Agencies and In-House Teams Aren't Competitors — They're Learning to Share a Desk

South African marketers are building hybrid set-ups, not choosing sides

For years the industry conversation has swung between two extremes: bring everything in-house, or trust it all to an agency. New research from the Independent Agency Search & Selection Company (IAS) suggests most marketers have quietly stopped having that argument. Among 40 senior marketing leaders surveyed, eight in ten now run some form of combination model — internal teams and external agencies working side by side, each doing what they do best.

The most common set-up, used by just over half of respondents, is a straightforward balance of internal capability and agency support.

"The conversation has moved on," says Johanna McDowell, CEO of IAS. "Marketers have stopped asking who should own everything, and started asking who's best placed to do each part of the job. That's a far more useful question, and a much harder one to answer well."

How the combination model actually works

In the typical set-up, the internal team holds the pen on strategy, briefing and final decisions. Agencies are brought in for what they're specialists in — creative, media, digital, performance — often several agencies at once, each handling a different piece of the puzzle.

The Most dominant ecosystem – Combination model

Marketers told IAS they value agencies for the outside perspective, the creative sharpness and the specialist skill they bring. What stays in-house is brand knowledge, data and commercial accountability, those elements a business can't easily outsource. It's a practical arrangement, built around what each side genuinely does well rather than any grand strategy.

The catch is coordination. Having several agencies in the mix doesn't automatically mean they're pulling in the same direction, and the research found that the burden of coordination often falls to the internal team by default. Getting a media agency, a creative shop and a digital specialist to row in sync takes real effort — without it, you end up with three good campaigns that don't add up to one strategy.

The bigger picture

The bigger story here isn’t in-house versus agency at all. It’s that marketing's future belongs to whoever can make the two work together — and that’s turning out to be a skill. In its own right.

"Perhaps this is where an intermediary can help — bringing an external perspective that improves how internal teams and agencies work together," continues McDowell. "We're being called on more frequently to do this kind of work, and we think that trend will continue."

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