The world’s gone mad if you believe, as some people are claiming, the above title. A politician (let’s say politician X) recently claimed that councils were wasting far too much money on design by employing agencies for jobs, which should instead be moved in-house. He went so far as to say that tools, such as Microsoft Paint and Photoshop, negated the need for the intrusion of design agencies into council life. Without doubt one of the most short-sighted statements made that day by a politician. The very fact that the politician and their chosen party are in power is due in a large part to design experts. The brand that Blair/Obama etc. built up is created with help from top agencies in fields such as design, PR and advertising. The power and consistency of their message is only possible through great design and brand guidelines. Posters and election literature are key communication tools and worth their weight in gold. Executed well , they can grab attention and create real emotion. Executed poorly (by an inexperienced in house designer/advertiser/PR ‘guru’) and your entire campaign momentum is lost as people struggle to decipher your message.
A belief that in-house is the way forward can even be seen in agencies traditional heartland; advertising. If you look at Marketing Magazine’s recent survey of ads with the highest recall, they found that ‘confused.com’ came out on top. And guess who created this masterpiece? Yes it was all done in house. ‘Success’ stories such as this seem to support financial directors view that as much as possible should be kept in-house. This success has led to multitple new national television adverts which clearly have no agency input- think webuyanycar.com.
A holistic view has to be taken here to see where the problem lies. Yes in-house people can have talents for advertising etc. and yes there can be one-off productions which achieve the business great success. Will webuyanycar.com have any longevity however? Will it be able to sustain its image and recall in the long-term by consistently repeating its aggressive message? The answer is probably no. In a year or two it will have fallen by the way side and the brand/website will always be associated with low value advertising. Catchy tune yes but one that has pidgeonhold them forever.
So would an agency have produced a better advert for webuyanycar.com? Perhaps, perhaps not. The only guarantee would have been that the adverts message and tone would have matched the company’s overall objectives and a longer term strategy put in place. They would have researched the target audience thorughly to see exactly what appeals and created the desired response.
How about PR? Surely that can be brought in-house and the occasional press story sent out to keep things ticking over? Well yes, if you are satisfied with your current position, because at best this is going to be where your business stays. At a housing company in Florida, I was approached by a PR agency to handle our communications in what was a highly competitive market. My manager having always worked client side had a deep mistrust of such agencies and insisted that we could clobber something together ourselves in-between leasing appartments and giving tours. Thanks to this way of thinking I found myself roaming the university campus in a banana suit in scorching temperatures, whilst riding a tuk-tuk, which had music blaring. At large crowds we would dismount, dance, throw out free t-shirts and hope that someone also took the leaflets. I also produced a radio advert, just because I was English. The script was written by everyone in the office that day, which meant it was hugely confused though doubtless amusing.
So did our in-house PR help with the overall objective of signing leases? Well no not particularly. There was a slight peak but the largest improvement came in my fitness from riding the bike. After this we decided that we would give an outside agency a go. After evaluating the market the chosen agency was able to produce an integrated communications campaign, which focussed on helping us sign more leases. And it worked- by the end of my internship at the company we only had one house remaining out of 340.
The message here then is for marketing managers and company owners to accept their limitations. Just as you would not put out a rushed service or product, don’t put out poorly thought through communications. Social platforms now mean that any mistakes or off tone statements will be amplified and delivered to all your customers. On the same note do not just accept everything an agency says: challenge them to produce a set of targets that you want, not which they simply set as being the norm. No two businesses are the same and therefore objectives must always be tailored.
