Global brands are bringing more creative, digital, media, and data capability closer to their businesses. Hoorah believes South Africa is moving in the same direction, accelerated by AI, cost pressure and the growing demand for always-on content.
Author: Shaune Jordaan, founder at Hoorah
There is still a perception in parts of the South African advertising industry that in-housing is either a threat to agencies or something brands are experimenting with before eventually returning to the traditional agency model.
The international evidence increasingly suggests otherwise.
Across the US and Europe, major brands have been bringing parts of creative, digital, content, media and data capability closer to their organisations for years. Importantly, this does not necessarily mean replacing agencies. In many cases, brands are building hybrid marketing models where internal capability works alongside external creative, media, technology and production partners.
According to research from the Association of National Advertisers in the US, 82% of organisations surveyed operate some form of in-house agency. More recent ANA research has also shown that internal agencies are increasingly being viewed as strategic business partners rather than simply lower-cost production departments.
The debate therefore should no longer be whether in-housing is happening. The more useful question is what brands should own internally, what should remain external, and how those capabilities work together.
Global brands have already moved
AB InBev is one of the most established examples. Its DraftLine model has developed into a significant global internal creative capability operating across markets.
PepsiCo has built internal content capability supporting multiple brands, while other large organisations have developed their own variations of internal studios, content teams, media operations, and centres of excellence.
Hoorah's global partner Monks has also worked with businesses including T-Mobile, Manulife, and Sprint on internalisation, embedded teams and capability-building programmes. These models differ, but the principle is similar: move the work that benefits from proximity closer to the organisation, while retaining access to external expertise where it adds value.
Always-on content, social, CRM, performance creative, data, localisation, adaptation, and increasingly AI-enabled production are obvious areas where closer integration can make sense.
Big brand ideas, specialist production, independent strategic thinking, and certain areas of technology or media may still benefit from external expertise. It does not have to be one or the other.
South Africa is following the same path
Hoorah has been building internal and hybrid agency models in South Africa and across Africa for several years through its Hoorah Inside offering. The agency has worked on internal or hybrid capabilities for brands including Nestlé, Private Property, Avon, Alexforbes, Heineken Beverages, and AB InBev.
For AB InBev, Hoorah helped build DraftLine Africa into an internal agency operation of approximately 100 people across 10 African markets. For Avon, Hoorah developed the Nova Arcade internal creative studio. The model has subsequently expanded across sectors including financial services, property, FMCG, QSR and beauty.
What Hoorah has learnt through building these businesses is that there is no standard template for in-housing. One organisation may require a substantial dedicated studio. Another may need a small specialist team embedded into an existing marketing department. In some cases the client does not need more people at all. Very often, the client already has good people.
The bigger challenge is the operating model around them. How are briefs managed? Which work belongs internally and which should go to agencies? How do creative, media, data, and technology connect? What systems are being used? How is work measured? Who owns creative quality? How are brand governance, intellectual property and data managed?
These questions have become even more important with the rapid adoption of AI. AI is accelerating the in-housing opportunity AI is changing the economics of content production.
A campaign can potentially be developed into hundreds of variations across different audiences, formats, markets, and languages. Content can be adapted faster, performance data can increasingly inform creative decisions, and brands can produce certain types of work at a scale that would previously have been commercially unrealistic.
That creates an enormous opportunity. It also creates an enormous amount of rubbish if it is not managed properly. Giving a marketing department access to generative AI tools does not suddenly make it an AI-enabled marketing organisation.
Brands still require governance, workflows, strong creative leadership, brand systems, technology architecture and clear rules around data, intellectual property and how generated content can be used.
There also remains something technology is not particularly good at measuring: taste. AI can help a business create more. It does not automatically mean the work will be better. This is where the design of the internal capability becomes critical.
The goal should not be creating the maximum amount of content at the lowest possible cost. It should be using technology to make talented people more effective while improving speed, relevance, and commercial efficiency without sacrificing the brand.
Why hybrid is likely to win
There are clear reasons brands want more capability closer to the business. Internal teams build institutional knowledge. They have direct access to stakeholders and data. Briefing cycles can become shorter. Brands can respond to opportunities faster and develop capability that remains within the organisation rather than disappearing when an agency relationship changes.
There are cost benefits as well, particularly where brands produce large volumes of always-on work.
But in-housing also has weaknesses. Internal studios can become order-taking departments. They can become too close to the organisation and lose outside perspective. They can struggle to attract specialist talent across every discipline, and without proper leadership they can become highly efficient production factories producing work that nobody notices.
That is why Hoorah does not believe the future is about in-housing everything. The strongest model is likely to be hybrid. Brands should own the capabilities where proximity creates an advantage and surround those teams with external partners that provide ideas, specialist expertise, technology, scale, and outside perspective.
That requires agencies to change too. The traditional agency model has often been built around protecting as much scope as possible: strategy, creative, social, production, media and everything in between.
Clients are increasingly asking a more commercially sensible question: what capability do we genuinely need our agency to provide? Agencies should not be afraid of that conversation.
Sometimes the role of the agency should be creating the work. Sometimes it should be helping build the client's team. Sometimes it may be providing embedded specialists, training, technology, production capacity, or strategic oversight. And sometimes success may mean transferring capability into the client organisation so that the agency is required less in one area and becomes more valuable in another.
That is not the death of the agency. It is an evolution of what an agency is there to do. AI, cost pressure, and the extraordinary increase in the volume of content brands require will continue accelerating this shift.
For South African marketers, the question is becoming less about whether more capability will move closer to the client and more about how to build that capability properly. That is where the real opportunity sits.
Hoorah is a South African creative, media, data and technology agency and African partner to Monks. Through Hoorah Inside, the business designs and builds bespoke internal and hybrid marketing capabilities for brands, combining people, process, technology, data and creative expertise. Hoorah specialises in full-service creative, plus designs specialist internal agency models for individual brands and organisations.
Contact: moc.latigidharooh@selas | Cape Town: +27 21 012 5235 | Johannesburg: +27 10 312 6033
