What you need to know:

• In-housing consultancy Lution is eyeing global expansion with founder Chris Maxwell tapping into global demand from brands that he says are taking more services in-house, particularly data.
• 18 months from launch Maxwell has assembled a team of consultants, with former Betfair marketing boss and founder Lution client Nick Thomas joining as partner.
• Maxwell dismissed suggestions that savings from in-housing media buying are short-lived.
• To keep in-house teams fresh, he’s bringing in top creative strategists, rolling out a commercial creative workshop series developed for Sportsbet to all clients.
• Sportsbet, Treasury Wine Estates, Birchal, The Star Entertainment Group and Dulux Group all on roster.

The in-housing consultancy founded by former CUB marketer Chris Maxwell is bidding to go global, with talks underway in the UK and New Zealand. Former Betfair Chief Customer Officer Nick Thomas has joined Lution as partner alongside a team of former brand execs turned consultants including Karina Russo, Steven Hunt, Ben Grace, Dave Keating and Adam Murphy.

The expansion follows a string of brands – Sportsbet, Treasury Wine Estates, equity crowdfunding platform Birchal, The Star Entertainment Group and Dulux Group – hiring the consultancy, with more incoming.

No one hit wonder?

While agencies are open to building in-house teams with brands, some have questioned the savings being touted, especially on media buying, suggesting cost efficiencies are the result of buying lower impact inventory and may be short-lived, criticising a lack of year-on-year benchmarking to prove sustained results.

Maxwell, who also last year launched the In-House Agency Council, rejected those claims. He said the evidence from the council’s media sub group, overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

“That sub-group is made up of specialist buyers. A lot of them are ex-agency that are now in-house. They know the rates they were paying within their agency versus what they are paying now and they are consistently saying they are saving so much money, that it is not a one-off.” Maxwell last year told Mi3 the in-house team he built at CUB in 2017 achieved media rate savings of circa 30 per cent.

Speed, efficiency and data ownership is also driving in-housing demand.

“You don’t have to wrangle with agencies to get the data out of their systems. You can optimise on the fly without going back and forth,” said Maxwell. “Data ownership is such an important factor. It is now almost commercially irresponsible to outsource it, not only from a regulatory and privacy standpoint, but also because your ability to leverage data is so much stronger if you have that in-house.”

Brands confirm that view. Treasury Wines has just gone live with its in-house agency. Dubbed Splash, it spans data, analytics, content, production, design and digital media across a 20-strong team. Marketing Director Ben Culligan told Mi3 those elements “are no longer external peripheral marketing capabilities. They're now absolutely core to what we need to have as our capabilities internally”.

Funding brand building

Maxwell said other marketers are drawing the same conclusion.

“We’re getting more unprompted contacts – the trend is accelerating. Brands that have dabbled in the past – taking social and search in-house – are doing more. They are looking at creative, media, data and production and they need help to best structure an integrated model.”

Maxwell pointed to the growth of CUB’s internal agency, now five years old, as proof that the model works over the long-term. “CUB started out with 20-odd people. Now it employs around 65. It is delivering results for brands and so they are willing to invest more.”

He underlined that the CUB still works with external agencies, as does Treasury Wines, as do most of the large brands that have taken an in-house route. While some buy above the line media directly, “it’s less common”, said Maxwell. For creative, “most still want to work with top agencies and talent – but some brands might only need an expensive ECD a couple of times a year.”

He said the cost savings enabled from in-house and hybrid arrangements can fund top-tier talent on a project basis, which was the original plan with Lution founder client Betfair, which shot a big brand campaign via Bear Meets Eagle on Fire before being shifting market dynamics forced a change of tack.

Stale is as stale does

Maxwell also responded to criticism that talent gets bored or goes stale when less exposed to the multiple brands they serve working in agencies. He said “at worst” those that miss more varied work can return to agencies with new skills and agrees with ex-Leo Burnett digital chief turned SiteMinder CMO Mark Renshaw that in-house teams “go deeper and get a different kind of variety”.

“Across the board talent is more scarce than it was, but we are hearing increasing evidence that people like the idea of going in-house. Treasury Wines didn’t have too much trouble building an amazing team pretty quickly. So I’d say there are a lot of people looking for that experience – and it’s not a lifetime commitment,” said Maxwell.

“There are some benefits of gaining a couple of years experience client-side and being closer to the commercial realities of a business. If you don’t love it, you can go back to an agency with more experience under your belt,” he added. “Plus the way corporates train managers can be very different to agencies. Many have formal upskilling programmes, you learn how to lead people, manage a P&L, aspects you may not necessarily pick up in an agency. So there is something to be said for broadening your skills from operating inside a brand, rather than one step removed.”

Lution is taking steps to keep in-house talent fresh via specialist workshops. As the start of the year it partnered with former Optus, M&C Saatchi and Droga5 creative strategist Michael Sinclair to deliver a series on creative capability and creative inspiration for Sportsbet.

“We’ve been in every six weeks, developing commercial creativity, giving them tools and models on how to assess and deliver creative ideas and build that muscle,” said Maxwell. “We had one of the guys from Treasury Wines come in to talk about how they approach ‘premiumisation’ and we’ve literally just finished a workshop focusing on all the best work from Cannes and the Super Bowl. Now we’re rolling that out to other partners, because in-housing comes hand in glove with being a more creative business.”

That said, brand teams have been less forward than agency counterparts in flaunting great work. Hence launching the In-House Agency Awards, with brands including Asahi, Aus Post, Koala, MYOB, Optus, Sportsbet and Xero vying for gongs.

While creativity in all forms is scored, judges – which include Deloitte Creative Partner and Lution co-founder Nick Garrett and incoming Telstra CMO Brent Smart – are giving heaviest weighting to business impact. “It’s all about delivering for the business,” said Maxwell. “We were surprised by the response – a lot of brands we weren’t expecting to enter threw their hats into the ring.” (Winners will be crowned here on 24 August.)

In-housing accelerates, UK, NZ next

Maxwell said in-housing demand is increasing across all categories – and local data broadly backs his claim. Just over half of 220 Australian marketers polled by consultancy Arktic Fox at the end of 2021 said they had in-housed some forms of marketing services during the year, with just under half stating that they intend to in-house in 2022.

He said demand is running hot globally – with Lution now eyeing international expansion.

“The growth strategy is focused on the in-house/hybrid model. We want to be the world experts and we’re heading in that direction, because there is global demand and we have a well-considered model for how to do this properly. We’re already talking to clients overseas, there’s live conversations underway in the UK and New Zealand,” said Maxwell.

“Which brands? There’ll be news in due course.”