AAR’s New Health Check To Become Essential Tool That Will Drive Success of In-House Agencies

• Assesses performance of in-house agencies 6 months on
• Identifies areas for development to future proof success

AAR today announces the launch of Health Check for in-house teams, a new proprietary tool that will help CMOs manage the performance of their in-house agency, ensuring it delivers against its commercial and creative objectives.

It specifically helps businesses who have set up an in-house agency within the last 6 months or so. Having made the business decision to move to the new model, Health Check provides a progress report when enough activity has been delivered to check that the intentions for making the change set out in the business case – speed, costs, service, quality of output – were justified and are all on track or exceeding expectations.

The online diagnostic tool only takes 20 minutes to complete and allows internal stakeholders and in-house agency team members across a range of seniority to provide mutual feedback on how well key elements of the relationship are working.

As well as flagging any areas that need addressing and recommending a development plan, AAR uses the data and insights to give an impartial perspective comparing the results to other in-house agency teams at a similar stage, tapping into learnings using our AAR benchmark data.

Victoria Fox, CEO of AAR, commented: “Setting up an in-house agency is a massive decision for any CMO. It takes time, consideration and financial investment, the right skill set and processes and a healthy dose of risk and reward. But it’s the fine tuning and optimising the performance of the in-house agency that will crucially ensure its success.

“Our Health Check helps CMOs justify the investment in the new model, evaluate its performance and influence how the model needs to evolve in the future.”

Research by AAR shows that whilst the demand for in-housing is set to continue, particularly in social, brand advertising and media, there are a number of challenges CMOs face when it comes to in-housing, including:

• 47% cited concerns with getting the in-house resource fresh, creative and innovative
• 45% cited having the right capabilities
• 36% acknowledged internal alignment proved challenging

Health Check provides an opportunity to take the temperature on those challenges and gives supporting evidence for internal alignment conversations.

The research also showcased that nearly half of CMOs (49%) are considering outsourcing some of what they have brought in-house. Health Check can provide an actionable plan for improvement or identify and validate those decisions.

Fox further commented: “Whether to in-house, out-house or find the perfect hybrid blend of both, it’s incredibly important for brands to put in place the right checks and balances. Health Check allows CMOs to tackle some of the challenges of in-housing head on to ensure their in-house agency has a roadmap laid out for success.”

Health Check is a bespoke tool that takes into consideration the culture and nuances of an in-house agency alongside performance evaluation metrics. It builds upon AAR’s years of experience of evaluating new external agency relationships and has been developed by Alex Steele based on his experience of setting up and leading an in-house agency for a FTSE 250 company as well as over 10 years in creative agencies. Alex now spearheads AAR’s in-housing consulting offer.

More information on Health Check can be found here.