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The Pros and Cons of In-House vs. Agency
February 8, 2022 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Strategy
Guest Speaker

Jess Kirkman

Executive Creative Director, Taco Bell

Jess Kirkman is the Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell. Prior to this, she headed up the design department at digital and social agency MRY, working with clients like Visa, JetBlue, Adobe, and Neutrogena. She has a BFA in Communication Design from Syracuse University as well as a background in branding and print design. She also walks the creative talk as a prolific visual artist and teacher.

Let’s get real about in-house vs. agency.

There’s a new fluidity to moving between working in-house and working for an agency that hasn’t always been the case for creatives. Centered in the creative revolution happening in business today, this change values and prioritizes the role creative plays in brand growth.

But what about the transition itself? How do creatives move back and forth successfully? And is there a way to start this process that will yield the most success?

In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, Jess Kirkman, Executive Creative Director at Taco Bell, talks about what this fluidity means for creatives — their training, their network, their leadership opportunities — and how experience with both can make you a better designer and a solid asset wherever you do your work.

Watch this episode to discover:

  • How to influence branding from the inside out
  • The skills needed to lead an in-house creative team
  • What benefits result from wearing different hats
  • Why the life-altering moves of yesterday have become today’s stepping stones
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mentioned in this show:
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Adam Morgan
Creative Leader and RCL Host
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The Stoke Group
Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency
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Transcript

RCL Episode Season 3, Episode 1
The Pros and Cons of In-House vs. Agency — with Jess Kirkman 

Adam Morgan: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Real Creative Leadership. I’m your host, Adam Morgan, executive creative director at Adobe. And we are excited to let you know this is the first episode of Season 3. Yes, our third year of creating Real Creative Leadership. I just want to take a moment to thank you all, those of you who are listening and tuning into this show, I so appreciate it.

And I’ve gotten so many good emails and LinkedIn messages from many of you stating how much you appreciate the content. And let me just tell you that is so, so helpful, especially for me, because it’s like, you build content, you put it out in the world and you hope that it has value. And so just hearing from a lot of you, in your gratitude or different things that you’re going through in your creative careers, I truly appreciate it and I appreciate you reaching out and making connections because that’s what it’s all about. For me in the late nineties, when I became a creative director, I didn’t have a resource like this that helped me understand the bigger picture of being a creative leader. And there’s so much more than just creating great content.

So, thank you so much for tuning in, it’s really, really appreciated. So anyhow, and we’ve also got listeners. We’ve got a growing community, listeners and viewers who are joining from around the world. Thank you everyone in any time zone and continent that you’re listening and joining in — we appreciate you. And we hope that we continue to drive great content. We know we’ve got a great guest here today. Yeah, just wanted to give a big shout out and thank you.

So today’s topic, this is a big one that I’ve seen many posts on LinkedIn of people talking about this and it’s been something that’s been pretty prevalent in my career. And it’s the idea of, where do I go — In-house or agency? Do I just work in the agency world or do I go to a brand side? And which side is better? And how do you make that transition? There’s so many questions around that topic and there’s definitely a “versus” of in-house versus agency, but today’s conversation is not going to be a competition. We’re not going to beat one side up or the other. There’s not a clear winner. It’s nuanced, there are a lot of options out there. But we want to talk about the challenges, the opportunities of each side. And I know before I joined Adobe in 2014, I was in agency life for almost 19 years, and so I understand both sides. And also our special guest today has also had significant experience on both the agency side and the brand side.

I’d like to introduce our guest, Jess Kirkman. She’s an award-winning designer, executive creative director from New York City and is currently the ECD at Taco Bell Design, leading the brand’s in-house team. Before that, she’s done a lot of great things, living in New York city, she worked at some agencies that did work for Visa, Jet Blue, Bud Light, Adobe, Neutrogena, a lot of things. So anyhow, I’d like to welcome you, Jess, to the show.

Jess Kirkman: Thank you! I’m super excited to be here and I love this topic of conversation, so I feel like I’m amped to get started.

Adam Morgan: Awesome. Well, even before we get started, maybe a little bit of background, I gave a brief intro, but if you want to give us a little bit more about your career, your life, where you’re coming from, not necessarily like a play-by-play, but some highlights of who you are.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah, so I’m actually originally from upstate New York. I went to Syracuse University for college. I studied communication design, which is a fancy name for graphic design and advertising, and then I moved to New York City. I did about 12 years there working in a couple different types of agencies, working on all sorts of different clients like you mentioned, before I ended up jumping to Taco Bell and moving across the country to California where I’ve been here a little over four years now.

