effectively resourcing
IN-HOUSe teams An R3 Report
DRIVING TRANSFORMATION FOR MARKETERS & THEIR AGENCIES
the new wave of in-housing The new wave of in-housing is a long-overdue response to an outdated business model built around the concept of media trading, which is irrelevant to the world of biddable media. As marketers need better integration to deliver on omnichannel customer experience goals, in-housing has become the go-to strategy for CMOs looking to transform their corporate departments and re-think their spend - bringing agility, data and technology capabilities, and market-leading insights and ideas into their teams. In a WFA study (2020) of 53 global advertisers, 37% of creative output was reported to come from an in-house team and 94% of respondents had in-house creative capabilities for digital content. Around half of survey participants reported having an in-house media team. However, almost 95% of companies surveyed noted that they continued to work with external agencies. The acceptance and acknowledgement that there is no “one size fits all� solution to the in-house challenge, has refocused marketers to think about the impact of performance management and organization design. How to best structure internal marketing teams and in-house agencies, as well as how to manage processs and performance within both in-housed teams and external suppliers, are areas we explore in this report. We hope you find these insights useful.
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EFFECTIVELY RESOURCING IN-HOUSE TEAMS
TOP 6 IN-HOUSE AGENCY SERVICES CONTENT MARKETING In-house teams have been found to be faster and more cost-efficient (especially at the ‘commodity’ end of the market) when it comes to feeding the demand of multiple ‘always-on’ channels, varying from video assets and rich media through to product listing ads in search.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
DATA/MARKETING ANALYTICS
In-house teams give brands creative control. The speed of adapting to consumer interests or events could be the make or break factor of any marketing campaign.
Brands should retain ownership of their data, and having an in-house team can ensure that there is a central source being used across all activity.
MEDIA STRATEGY
PROGRAMMATIC MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA (CREATIVE & MEDIA)
It is natural for direct-toconsumer brands to prefer in-house control of their channels, becoming self-reliant on everything other than upperfunnel demand creation via mass media. Their model is performance-led with constant optimization across channels, and in-housing done well can deliver this.
In-housing programmatic has gone from a nascent trend to the norm as brands seek more control over their first-party data. 69% of brands have either partially or completely moved programmatic buying of display, video and/or CTV in-house, according to a 2020 survey conducted by the IAB across the US, European and Latin American markets.
Social platforms generally offer sophisticated self-serve adbuying tools that can be used with minimal spend. Such a low barrier to entry enables marketers to test campaigns against particular audience segments before deciding whether to invest more money to reach more people.
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DRIVING TRANSFORMATION FOR MARKETERS & THEIR AGENCIES
the challenge of In-house teams The complexity of managing certain services in-house, coupled with the lack of existing talent and resources, are some of the biggest barriers for marketers who want to build an efficient and competent in-house team.
Getting It Wrong A good example of marketers wanting to take services in-house but then realizing that the model did not work to their advantage, is the case of Vodafone. The telecommunications company wanted to take its programmatic ad buying inhouse in but quickly realized how complicated the task would be. They also learned that they wouldn’t be able to buy as much digital media in-house as they first thought. Internal struggles over whether the marketing or digital team would own - and therefore fund - the programmatic setup resulted in an initial stalling of the process and subsequent reversal of the decision to bring programmatic buying in-house.
Making It Right In 2019, Vodafone UK made another attempt to bring programmatic buying inhouse, beginning with the hire of a head of biddable media and building a team with a mix of senior and junior executives to cover a range of roles, including programmatic optimization specialists and programmatic audience specialists. Issues that Vodafone has had to address on its journey include: • Finding the right talent. • The cost of building a team to the scale of Vodafone’s business. • The amount of media the team would need to handle (in 2019, this was about $132 million of media). • Leadership that can deal with the complexity of in-house teams.
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EFFECTIVELY RESOURCING IN-HOUSE TEAMS
challenge in programmatic talent & training Finding quality talent with experience in programmatic is a challenge
74%
73%
Brand
Agency
Sourcing qualified talent
88%
76%
Publisher
Tech/Data
% Somewhat / Completely Agree
13%
14%
47%
46%
Brand
Agency
Biggest challenge
11%
16%
54%
50%
Publisher
Tech/Data
2nd biggest challenge
Source: IAB 2020 U.S. Report on Programmatic In-Housing
agree or disagree? Collaboration between creative and marketing is effective A survey of more than 550 creative and marketing professionals
22%
51%
say collaboration is ineffective
7% Strongly Disagree
say collaboration is effective
15%
27%
40%
11%
Disagree
Neither Agree or Disagree
Agree
Strongly Agree
Source: 2019 In-House Creative Management Report by InMotionNow and InSource
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DRIVING TRANSFORMATION FOR MARKETERS & THEIR AGENCIES
7. How will we manage our Partnerships? Partnering with agencies is often in the best interest of the business and your internal team. In-house teams typically partner with external agencies to complement their service offering - predominantly campaign strategy, creative strategy and design execution - and are increasingly leveraging offshore/offsite creative and production for T1 and T2 digital work. While overall satisfaction is good and miscommunication has improved, partners’ lack of brand knowledge has increased 15%. Beyond simply sharing the workload, there are other key reasons to further agency relationships, including keeping up with a dynamic business environment, integrated creative excellence, career development for your team, and efficient delivery. As a leader, you must work to remove the fear of bringing in outside expertise and embrace the possibilities. It is difficult to do everything on your own.
case study: AB InBev AB InBev has built up its own in-house agency to be closer to the creative process. When it first launched, the in-house team consisted of three people and has since significantly expanded in size and scope. Over the course of a year, the company extended its digital and social capability, with the team now working across the AB InBev portfolio of over 40 brands on a full range of services: OOH, display and radio advertising, email marketing, packaging, audience segmentation, programmatic media buying, analytics, influencer marketing, social listening and community management. In addition to AB InBev employees transferring to the in-house agency, the team comprises employees with experience across agencies, production companies, in-house studios, digital media publishers, and TV networks.
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