John, you are one of the most respected creative leaders and I agree with absolutely everything you say – except about in-house agencies.
I work at Oliver. This is the only one I’ve worked at and it has been great.
It’s very similar to a normal agency, where you get given your own account to run. And inside the client’s house, everything goes much quicker than it would in a normal agency. The client is right there and so everything gets handled a lot faster.
I am impatient, so it’s nice not to have to wait for the big meetings to ask the little questions. Plus, we can’t lose the account.
The downside to the in-house agency may be a lack of variety, but the upside is specialisation. It’s a tight spot, but that’s where the creativity soars. As I said, it’s similar to running your own account at a big agency.
And I don’t have to spend all my life working on one account, anyway.
Oliver is a good in-house agency. It has a cracking team of brilliant, strong and kind creatives in every client’s house, so we get called out to work on other accounts all the time. Everyone is able to move around to suit their strengths. It’s a perk of the job. And we’re currently one of the fastest-growing agencies in London.
I’m not sure all in-house agencies are this good; you might be right about most of them. But I only work at Oliver and, respectfully, you’re not right about this one.
Jade Trott is an art director at Oliver