So, a majority of my experience is actually on the agency side, and then coming in-house and working on the brand side — a totally different environment. So, that’s my story, and then aside from that, I also am a visual artist, as well. I paint my studio every morning. That’s where my passion lies, and I feel like that helps balance me out a little bit for my day to day.

Adam Morgan: Well, it definitely is a trend that I’ve seen among many creative directors of this transition from going in-house or going back to agency, or this back and forth. There’s certainly a fluid nature to it, which wasn’t there when I started my career, it was like you were in one group or the other. And frankly, there weren’t a lot of options for creative people on the brand side. I think that definitely has been something that has grown over the past decade, which I think is phenomenal.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah, for sure. I think at first, even in school, there’s not a lot of conversation about the “verses” that you’re talking about. And again, they’re not pitting against each other, but there’s options. And I think I didn’t even understand my options coming out of school and I had a really great program. I was well prepared and well-versed, but I didn’t quite understand that you could go to the brand side. And that might be so because it’s been quite a while since I was in college, but I’m not even sure that in-house was as much of a thing 15, 20 years ago as it is now. So that could be a contributing factor, but I’m not sure even in school that there’s a lot of conversation about the options and where your career can go.

Adam Morgan: No, and I’m glad you’re already taking us down the path here of your career and starting out and where it’s going in terms of your options. I agree with you. For me, mid-nineties, it was like agency or die. There was not another choice. For me, it was like, you don’t want to go in-house because you’re just doing the grunt work. And I think that was the nineties. It certainly has changed. And I know in talking with some schools, I think there’s still a pretty prevalent message that when you graduate, the best bet is to go to an agency. And that’s something I’m hearing from a lot of students too.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah, and it could be because professors have lived that life as well. Or I will say, and I know we’ll get into it, but there is something to be said about starting your career at an agency verse jumping to in-house, but I do think that the landscape has changed.

I think a lot of in-house agencies in the 90s and the early 2000s, they did start as internal production, internal communications they needed people to do their decks and their franchisee meetings or whatever it may be. And they didn’t really even understand that they had the option to build their own teams in-house. We’re having a very different conversation now than we would probably even have 10 years ago. And it’s actually a really exciting time for creatives across the board, because I think everyone is understanding the value of creative from the inside out. So you have your finance people, your CEOs, understanding that you can get a lot of value from building up your creative resources in-house.

Adam Morgan: Oh, totally. I think you’re right. It really is a creative revolution. It’s this new change, it started with a design-led movement and I’ve seen a huge change where back when I started, if you believed in creativity, you were at an agency because those were the only companies that truly valued creative ideas. It seemed.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah.

Adam Morgan: And now today I think you’re right, so many. I wouldn’t say all, there’s still, certainly is some hurdles in some companies and it will get into which companies are best for what, but I do see some like my company that values creativity and gives enough of a presence inside to say, okay, if we believe in creativity, then we want creative leaders and we want people who have a vision for creativity. And so now I see that as both agency and in-house, that’s why there’s this whole dilemma of where do I go? Because there’s an option because many of them believe in creativity and it’s not just a fleeting thing for agency only.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah. I think you’ve got a point there. And even just the idea of being supported, I think it really comes down to your senior leadership. Does the brand have a CMO who supports creativity versus an agency? It’s built-in support and acceptance because it’s built around creativity versus in-house. You do have to have strong leaders who support, understand and really want to see that grow. Otherwise, you will end up with just a production in-house company because they won’t see the value in getting ideas from the inside out.

Adam Morgan: I think some of the great reasons why we have a guest on the show is to have their personal lived experience shared. So you started out an agency. Talk to me a little bit about that journey, but mostly that transition period. When did you decide, I’m going to go in-house or I’m going to try a brand, because I’m sure when you were an agency like me, I was all in and I loved, loved, loved it. I was an ad guy. That was just the perfect place for me. So tell me about your journey of making that transition and decision.

Jess Kirkman: Sure. So agreed from school into agency life, that was what you did. It was the next step. It’s almost like you get married, you have kids, you have the white picket fence. There’s this idea of where your career should go versus the whole idea of that there’s options out there. So I went into agency culture, and I was all about it. 

The great thing about kicking off your career at an agency. And I really do think there’s value for everyone to have agency experience, whether you end up in-house or not. We have a crew of people that I work with in our in-house agency that have come from the agency side, most of us, and we almost call it like our bootcamp, our training for brand side, because you get to work on so many different projects. You get to understand agency structure, which I think is important. What are the roles of an agency? What does an art director do versus a designer versus the copywriter? How do you become a creative director? I think agency structure is important to learn because that’s the structure. You kind of mimic when you come in-house and when you start building in-house. 

