Our PR and social media agency has enjoyed the many benefits of having a full-service, award-winning creative team in-house. In fact, that group is growing like gangbusters and doing great work for clients like LoJack, as you can see here.
In many ways our creative services team, Studio-C by Matter, is our PR agency’s secret weapon.
First, an in-house creative team consisting of graphic designers and video producers gives our public relations pros the opportunity to customize our pitch decks, and complement our new business effort with powerful imagery that best communicates our recommendations. In addition, it gives prospects a first-hand preview of our outstanding creative capabilities, enabling them to think holistically about PR campaigns.
Second, the creative team’s energy and effort add to the agency’s top and bottom line. In either a project or ongoing capacity, the creative revenue supplements our PR and social media revenue, and directly contributes to the agency’s success. Many clients choose to put aside a modest retainer for creative projects that can be deployed with traditional media outreach to improve coverage and better bring their news stories to life. Most media outlets are hungry for original creative content, and jump at the chance to include it in their coverage.
Third, in a media world where original content is king, an enterprising creative services team can fuel the fire by “manufacturing” news during times when clients aren’t announcing new products or services. Having the opportunity to plug the gap between news cycles with a content-rich infographic or a powerful explainer video is an enormous help to any communications team. Slow on the news front? No sweat: we’ll make some news that adds value to key audiences.
Fourth, an in-house creative team attracts non-clients and provides the opportunity to convert them into PR and social customers. It’s a new channel into the agency, and allows the opportunity to “get-to-know” team members who execute core communications programs, which often results in an AOR relationship on the PR side. Clients tell us it’s a huge benefit to have creative and PR under the same roof, versus having to cobble together disparate vendors and having to re-explain the company’s goals to different people.
And, finally, any in-house creative team is able to embrace the agency’s own website and marketing collateral in the spirit of being certain that it is engaging and fresh. Having a group dedicated to being quality control on agency-wide initiatives is an enormous ancillary benefit of having a creative team in house.
If your agency doesn’t have an in-house creative studio, ask them why not. And then give me a buzz.