Darren Woolley, Trinity P3 founder and global CEO, warns marketers of in-housing as economic recession looms.
“If you're a marketer thinking - should I bring all my agents in-house? Don't do it,” Woolley said on stage at AdNews’ Adelaide L!VE.
In-housing was big in the US a decade ago but has surfaced more recently in Australia with Australia's peak industry body for in-house agencies, The In-House Agency Council, established in 2020.
“The weird part is everyone says you're either in-house or you outsource. But it's not the only choice and almost no one is exclusively doing one or the other,” Woolley said.
Instead, one trend unfolding in the US is a hybrid model - where creative agencies act like consultants to help clients deal with volumes of work by generating ideas.
“Another big trend we're seeing is extended workbench where agencies provide talent for client organisations.
“We're doing a project in North America where they are getting rid of their in-house agency, and replacing them with an agency who will provide people to work in-house. Already they have reaped huge benefits.”
Woolley explains how this false dichotomy - of in-housing or not - has emerged as a way to deal with the over-complexity of today’s marketing landscape.
“Everything gets reduced into these simple A or B choices and the problem with simplification is we end up with half of the solutions. Because every choice you make on a binary, half is going to be missed.
“And you won't know whether it's the correct half.
“When we work with clients who are being pushed into a situation where they feel they have two choices, we say to them, you don't have to do either, there's actually an infinite array of other choices that you have to work through.”
Instead what marketers need to consider is what’s right for their business, says Wolley.
“We're seeing, particularly in the US, in the face of the economic downturn clients are suddenly faced with having to lay off their in-house agency as that was a cost that they never accounted for.”
#L!VE Adelaide is powered by co-curators AADC, AMC. Supporting partners Boomtown, CARAT, NINE. Hospitality partner StackAdapt. And associate partners MiQ, Solstice Media.
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