What you need to know:

• DTC Australian mattress brand Koala is ramping up in-house capability following the launch of its new brand campaign.
• The move follows the departure of CMO Peter Sloterdyk, with the chief marketer role scrapped via a restructure.
• Koala is now moving investment and creative output into larger above the line campaigns, with the support of project partner The Royals.
• However, in-house lead Brad Firth aims to grow the internal 40-strong agency team further over the next six months.

In-house rules

Direct to consumer (DTC) mattress and homewares brand Koala may be without a CMO for the foreseeable future but that's not stopping it from upping investment in its in-house capabilities.

This week, the brand underwent an "organisational restructuring", with marketing boss Peter Sloterdyk exiting and his role scrapped in favour of a Chief Commercial Officer position – which the company stated it is "passively" filling.

Nevertheless, the brand has just had arguably one of its most expansive periods of marketing since launch, releasing a new brand campaign and overhauling its e-commerce platform.

Both tasks were handled by the brand's internal creative, media and tech teams – some 40 staff.

The campaign has also been more present in above-the-line channels compared to the brand's more common digital messaging. In-house strategy and creative boss and former Nike creative exec Brad Firth, who has been with the firm for six months, said the campaign kicked off the “biggest evolution” for the brand to date, which also included entering a new market in South Korea.

Firth said while Koala had already been investing in above the line channels for the last 12-months, the latest campaign was also the most ambitious work yet – which meant the brand needed to consider bolstering in-house capabilities in order to deliver bigger work more consistently.

"We’re a brand that has set the standard for incredible in-house creative in Australia, combining disruptive tone of voice with full-funnel digital marketing. Something that will continue to be the bedrock for the brand even as we continue to expand," Firth told Mi3.

"But we also need to look into how we can grow our capabilities further and manage those larger-scale projects that are more demanding of us."

For the latest campaign, that included bringing on indie creative agency The Royals.

Firth said this allowed Koala to “keep its eye on the ball” across every area of the campaign, with the agency providing support for the final above the line creative.

This included the executions across TV, outdoor and radio, areas Firth said are still growing channels for the brand and areas where the in-house team is continuing to upskill.

“We worked in an extremely close relationship with The Royals in the space and obviously our team delivered a lot of the ideation and overall creative direction," Firth said.

“I believe the majority of our success is grounded in the work we do in-house primarily – but we can’t ignore the pressures that can come with something as large as a product launch, new e-commerce offering or the launch of a new market, all happening at once.

“So I wouldn’t dispute the relevance and value of a larger agency and their ability to help execute some of those ideas across a wider scope of media channels.”

The brand also runs a significant amount of its media planning in-house but has also recently begun working with external partner All Social.

Outside the house

While appreciating the value and skills brought to the table by agency partners, Firth disputes the notion that in-housing can reach a cap in execution based on media channel, content or team size – though he does aim to increase headcount in the coming months.

Rather, Firth said the success of an in-house team is reliant on experience and ambition, admitting it “may not go right the first time... but that’s like anything in creative”.

“There is always going to be a test and learn when it comes to how an in-house team manages certain projects and it’s not a matter of whether above the line can be done at scale. It comes down to how much the team is taking on at one time and whether its something it hasn’t tackled ye," he added.

“In this instance we were launching several new aspects of the business, ramping up investment in different channels and re-platforming our online presence – that’s going to require assistance, especially as we are still quite a young business.”

Not ruling out a closer agency relationship going forward, Firth said Koala would have to be comfortable in having a partner acting as “an extension of the internal team”.

Firth said the next 12 to 24 months will be pivotal in understanding the next stage in the internal team’s growth but said a roadmap had “yet to be defined”.

“I'm not really sure yet whether Koala will 100 per cent remain in-house or go 50:50 or 25:75, agency split – there’s no rigid structure.

“What we do have is a strong bedrock foundation setup to continue driving our own work internally and the ability to work with partners where necessary. It’s something I think a lot of naysayers about in-housing miss; it's an area that needs to be built into and connect with every element of your business.”

Brand investment

Firth said Koala will continue to focus on brand investment while ensuring the creative is digital-first and connects every layer of the funnel. 

He said this would hopefully give the business a 60/40 split when it came to brand versus performance but argued that the two aren't viewed as explicitly separate by the team.

"Just because we do a campaign through our digital channels doesn't mean it's not a brand campaign - our cheeky swipe at IKEA furniture earlier this year was a good example," Firth said.

"It was an idea that was thought up internally, we went around shooting images of council clean-ups and then turned around a full digital ecosystem of creative in two weeks and it was a massive hit, got a lot of attention and traction. For us, being able to continue to do high speed disruptive work like that, in-house, is key."