Agency principals often sense a gap in their creative department before they can name it. Is it another art director or designer they need? An idea person? Some combination of the two? Getting that diagnosis right matters, because the wrong hire compounds the problem instead of solving it.
What follows is a creative department framework with descriptions. It encompasses all the creative functions within an agency. Some agencies outsource some of these functions. That is a legitimate financial decision. But three things are worth keeping in mind before concluding that outside talent can carry the load.
First, assuming you can keep them busy, you make more money on in-house creatives than outside suppliers. The math is straightforward.
Second, agencies that depend solely on outside sources rarely deliver significant creative over time. Good creative is almost always accomplished by a core team of people who trust each other and know the client's business as well as they know their own. That kind of team is difficult to assemble on an ad hoc basis. It has to be built and grown in a stable environment. Your production staff, on the other hand, can be entirely freelance or outsourced.
Third, consider what makes your agency worth buying. A good investment advisor once made his case to prospects this way: "You cannot duplicate this particular combination of people anywhere in the world. If you like what we have in our little black bag, you have to buy it from us." The same is true of advertising agencies. Your unique combination of in-house creatives and the work they produce cannot be replicated. You cannot say that about creative you buy from the outside.
Consider your own workflow
Many agencies commit to tight comps far too early in the approval cycle of a typical job. This causes hours of wasted rework to meet strategic goals that were never properly locked in. A well-organized creative department generates more billable time, fewer start-overs, and smoother operations.
Creative flows through an agency in the following manner.
Level 1
A meeting, usually between the account executive, project manager, account planner, media planner, creative director, art director, and copywriter to thoroughly discuss client input and the project. The combination of people varies depending on the importance of the project and personal schedules. The goal is to arrive at genuine alignment before anything gets made.
Level 2
Senior art directors working with copywriters complete rough, sketchy conceptual comps. These should be worked at a level geared to generating ideas, not producing a finished-looking digital comp. The goal is to get consensus from the team on the validity of the idea before anyone commits significant time to execution. Many agencies go astray by immediately focusing on too few comps that look polished but may not be on strategy.
One agency was writing off tens of thousands of dollars a month in creative time as non-billable. The cause: the agency was submitting comps that were too detailed before the account executive and the client had genuinely signed off on the strategy. The rework was relentless and entirely preventable.
Level 3
When the idea and strategy are approved, the task shifts to making the work look good in the form of a tight comp. This is where you need a strong comp artist to create your digital artwork. This level of artist does not have to be strategic. They need to be highly conceptual with excellent art skills.
Level 4
The client has agreed to the project and the tight comp is in good shape. The job can and should be finished by a strong production artist with support from the appropriate team members and the production manager. The production artist transforms the job into the finished digital file for whatever the output requires: print, digital media, social, broadcast, or web.
The four levels are not bureaucracy. They are the difference between a creative department that bills what it earns and one that donates its best hours to rework nobody asked for.
