The rise of in-housing is tempting advertising creatives, with Richard Morgan the latest to make the jump.
While in-housing is more established overseas, many Australian brands are growing their capacity such as Optus, Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) and Coles.
And following them is "a lot of great talent" - such as writers, art directors, creative directors and ECDs - who tell Morgan in-housing is a healthy trend that unlocks great creative work for a client.
“[Creatives] are looking for those [in-house] opportunities actively because they think it has something different to offer than just taking another [traditional] agency job,” Morgan told AdNews.
After 25 years agency side tackling beasts like McDonalds at DDB to government work at 303MullenLowe and contributing to the advertising beer wars for Lion Nathan at BMF, Morgan couldn’t resist ‘jumping in’ and challenging himself client side.
Morgan is now hungry for the challenge of the supermarket wars and started as executive creative director at Woolworths’ in-house agency Greenhouse Collective four weeks ago. Why? Because agency-side isn’t what it used to be.
“As a creative I’ve experienced that to produce the best work, you need complete trust with a client,” Morgan said.
“Having shared objectives, goals and accountability is the real way to unlock creativity because then clients buy bolder, more challenging creative and invest more at scale into the work.”
But due to the changing landscape of adland with the shortage of staff tenure and pitches becoming more project based, trust is hard to come by.
“Agencies are always kind of scrambling or trying to shape people around uncertain revenue forecasts and it's very difficult to shape a business model around that,” Morgan said.
“Whereas [the in-housing] model allows great people to be invested in, over time seeing short, medium and long term opportunities.”
And the Greenhouse Collective model does exactly that as the agency and the client are wholly invested in the same thing; there's a co-responsibility and co-authorship to ensure creative ideas flourish.
Woolworths 2022 Christmas campaign.
Unlike most in-housing agencies, Greenhouse Collective staff get to stretch across multiple categories of the retail giant's ecosystem, from supermarkets to everyday rewards to mobile to insurance.
“For me as a creative that's the major opportunity here - to foster that trust and reap the rewards in terms of raising the bar of work,” Morgan said.
“Also through my recruitment process Greenhouse Collective really expressed its desire to level up the output, despite being Australia's biggest advertiser they have a desire to do better and be bolder.”
Shared responsibility also emerged as a theme.
“With a hybrid in-house model, it’s harder for client – or agency – to point to the other and say they’re not delivering, say, great ideas or process, when both groups are co-invested in that process," Morgan said.
"Woolworths is home to some of Australia’s top marketers, they know M&C Group has top class talent and is famous for its processes bespoke-built for large clients, so we’re right in there together.”
Greenhouse Collective comprises 100 marketers in-house but also runs on a hybrid model working with external agencies when required. Because with an in-house model, it’s important for a creative agency to remain objective, Morgan said.
“It’s a danger for any agency that works closely with a client over a long period of time to ‘go native’ and lose objectivity," Morgan said.
"We need to be constantly looking at market rivals, best in class work and asking ‘where does our client’s brands fit here? What should we be saying and how? Where’s the white space?' without the waters being muddied."
The spirit of start up mode
Agencies are always at their best when they're in the spirit of startup mode, Morgan said, because in that era there are infinite possibilities of success.
“That kind of start-up swagger creates a real energy and momentum for everyone, it is amazing what that can do to an agency,” Morgan said
“Matthew Melhuish [founding partner of BMF and former CEO of Enero Group] says you can tell when an agency gets on a roll, because everyone carries a confidence with them, which is infectious across the business.”
Despite Greenhouse Collective operating for over eight years, “believe it or not there is that spirit at here right now because Woolworths and M&C have brought me here to basically optimise the agency and work together to champion ideas,” Morgan said.
“Of course we will put those bold initiatives through the required level of stakeholders and process, but we will still emerge with work that's going to be genuinely disruptive with a powerful business impact.
“Good agencies are constantly in reinvention mode, striving for positive evolution.”
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