The five things
That was a true story about one of this writer’s early experiences of working creatively, client-side. The year was 2020. COVID was just getting started, retail was going off — and so was a trend (alarming for traditional agency operators) called creative in-housing. For most of the team it was their first client-side gig and the start of an awakening. These are five things that stood out for someone whose entire career until then had been on the other side.
The business is the business
Twenty years in ad land, cushioned in the beanbags of a creative department, can leave you a touch business-naïve. Client-side, that’s the first intel to hit you: ‘the business’ is what everyone is controlled by, measured by and deemed necessary or unnecessary by. Every department — marketing included — is ultimately a servant to it, accountable to it, and has to prove its value by its achievements.
Clients are commercial
Many trained in ad land were taught to pursue creative excellence at all costs — blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars of hours on pitches and concepting, fully accepting 90% would hit the bin. Client environments are less like this. Commerciality, not creativity, is the key driver of most thriving businesses, and the bottom line is the bottom line. Marketing can even be seen as a luxury — first in line when budgets are cut — so teams must prove their worth by making, not losing, money.
Technology is taxing
If there’s one thing internal teams are preoccupied with, it’s technology. There’s the pressure to keep up, the bewilderment of endless options and vendor pitches, and the implementation, training and measurement that follow. For CMOs, recommending a martech suite and proving its value can be make or break — not least because of the territorial tension with the CTO, whose KPIs depend on the same technology but are measured by a different yardstick.
In-housing is everywhere
There was a time when marketers and agencies left each other to their knitting. Somewhere in the 21st century that age ended, and creative in-housing — designers, copywriters, art directors and creative directors working inside the business — is the result. Over the last five or six years, agencies have either lost work to the model or embraced it, embedding their teams on the ground with clients the way consultants have for decades. Why so popular? Businesses are less focused on the mystique of creativity and more on their bottom lines.
Media is a main game
What brings CMOs accolades? Directly attributable leads and sales. Which is why media — any platform, event or sponsorship that gets the message to the audience and brings in customers — is a main game. It’s also more complex and digital than the days of TV spots and billboards, so it’s a core energy-sucker. If you’re wondering where the creative budgets of old went, chances are they’ve been redirected to media.