With an increased appetite for creativity and desire for innovative approaches to campaign development, clients from even the most traditional spaces are pushing for more from their agency partners. Early on in this trend, Global Strategy Group (GSG) saw this shift as an opportunity to bring something totally new to the market. Where the written word has long reigned supreme at communications firms, GSG leaders were ready to rewrite the rule book. 

In this episode of the PRovoke Media Podcast, GSG Partner and Managing Director Tanya Meck joins Megan Keogan, head of content partnerships at PRovoke Media, to discuss how GSG built The L@b and share some of her biggest learnings since its launch in 2021.  

With the motto, “digital always,” The L@B offers high-level creative direction, full-service video production, and a laundry list of digital services. The team starts each project by first taking time to identify and understand the client’s target audiences and key messages. From there, creatives and their communications counterparts craft custom solutions that unite goals and key audiences in their aperture moment: the right time on the right device with the right message. To pull this off, everyone — from sales to project managers to creatives —needs to have a seat at the client table. 

“Our L@b leadership team sits on our sales team calls every week,” Meck said. “So, they’re there from the very beginning, hearing about opportunities and offering their ideas or their support at that meeting. The L@b team itself meets every week. That’s sort of more for project management, but also troubleshooting, brainstorming, creative discussion, staffing issues, etc. And then the L@b team is embedded with our client teams and our subject matter experts. When we pair a public affairs subject matter expert with our creative team, they’re with the client from day one as equal partners.”

GSG has had this process in place for two years, and while it’s constantly growing and evolving, Meck says they have already seen a slew of benefits having creative owned internally and brought into the client journey from the start. 

“Creative is not just about content,” she says. “It’s not just about graphics and videos. It’s about colleagues who think differently — the zoom-out mentality. That helps everybody. Also, not all creatives need to be or want to be client-facing, but we’re most successful when we bring them in, give them exposure to clients, clients exposure to them. We’re most successful when the full team is brought in on the big idea.” 

Key Moments
0:00 Introductions
4:30 GSG’s L@b: An In-House Agency
8:56 Hiring Outside the Box Requires Trust
14:19 The New Production Experience
21:58 A Case Study: Perfect Storm of Subject Matter Expertise and Creative Execution 25:54 Best Practices to Build Your own In-House Agency