How Will You Assess the Benefit Delivery of Your In-House Agency?
March 12, 2020
The number of marketers transitioning portions of their advertising from agency partners to in-house operations has grown in recent years. According to a 2018 ANA study on this topic it found that “78 percent of its members had in-house agencies,” which was up from a level of 42 percent in 2008.
As marketers seek improved levels of speed, control and efficiency, the trend of marketers transitioning select services in-house or, in some instances, seeking to build full-blown internal agencies will likely continue.
Company management’s goals regarding this decision often revolve around the procurement of advertising support with shorter turn-around times and lower costs than what can be achieved through its external ad agencies. The question to be asked is, how will in-house agency executives measure and report on their operation’s benefit delivery?
Capturing data and providing feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of in-house operations is a must when it comes to validating its existence, assessing project through-put potential and evaluating colleague satisfaction. That said, determining what performance criteria to measure and the methodology to be employed is an important decision.
In a recent article entitled “Taking Your Marketing In-House? It Is Time to Improve Productivity” Darren Woolley, global chief executive of TrinityP3, an Australian based marketing management consulting firm, suggests that when it comes to benefit delivery, in-house agencies are overlooking the “single biggest financial benefit” that they provide, which is “improving productivity.”
Measurement of “what” an in-house agency produces in addition to the cost of delivery aside, Mr. Woolley rightly points out that in-house agency executives have the unique ability to enhance the productivity of their operations by “streamlining structures and processes” between their internal clients and the in-house agency team. This is a structural advantage, not always available to a marketer’s external agency partners who have to adopt to their clients’ internal processes, no matter how inefficient they may be.
The good news is that there are resources available to assist marketers with crafting in-house agency effectiveness measures and to benchmark their performance. As an example, the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF) offers its members access to a normative database of performance benchmark and the ability to customize a performance survey that they can field to assess their service delivery where it counts most — with their internal clients.
Establishing the storyline for assessing in-house agency value delivery is critical to driving productivity and positively shaping stakeholder expectations. In the words of Paul Meyer, “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
Cliff Campeau is a Principal at AARM | Advertising Audit & Risk Management. You can email him at ccampeau@aarmusa.com.
The views and opinions expressed in Marketing Maestros are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.