Agencies can and will continue to play a role – on a national and brand-think level, but in terms of day to day and maintaining brand stewardship, let’s look at the network / cable television in-house model.

This model maintains top down branding and corporate direction, while also remaining fluid, economical, regional, and even local… like OOH.

Let me further elaborate using the example of Fox Sports Net , or ESPN, as they tend to focus on regional broadcasting within the national landscape. The “mothership,” aka the network headquarters, creates network advertising and branded advertising “content” on a daily basis via in-house creative divisions.

The in-house produced product adheres to overall brand related issues, and then is further customized by in house creative directors, motion designers, writers and producers. In House productions are then taken one step further and material is “localized,” utilizing available graphic toolkits, the content is put it up on the bird… and off it goes, into Milwaukee, Detroit, Oklahoma City, etc.

Voila – market specific promotion that works within the overall national branding direction, at a scalable OR national level.

This model has worked for years, allows the flexibility for in-house folks to go “out of house,” when more firepower and creative skills are required, and yet adheres to brand guidelines. It also allows a laser focus on a project by project basis, while keeping brand stewardship in house, even if the overall direction was defined at some point by a clever and smart agency.

Thanks to shared goals, it is also extremely fluid when it comes to partner-based campaigns, maintains overall network brand, and allows content distributors to strictly focus on doing their job of distributing customized content to the appropriate defined markets.

This model is neither inclusive, nor exclusive to the agencies – and keeps the goal and bottom line dollars and overall branding direction where it should be – with the retailer, and a talented staff of brand communicators.

Food for thought – is this network / cable model worth further considering?