And so I had my fair share of working on all these different clients, getting to try my hand on certain things. I think the best part about working for an agency is that it’s always fresh. It’s always new. You can jump to another client if you get burned out on one. So if you get a lot of hands-on doing lots of different things, you’re able to be nimble and grow in that way. Of course, the flip side of that is that sometimes you’ll work on something for six months or longer at an agency and then the client kills it or the budget ends and some of your work never sees the light of day.

I do remember working on the agency side, especially having worked for agencies for over 12 years. I didn’t have as much output as I really wanted. And it didn’t mean I wasn’t working and putting forth the effort, but some of the stuff would just never see the light of day. And when I was interviewing at Taco Bell to come in-house I was just seeing what they were doing and almost 99% of everything that we work on sees the light of day because we wouldn’t get the project otherwise, if it wasn’t going to happen. Versus, we joke around in-house and we say 99 problems, but a pitch ain’t one. There’s a pitch mentality on the agency side, and I think it’s important to learn presentation skills there. There’s just the enthusiasm, the point of view you need to express. So if you start in-house, you might not understand the salesmanship of being a creative director and selling and work.

Adam Morgan: So you hit on a lot of topics that I’ve heard in the chatter over the interwebs of topics of the “versus” stuff. So I’m just going to note some of them so that people can see why your response is the way it is. One is this idea of you go to an agency, you get to work on lots of stuff and you go in-house and you’re stuck working on one thing. And I think the reality that we understand is it depends on where you work. You could go to an agency and work on the same thing for years and years, just as much as you can go to a brand and work on the same thing for years and years. So it really depends on what place you’re at and what it’s like. There are some in-house brands that have multiple sub-brands, multiple divisions, multiple things, and you can still find variety.

I know that’s like the case of Adobe. There are a lot of products within Adobe, you would think it’d be simple and easy, just one thing. You can find the variety in both places. I don’t think that’s a universal truth one way or the other.

Jess Kirkman: I agree.

Adam Morgan: The other is there is this good and bad thing. For me, I think back in the mid- to late-90s and it was such a pitch fest, it was such a battleground — you were competing against all the other teams in the agency for that glorious Super Bowl TV spot or for whatever other big project. And you could see people who come up with idea after idea, after idea and never produce a thing for a year. That is so true.

And I think there’s good and bad. It was really good for me to learn. I talk about agency as in dog years because I really feel like I learned a lot within one year, there was so much going on. It was so great, but also very chaotic. 

So that is a thing. In-house, I feel like there is a lot more ownership, it’s because you own the execution of the brand.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah.

Adam Morgan: And it’s less of a matter of do I get to work on the thing? It’s more of how am I going to prove my vision and show that I’m going to move beyond just something shallow, versus on the agency side it’s just built into the machine of you’re striving for excellence, but you have no control over it. It’s thrown at you where you may or may not get it. So I think there are positives and negatives on both things. And I agree with you. 

Here’s one thing for me when I am hiring someone, I know that if they’ve had agency work, it’s like we’ve lived through the war together and I totally understand it. And it’s even though that sounds terrible of living through the war, but it is like they were, they were 100-hour work weeks. So it was just you were just you had your nose to the grindstone, so we totally get that. And without that, I see a lot of people who just go straight to in-house and don’t ever earn their stripes. And it’s just they don’t have the not intensity, but the work—

Jess Kirkman: It’s like gumption or something.

Adam Morgan: Yeah.

Jess Kirkman: That’s why we call it the bootcamp or whatever. I really, really do feel that it is an important skill to have on your belt to have worked at an agency. Just that line alone, because there’s so much understanding that comes with it. There’s the grit. There’s the long hours there. 

The competitiveness was something that I was getting a little bit tired of as well. At an agency, every job you win, almost keeps the lights on, we say. You don’t have to worry about that in-house. We have a budget. We’re full-time employees.

So there’s a little bit of competitiveness that’s built into agency culture that I think, if not tamed properly, or not led by someone who can kind of mellow that out, it can become really toxic. And that’s why I don’t have bitter feelings towards agencies. I think it really is up to who are the leaders at the agencies? And are you being run by an account team or are you being led by an ECD who can really help drive the creative?

