The makeup of a recession-resilient internal creative agency

The last year and a half have been hard on the industry. The covid era brought bountiful budgets and many Creative Operators were lucky enough to scale their teams to meet lofty revenue goals. This is not the reality of H2 2023.

I’ve long belonged to the camp of ‘in-house is best’. I’ve seen true business-driving value generated by creative and marketing organizations with close proximity to the customer, living the brand ethos day in and day out. To be blunt, this competitive edge comes with high overhead. When this economic downturn hit we had to make hard choices.

Today I believe it is my fiduciary responsibility to build creative organizations that are more recession resilient. Moving forward a portion of my team’s individual contributors will forever sit out-of-house. Having an external partner available to surge and rightsize as needed makes sense for the bottom line, and on a human level, provides security for my core in-house team.

This external support model takes time to build. In my experience, you are looking at six months to source and negotiate a statement of work. Another three months for knowledge transfer and an additional six months before you reach steady-state.

As you start to plan for 2024 may I suggest ring-fencing a portion of your budget to stand up a flexible labor force? It is a tool in the Creative Operator’s toolbox that shouldn’t be ignored. I’d be happy to make introductions. Please share your favorite agency partners in the comments below.

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