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What’s HUb Inside/Out?

Ask 100 CMOs if they have in-house creative capabilities and about 80 hands will go up. Now ask if their in-house agency is doing everything they dreamed of, and, well…a lot of those hands go down.

And that’s where HUb comes in. Inside/Out is on a mission to help in-house creative agencies do all the things they were created to do in the first place. Things like giving brands greater control over implementing their marketing strategies, realizing cost savings, and achieving greater brand consistency. Think of Inside/Out as a sort of SWAT team (only way less violent. And let’s be honest, way less brave). SWAT teams show up at a situation that needs immediate tending to and use their brains and training to solve the problem at hand. And when they’re done, they leave.

Inside/Out is kinda like that. But the situation that needs tending to is your in-house creative agency and the SWAT team is composed of client-side veterans, creative directors, account management devotees and an amazing roster of senior creative specialists that can tend to any immediate need you might have. When we’re finished and your in-house agency is humming along marvelously, we leave.

Want to hear more about Inside/Out? Contact us at hello@hubinsideout.com.

What we do

  • Help you determine the right work for in-house agencies and internal creative teams
  • Set up an infrastructure that supports great creative work
  • Develop a process to move work through creative and marketing teams
  • Attract high-level talent to execute the work
  • Foster great partnerships with your external agencies
  • Build credibility for your company

Capabilities

Internal agency ROI goals

To decide if you even need an in-house team, we’ll dig into your current agency spend with your finance team and find the right opportunities for in-house work. We do this with three things in mind; the overall cost of hiring new talent (including benefits), the cost of hiring an external agency with the same level of talent, and the number of people it will take to execute a specific body of work.

Creative and production skill assessment

Evaluating a creative team is time consuming, especially if you don’t have direct experience with the roles. We can help assess the skills of your existing team and identify areas that may need some TLC. We will work with your HR team on our skill assessment criteria to ensure we are following your hiring policies and establishing good transitions for your employees and your company.

Creative organization architecture

Depending on the ROI, available talent, and company needs, we’ll help you determine who and what roles you’ll need to reach your goals. Since each business is different, we’ll give you a couple of options to consider so you can approach your new team with confidence.

Creative workflow process

Bringing in great talent does nothing if there is not an agreed upon system to work between your marketing department and internal creative department. We’ll work with your existing team to find the best process for your creative workflow, considering your brand, channel and product teams so the work gets through as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Creative briefs

In our experience, marketing folks often articulate business needs easily, but sometimes struggle when they have to turn them into inspiring creative briefs. We can help you develop and train teams to write compelling creative briefs for seamless execution for your ad campaigns.

Job description development

After you understand the work that needs to get done and what your dream team will look like, we’ll help you write job descriptions that attract the right talent for your internal team.

Interviewing and hiring

Your recruiting team is probably excellent at hiring the right talent for the roles that have made you successful. But It’s a little more difficult to find the right creative talent if your recruiters aren’t familiar with the advertising and branding industry. They may not know exactly what you’re looking for or where to search. We can bring in creative recruiters for high-level positions as well as assist internal recruiters to screen and interview candidates that best fit your goals.

External agency assessment

In the past, we’ve had a lot of luck getting internal and outside agencies to not only co-exist but also to help each other in the best interest of the brand. If your current agencies just aren’t working out, we’ll help you find an external agency that can work with your internal teams to deliver integrated campaigns in service of your brand, not theirs.

External agency resourcing

Depending on your current roster, we can help flesh it out with additional capabilities. Lots of agencies take a collaborative approach in working with brands, and while we won’t run your RFPs for you, we know people that can until you’re ready to take them on yourself.

Creative direction and development

From the Staples “Easy Button” to Lady Gaga’s David Bowie tribute Grammy performance, our Inside/Out team has done it all. We’ll help coach your team to develop creative ideas that delivers on your KPIs until you are ready to hire that position full time.

Culture & mission

So, you go through all this work and you STILL have a team that is unmotivated or underperforming. We believe a strong mission that everyone understands and is behind is absolutely integral to fostering good company culture and creative ideas. We’ll help you develop an actionable and easy to understand mission for your department, making sure it extends beyond a poster in your conference room and is visible in every aspect of the workplace.

Creative resource presentations

We can present what we do to your internal creative agency either in person or virtually. We want to have open conversations that spark inspiration, engage different points of view, and create a better understanding of what a different creative process can do for your company. We’re also willing to speak to your management team to help them understand the benefits and caveats of in-housing.

In-housing staff

Giving you org charts and processes will only succeed if they’re actually implemented. If you don’t have a current team that can fill all of those roles to work in-house, we can provide some short term in-house employees with the right skill sets that will help get your model up and running.

Who we are

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Teresa Herd

Teresa is a creative and brand leader who has developed global integrated brand platforms, impacting both brand perception and company performance across retail, tech, service and packaged goods companies. She’s worked on both the ad agency and client side of the business, giving her a unique perspective on how to structure creative organizations to work in service of brands like Intel, Zillow, Staples and Boston Beer Company.

She has spent her career building integrated teams of writers, art directors, designers, UX, motion graphics, creative strategy, account services, operations and project management. To develop the best creative, Teresa cultivates inspiring cultures as well as infrastructures and processes that support creative teams.

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Elaine Smith

Elaine is a 20-year agency account management veteran, starting her advertising career at the Agency at Staples outside of Boston. After 3 years learning the ins and outs of the business on the internal side, she worked at various Boston agencies including Mullen, Carat and VML. Elaine brought new workflow technologies to businesses and consistently recommended day-to-day process improvements. Working efficiently is, dare we say, an “odd” passion of Elaine’s, and when you work with her, you’ll quickly realize she has no tolerance for inefficiency.

In 2013, a move to San Francisco brought Elaine to Organic where she honed her digital skills, and then to HUb, where she has been ever since. She has since relocated back to Boston with her family, where she works remotely and manages one of our largest accounts. Despite her remote location, she is still very much involved in the operational side of the HUb business, recommending new workflow software and driving tech migration and new business processes.