In-House Insights

Have you ever wondered if your team's marketing skill set could solve problems far bigger than brand awareness?

In this episode, host Abby and special guest co-host, Mike Worden welcome Philippa Moig, CEO of UnLtd, the social purpose organisation connecting the media and marketing industry with charities supporting young people at risk.

Phil opens up about her personal career journey, overcoming imposter syndrome, and how embracing rejection ultimately led to her dream role. She breaks down how in-house teams, creative leaders, and media professionals can leverage their everyday talents to build campaigns that drive massive, real-world social impact.

What you'll learn:

• The Power of Resilience: How failing forward and taking a "squiggly" career path builds stronger leaders.

• Redefining Philanthropy: Why you don't need millions to be a philanthropist, just your time, skills, and industry influence.

• Unlocking In-House Capacity: Practical ways corporate marketing and creative teams can partner with charities to make a tangible difference.

• Leadership Through Vulnerability: Why creating psychological safety and dropping perfectionism leads to better creative outcomes.

Ready to plug your team into a community doing real good? Subscribe to In-House Insights now.

#CreativeOperations #InHouseAgency #MarketingStrategy #Leadership #SocialImpact

Sitting as the only marketer or sole creative in a company often feels like living on an isolated island. Without a sounding board, how do you know if your strategies, budgets, or operational models actually stack up?

In this episode of In-House Insights, Abby and Chris sit down with Chanel Clark, founder of The Marketing Club. Chanel shares her journey from being an isolated solo marketer to building an 18,000+ community across Australia and New Zealand.

They explore why isolated marketing roles lead to burnout, why cross-functional collaboration between marketing and in-house teams is critical, and how community acts as the ultimate career safety net in an era dominated by AI and budget cuts.

What You'll Learn:

• Escaping "Solo Marketer" Syndrome: Strategies for navigating roles where you are expected to build and run an entire marketing function without support.

• In-House & Marketing Alignment: How in-house creative teams and marketing leads can eliminate friction and operate as collaborative growth drivers instead of internal competitors.

• The T-Shaped Marketer Resurgence: Why generalist capabilities are regaining value over hyper-specialisation in modern marketing environments.

In this Moves & News edition, hosts Abby and Chris break down the latest shifts shaping internal agency models.

They explore Asahi In-House’s Agency of the Year win, Samsung's consolidation move to its in-house agency (Cheil), and how even NASA has to consider budget issues! Plus, a deep dive into why brands are now bringing Creative Partnerships Managers in-house to manage the creator economy.

Key Takeaways

• Scaling Capabilities: Why major brands like Samsung and Asahi are moving full-service media, digital, and production in-house.

• Creative Consistency: What in-house leaders can learn from Mars Snickers' 15-year platform about resisting the urge to change creative too soon.

• The Creator Economy Shift: How to transition influencer management from off-the-side-of-desk tasks into a dedicated internal function.

• Behind the NASA Model: How the world’s biggest stage operates with a resource-conscious, agile mindset.

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In-house leaders often get trapped inside their own four walls, fighting the battle of proving value beyond mere cost-savings while navigating AI noise.

In this episode of In-House Insights Moves & News, hosts Abby and Chris discuss how category-leading brands like 7-Eleven, Treasury Wine Estates, and Guzman y Gomez build world-class internal capabilities, the reality of AI adoption for leaders, and why human-led curation is more critical than ever in an era of generic LinkedIn content.

Key Takeaways:

• The IHAC Summit Preview: Why the shift from cost savings to competitive advantage is reshaping internal agency models.

• Building From the Ground Up: Lessons from 7-Eleven's new in-house agency, The Corner Shop, on scaling internal capability and culture.

• Practical AI vs. AI Slop: How creative leaders are using AI to reclaim time without losing human connection or brand voice.

• Measuring What Matters: Previewing the high-stakes debate on internal agency measurement featuring top industry leaders.

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Most in-house media models struggle to keep pace with modern tech environments. Traditional loops of briefs, plans, and revisions slow momentum down, leaving performance teams trapped in black-box platforms and outdated workflows.

In this episode, Alex Concannon (VP of Global Marketing at Deputy) reveals how he is rebuilding in-house marketing from the ground up using lean, AI-integrated models. From running an AI-generated radio test to shipping 40 videos and 400 social assets in 60 days, Alex shares a practical blueprint for scaling speed and output without ballooning overhead.

Key takeaways:

• The Evolving Talent Stack: Why performance platforms mean you should hire creative copywriters over traditional media buyers.

• De-Risking Channel Testing: How using AI voice agents enabled a low-cost, top-of-funnel radio experiment before investing heavy capital.

