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The new way of doing more for less: Inside the creation of Plus Also Studios

Howatson and Company’s AI-powered sister agency Plus Also Studios is ingeniously tackling marketing’s biggest roadblock — having to meet increasing content requirements with declining budgets. For foundation client and partner Endeavour Group, it has changed everything.

At Mumbrella360 last week, delegates were treated to an inside look into the journey of Plus Also Studios and how it revolutionised content creation for Endeavour Group, which owns iconic brands including Dan Murphy’s and BWS.

The agency was founded in December last year, led by Howatson and Co’s chief data and technology officer Hoàng Nguyen. It exists independently of Howatson and Co.

Much like any marketer, Katie Dally, general manager of brand, creative and operations at Endeavour Group, was facing a number of challenges that prevented her brand from driving forward — it was only “keeping up”.

(L-R): Chris Howatson, Katie Dally, Hoàng Nguyen

Diminishing budgets conflicted with Endeavour Group’s third for content at scale, time constraints were holding it back, and it was investing too much in the wrong areas within the value creation chain. In addition, AI was coming into the mix and causing all sorts of insecurity.

“We realised that the human intelligence was at the wrong end of the spectrum,” Dally said. “We needed strategists, we needed content creators, we needed creative, we needed people that were doing the ideation.

“We needed the artificial intelligence at the delivery end, and the human intelligence at the beginning of the business problem-solving end.”

The biggest problem, however, was the fragmented agency village the brand had. According to Dally, Endeavour Group had nearly 300 agencies in its stable, which produced operational complexity.

“When you have that many partners in your stable, there is no brand consistency, there is no brand guardianship. So we knew we had to cut back.”

For Howatson and Co, similar problems were beginning to surface in how AI would impact the future of the agency.

AI is being used to extract value from a brand’s network assets, they’re being used for efficiencies, which Howatson and Co’s founder and CEO, Chris Howatson, said was “really concerning” for an agency.

“There’s little to quell the anxiety of a creative agency, wondering if it still has a role in the future,” he said.

Chris Howatson presenting at Mumbrella360 last week

Howatson was steadfast that, in this moment in time, the best place for innovation to come from is a creative agency, especially in relation to solving client issues, like the ones Dally was facing.

“They understand the client’s business, understand the shape of ideas, they’re currently in control of budgets… So it was time to build something new.”

Thus, Plus Also Studios was born.

The timing lined up perfectly for Endeavour Group to pilot the program, as Dally was reviewing the creative partnerships to streamline its operations. She had other conversations with holding companies and consulting firms to take on the brand, but realised their proprietary tools would over complicate things — which is exactly what she was trying to avoid.

On the flip side, she knew she couldn’t solely rely on AI, the human intelligence was still just as crucial.

“We still needed the strategy, the creativity, the technical enablement to bring all of that together,” she said. “And actually, we found that did not exist under one roof.”

Plus Also Studios pitched for Endeavour Group, won it, and set out to co-create the solution together with the brand. It set out to address Endeavour Group’s three key issues: Cost and time constraints, manual efforts in the wrong places, and operational complexities.

To address costs, Plus Also Studios introduced “input pricing”, rather than the traditional output pricing. It’s not the same linear relationship that advertising agencies, and procurement teams, are used to, said to provide better cost efficiencies.

What the agency proposed to address the misplaced investments in the value creation chain was “putting automation at the end of the process, and human IP at the front”.

Katie Dally presenting at Mumbrella360 last week

Howatson said: “While efficiencies in production have largely become offshoring, where agencies get cheaper people to do the same thing, we just reshuffled where we were putting in resources. And that means that we can spend more at the front, where it matters.”

And finally, to address Endeavour Group’s complexities and lacking brand guardianship, Howatson reminded the crowd that Plus Also Studios exists as “one team”.

“There are still other agencies in the village, but we are one team. We are co-creating and building this thing up together,” he said.

Six months in, Dally said the changes are being felt and there are successful efficiencies across the board.

“We would not have delivered all the incredible efficiencies we have without this model,” she said. “It’s allowed us to turn focus to effectiveness, making sure that what we’re putting out is actually meant to be in the world.”

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