The cost issue looms large now as Marketing Directors and CMOs are under pressure to prove the ROI on their campaigns and projects. The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the creative services industry, according to Marketing Week, with over half of marketers experiencing a decrease in their marketing budget. In fact, according to our March 2022 survey ‘Challenges for IHAs in a post-pandemic world,’ 56% of UK in-house agencies say the biggest challenge they will face will be having to do more for less! Doing ‘more for less’ is now a commonplace challenge.
An article published by Campaign Live highlighted how Nestlé was able to reduce production costs by as much as 80% using offshore production partners. For creative and artwork, production and digital work, using an offshore production partner can make significant savings for in-house agencies without any loss in quality.
Delivering more for less by using a creative production partner offshore extends beyond that of cost savings.
Meeting deadlines is one of the biggest challenges with 51% saying so in the EKCS The Modern Challenges of an IHA survey. For in-housers, time gets taken up with company pressures and priorities. As a result, meeting deadlines creates extra pressure and overtime. Using off-shore production partners, who are working in different time zones is an advantage for creative teams. Every business has peak periods and it is here that IHAs can leverage the help of external partners. With knowledge transfer and collaboration, external and in-house teams work in tandem to handle peaks.
According to the IHAF 2018 State-of-the-Industry Report, 67% of IHAs are not adequately staffed to carry out mass creative production and distribution. In a global economy based on virtual working and digital advertising, access to flexible resource has become a crucial component for any studio manager, looking to fulfill customer requirements in a timely way.
Creative production outsourcing is all about enabling staff and your IHA to do more. IHAs consist of talented individuals who should always be leading creative strategy. An EKCS poll conducted in April 2021 showed that one-fifth of IHA leaders still felt that they were mainly a production entity, running as a centralized production team over and above being creative-led. One creative leader described her situation as having ‘a stable of racehorses being treated like donkeys’! Outsourcing creative production really can help your team perform at their very best and deliver their employer their maximum value.
Cross-media adaptations is a common area where help is often needed. If you’ve got an idea for a campaign but lack the resources to execute it across print, digital and video, then the collaborative outsourcing model could work for you. The IHA creates the master artwork and the external partner manages the adaptations across multiple channels.
As satisfaction levels are steady and partnerships are developing based on trust, offshore production is set for strong growth over the next five years. In fact, brands and IHAs are predicting more investment in offshore creative production over the next 12 months.
If you’re looking to do more for less, isn’t it time you explored outsourcing?
To find out more about outsourcing, download our guide. It looks at the benefits of outsourcing, what to consider in a production partner and tips on how to get started with outsourcing.