And I do feel like when the account side becomes more important, when winning the job becomes more important than the creative idea, I think that’s when you end up struggling as a creative. And so I do think when you come in-house, there’s a lot more ownership. You do see things from beginning to end, you see things through and you’re helping to shape a brand, which again, this is totally dependent on the brand you work for. I think you’re very fortunate. I’m very fortunate. We have super creative brands. We have very diverse brands in the type of work that we do. We work on everything from social, the website, retail, uniforms, restaurant design. 

And then at the end of the day, you can look back and say, I did that. And I think you can’t really do that at an agency. You almost don’t get the credit at an agency. So there’s something nice for that ownership on the brand side.

Adam Morgan: And I’m glad you’ve transitioned. Because we were talking a lot about agency positives and negatives. And now yeah. Let’s talk about some of the truths that we hear out there about in-house agency, which is, you’re just a production arm. It’s boring, you’re safe and you have a good work/life balance, but it’s a snoozefest and maybe it’s not, you don’t have the energy. And there are all these truths out there, but again, I think it comes back to, and I’ll let you talk a bit more about that, but it’s where you’re working.

Like you said, you have so much going on at Taco Bell you don’t feel half that stuff, but it is true that it’s really on you to keep driving the creativity. There’s no one else who’s holding you accountable. It’s not like there’s a client out there. It’s really on you to drive great work. But there is a problem of apathy. There is a problem of getting comfortable. There is a problem of all those things. So there’s negatives and positives in-house just as well.

Jess Kirkman: I can definitely agree with you on that. There’s pros and cons to everything. And there are a lot of brands that are lackluster and it will be really hard to motivate yourself or motivate a team does not mean it can’t be done. And I’m seeing some really quote unquote boring brands do some really exciting things. And I think that means they had some creative leader come in and say, well, how do I shake this up? And how can I make this exciting? So I would say, you can be choosy when you’re going on the brand side. And I think that’s the exciting part.

Because you can latch on to something you’re passionate about. Not to say when I got offered the Taco Bell role, I didn’t even know how passionate I could be about tacos and Taco Bell, but I did know that it was a super fun brand and I knew that they really value their cult fans. They don’t call them consumers  — they are the fan base. And that was just really exciting. People have Taco Bell tattoos. So there’s some fandom that I could get behind. 

Also in-house you really can move the marker. I’m a pescatarian, I don’t eat meat. And I was a little worried starting at Taco Bell one, would I be judged two? Can I really invest in this brand? And truthfully I’m able to influence vegetarian on the menu and how we talk about vegan and also sustainability and packaging. And we’re making those choices in-house. And I really do feel I can help move the marker in positive ways. So I feel my impact. And I also feel like my team all the way down feels the impact. 

I didn’t really get that so much at an agency, because like you mentioned, sometimes it’s more about winning awards and doing breakthrough amazing creative, but are you influencing the branding in a bigger way? And you definitely can do that from the inside out when you’re working at an in-house agency. But there’s definitely struggles there, I mean, look, we make sure everyone gets moved around.

So I think making sure as a leader that you’re moving your people around, there’s burnout on both sides. I think the stigma I’m fighting against — and it’s kind of an older fight; I don’t think we have to do it as much any anymore — is that there’s mediocre work coming out of in-house agencies. That oh, ‘That’s where all the mediocre designers go.’ Again, that might have been 20 years ago and there was just like production. But now with the Targets and the Nikes and… there’s plenty of other in-house brands doing big things from the inside out, that I hope Adobe, Taco Bell that were really starting to change the game for people entering the industry.

 

And so work/life balance you mentioned, for me, I’ve never seen such a great work/life balance when I moved to California. And again, New York to California, kind of a different head space.


But I do think when you work at a brand, you are the client, your clients are your partners, so you’re all working together. Let’s just say, if your client is working the nine to five, you’re on staff too, you’re working nine to five. There’s not this need to have to work all through the night. I have not worked a single weekend. I’ve barely worked past 8:00 PM. And again, that might be the California Taco Bell lifestyle. We get half-day Fridays all year round. Now we’re remote, so everyone’s flexibility is a key factor. But I would say that’s a major benefit of not getting burnt out and not feeling bitter towards losing your life for your career. I really do feel like it’s an equal work/life balance, which is important.

Adam Morgan: Hmm. All right. I’m just going to back up to a couple more things that you brought up that I think really are critical. The ownership thing. So for me, when I was making a transition —. because like I said, the things that I loved of an agency was you could work on multiple campaigns for multiple clients every year. Versus what I’ve noticed in-house is there’s one big campaign and you do it and then it’s just extensions of it. So you really did get more experience of getting more and more campaigns under your belt per year in-agency. But for me, I finally got to that point where… and something you said earlier that triggered it is… It’s like in the agency you’re waiting on a client to give you the thumbs up or thumbs down and you’re doing your best work for them.

