Many creative agencies face a growing dilemma. And as usual the dilemma is about time management and profit. In the current economic scenario, running a creative business is getting tougher by the day. To stay competitive in the market, many agencies are looking for ways to streamline their business processes in order to increase their productivity and reduce their costs. One of the biggest challenges today is the pressure of crunching client budgets and the inevitable shrinking profit margins of the agencies themselves.
A solution has been found. It’s a business model that looks like a team of freelancers doing the day-to-day stuff while the high-end creative talent can go about looking after the high-end creativity.
Err. In fact, it looks exactly like that. It’s called ‘Creative Outsourcing’ and it is described by people involved in launching the service thus: A simple solution for current economic pressure is to outsource your everyday, process oriented or time consuming jobs like adaptations, web maintenance, social media maintenance, editing, etc. at a reasonable cost and use your in-house creative teams for cognitive jobs and developing your core competencies, such are campaign conceptualization, new pitches, etc.
And now, here’s the key part of the pitch to agencies: You can outsource your work to a freelancer, who often has a limited range of expertise and services. Alternatively, you can partner with a creative outsourcing team, that offers you the experts that provide all the services you may need from time to time, under one roof.
It helps you focus on your strengths and deliver high quality creative work at reasonable costs by executing all operational aspects of your campaigns and communication material. It is a win-win solution for the agency, as you save your time, effort and resources and are able to deliver quality work on time to your clients.
So as mentioned in paragraph two - it’s a team of freelancers doing the day-to-day stuff while the high-end creative talent can go about looking after the high-end creativity.
Trust me, this business model is going to be successful. Agencies simply book in the creative outsourcing team when they are needed. And they don’t have to track down the individuals themselves – the creative outsourcing house has the people they need on their books. Or if it's a specialised creative requirement - a few phone calls and somebody will know somebody out there doing it on a freelance basis.
Agencies are very interested. Statistically speaking, outsourcing routine jobs and sudden workloads can improve agencies bottom line revenues by 40%. Along with the cost advantage, a creative outsourcing house will assure the best of quality as well as ease of communication. It’s a one-stop creative solution.
The thing is, the more that I think about this, the more opportunities there are - particularly for freelancers. if you know a bunch of creative folk who are skilled in all things online and offline – what are you waiting for? Join forces and go start your own creative outsourcing house.
@fountainjohn