• Speed over Perfection: Why shipping high volumes of varied, good creative beats banking everything on a single Cannes Lion idea.

• Executive Efficiency: How a simple, automated daily digest agent can save senior leaders two hours every morning.

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#MarketingPodcast #InHouseAgency #AIinBusiness #AI #AITrends

In this recap, hosts Abby Blackmore and Chris Maxwell dive into their key takeaways from their recent US tour, attending the Henry Stewart Creative Operations conference in New York and the ANA conference in California.

They share exclusive insights from global creative leaders at NASA, GSK, Target, and Liquid Death, breaking down how the world's most sophisticated internal agencies are transitioning from pure production studios into high-value growth partners.

What you'll learn:

• The Shift from Savings to Growth: Why only 9% of mature in-house agencies now prioritise cost savings, and how to successfully report on brand value, agility, and innovation.

• AI Orchestration vs. Tool Fatigue: The operational reality of AI, why optimising individual tasks creates workflow bottlenecks, and how to build a unified system hub.

• Making the Implicit Explicit: Lessons from Target on how to map your internal processes, establish strict brand governance, and properly market your team’s value to stakeholders.

• Mitigating Creative Risk: Real-world lessons on managing AI governance, IP risk, and false advertising when using generative tools for consumer-facing copy.

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#marketingpodcast #inhouseagency #creative #australian

Too many creative leaders are confined to a silo, disconnected from broader business strategy and structural operations. This lack of integration limits your organisational impact and prevents your company from building a true culture of cross-functional innovation.

Ivan Pols, Chief Creative Officer at what3words, and former Global Creative Director at Ogilvy and Adam & Eve, joins us to share his journey from traditional advertising to driving creativity inside a fast-growing tech company.

Ivan reveals how shifting away from the traditional agency model allowed him to apply creative problem-solving to complex business operations, showing what happens when creativity gets a seat at the executive board.

• Breaking the Studio Box: Why true creative leaders need to see themselves as business partners, not just heads of a creative studio.

• The Client Influence: How the willingness of a marketing leader to invest and scale work dictates impact far more than the agency itself.

• Cross-Functional Creativity: Practical ways to expand creative thinking into unexpected departments like finance and operations.

• The In-House Advantage: How inside access allows creatives to solve fundamental business challenges rather than just making ads.

  
  

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#marketingpodcast #creativeops #creativity #businessstrategy

When you're running an in-house team, it’s easy to slip into the role of an internal order-taker, constantly fighting creative pushback from corporate stakeholders. But what if you could train your team to manage up effortlessly while simultaneously harnessing AI to speed up production?

In this episode, we sit down with Via Tendon, Head of Bupa's In-House Agency and a vocal leader in the creative operations space. Via shares her deeply personal journey in the industry and reveals the exact strategies she uses to lead with radical empathy, build a culture of high-agency creatives, and implement AI tools safely inside a heavily regulated global health insurance brand.

#podcast #marketing #creativeops #ai

In this episode, Abby and Chris sit down for a download of the biggest takeaways from Mumbrella360. They break down the real-world pressures currently keeping CMOs up at night, the danger of AI-driven creative "blandification," and how modern in-house teams are uniquely positioned to pivot from siloed tech experiments to scalable enterprise workflows.

What you’ll learn:

• The Power of the "Stop Doing" Audit: How to identify and eliminate performative work that doesn't move your core marketing KPIs.

• Escaping the AI Average: Why relying purely on standard AI prompts leads to middling creative, and how to intentionally build diversity and inclusivity into your generative tools.

• Chasing Bonfires, Not Fireworks: A smarter approach to cultural marketing that prioritizes predictable, large-scale moments over reactive, short-lived internet trends.

• The Brand Guardian Advantage: Why in-house agencies are the ideal sandbox for embedding safe, high-stakes AI frameworks into daily operations.

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#InHouseInsights #CreativeOperations #InHouseAgency #MarketingStrategy

Optimising metrics is easy, but are you accidentally squeezing the emotional magic out of your creative briefs? It's time to stop letting dashboards dictate your output and start building true creative judgment within your team!

Fresh off the ground from Cairns Crocs, hosts Abby and Chris break down the five biggest operational shifts happening across the APAC marketing landscape. From moving past gimmicky generative AI toward foundational infrastructure, to balancing long-term brand equity with fast-paced 'Express Lanes', this episode looks at what it actually takes to run a high-performing internal agency in today's economic climate.

Ready to elevate your internal agency's operations? Subscribe to In-House Insights and follow us on LinkedIn for bonus content.

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