of voice right on the first (not the ninth) go-round.
Project managers who know how to bring agency process and rigor to the brand side, without all the sturm und drang.
These people — and others — have their own agenda, and it’s in now way aligned with your desire to tear down the internal agency.
So be on your guard. If you’re not careful, in-house creatives might just prove to be some of the most valuable individuals and teams in your company.
Now wouldn’t that suck?