Sometimes You Just Gotta Go Outside For Creative Ideas
Photo credit: Jonathan Borba
In my three decade career in the advertising business, I’ve worked at eight agencies in five cities. There wasn’t a single agency who didn’t, at times, go outside to get creative ideas. It’s not ideal, of course. Agencies want to use their own people whenever possible. It’s more profitable. But here are three cases where going outside is the right business decision.
1. Your team is stuck.
It happens. You’ve had a client for multiple years. You’ve had the same campaign running for as many years, and largely the same team working on it. Sometimes the team can get stuck creatively.
How do we keep the campaign fresh? What should our spokesperson do next that we haven’t already done? How do we keep the client from getting bored with the same ol’ campaign?
Going outside and bringing in freelance help is a great way to get unstuck. The outside team doesn’t know the history, isn’t aware of the agency/client politics, and is oblivious to the understood inertia of the campaign’s direction. Some of their ideas may not be usable for reasons they can’t help, but I guarantee all of the ideas will get your resident teams thinking differently about the brand.
Note: this truth is especially true for in-house agencies, where insular thinking is virtually inescapable.
2. Your a-team isn’t available.
This happens all the time when the agency is in an exciting pitch—a pitch that, if won, could change the trajectory of the agency—and the A-team is on a shoot in LA or on vacation or otherwise not available.
Going outside and bringing in a freelance A-team is a great option so you don’t lose any ground. Remember, the timing of pitches are fixed, so you can’t ask for more time. An outside team can work for a week or so coming up with ideas while your A-team is away, so when your team comes back they’re not starting from square one.
Now, you're returning A-team may not love all the work that comes from the outside team, but that’s ok. The work will still no doubt inspire your A-team and give them the jump start they need to come up with even better ideas quickly. And who knows, maybe the outside team will nail it.
3. You don’t have the right talent.
This is another one related to pitches. Since the agency is in the pitch for a client in X category, then by definition they don’t have a competing brand already from X category. As such, only a few if any of your employees will have any category X experience.
Going outside allows you to bring in freelance creatives who are loaded with category experience. And it may be creative teams, but also strategists who can advise your pitch team as to the realities of the category as they navigate the pitch.
Fake it till you make it. The client doesn’t need to know. Going outside will help you win.
Going outside has never been easier.
We have built our entire business around the need for outside creative help. As stated above, it’s not always the ideal solution for agencies and in-house agencies. But when they do need to go outside, there isn’t a better, more economical way to get four creatives this good to work together as a team on any problem you throw at them. Click here to schedule a demo of the Ideasicle X platform.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. And he’s the consummate Beatles fan. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post.