But when you go in-house, there’s no longer a client, it’s almost like you are the client. And it’s really on your own shoulders of driving it. So it’s that ownership. To me that was a big factor when I was looking to transition was all right, I’ve done a lot of great work for a lot of amazing brands and for other people and helped build their careers. And now it’s something like, I want to have some ownership for myself. I want to own something that I’ve built and grown on my own shoulders without having to rely on a client’s approval or whatever it may be. Just like how do I really shoulder that? And it’s hard. I won’t kid you, it’s tricky. When you want to have that ownership, there’s no one else to look to but yourself if things aren’t going great.

But even like with some of the younger people I’ve noticed that the campaign thing is tricky. If you start out an in-house, let’s say you’re a writer, you’ve got to be looking for other things. It’s not like the classic, you’d be looking at every art director, copywriter portfolio out there on the market. It’s just like TV campaign after TV campaign, after TV campaign. You’re not going to get that in-house. If that happens once a year, maybe. But you’re going to have to look for other ways of expressing creativity, like storytelling or big narratives, or how am I driving content in a different way and loving that with design and with writing rather than just the big flashy campaigns.

Jess Kirkman: It’s more about the brand and less about the campaign. And I think you’re right, you do have to get creative. But I feel like you almost get to touch a lot more stuff versus just working on broadcast, because that’s one singular way of expressing something for the brand versus like what’s the brand positioning and what do we stand for? And you get more of that strategy and of a business know-how. I help build and run the in-house agency, but I feel like I’ve become a CEO and a CFO. You are exposed to the business side of the creative field versus like at an agency, and it could be a blessing or a curse, you just do the creative and you get it out and you’re done.

And in-house there’s plenty of conversations about what this means for the brand and how it works with financials. I just feel like you get a peek into more of the agency structure when you’re in house than you do working for an agency because you see how it works and how it ladders up and how it’s supported.

Adam Morgan: Oh, I love what you said. That is so true. In your role as a creative leader, you have to be strategic, you have to have a business sense. You learn all those skills, whereas at an agency, I feel that to get that you’d have to move from the creative department to the strategy department to the leadership team or whatever to get those skills. It’s a completely different role. Whereas, in-house you have to shoulder all of those elements in your learning.

Jess Kirkman: I think you wear many hats in-house. I look at that as a positive. I think it’s room to grow. It keeps you from getting bored when you feel like you’re involved in a lot of things. If you’re just someone who wants to sit at a desk and get something out and do it, I just feel like there’s more opportunity in-house to get peak and to jump around and to say, hey I really want to try to work on that. There’s more movement that can happen. There’s almost less structure that you have to go through to make change with your career. 

I do feel like I’ve had people wanting to switch certain skill sets and learn new things and hey, I want to learn animation. And then all of a sudden they’re doing editing animation, TikTok, this, that, and the other thing. I can easily just give them that work whereas, when you’re at an agency, there’s not a lot of room to just make up things for them to try their hands at. You have your assignment and you have to work through that.

Adam Morgan: That’s interesting. Or you have to always shake the trees and get all those different assignments and try and build those skills. Yeah?

Jess Kirkman: Yep. Exactly.

Adam Morgan: Let me ask this, so what is your perception on any migration trends? Are you seeing more people move from agency to in-house? Are you seeing it flowing back and forth? 

Jess Kirkman: I mostly see people go from agency to in-house. I do feel like that feels almost like a natural progression. And again, I don’t want to box anything in, but it does feel like it’s great to get that agency experience. rarely do see people jump back to agencies, but does not mean it doesn’t happen. Some people prefer that environment. I mean, you can sometimes make bigger jumps in your career when you kind bounce around. And then people do get bored of a certain brand after a while or their passions change. You could work for Lululemon and then suddenly realize that you have no passion for any of that.

I think generally once you’re on the brand side, you tend to go to other brands because you know how that works. But what I’m starting to also see is there’s almost less of an ‘agency is this,’ and ‘in-house is this,’ and it’s going to be life-changing. They’re starting to like become part of the same dialogue in that, you’re not going to shake up your whole life if you go in-house and then decide you want to go back. Before, if you went in-house, it was like, oh my God, your career, you’re changing. But now it could be a great stepping stone. So if you want to be an ECD at an agency and you want to start by being an ACD at an in-house agency because it might be easier if you could get there faster.

It’s actually just another stepping stone in growth versus I think before, they were so different that it felt a little more life-altering. And I’m liking how we’re starting to look at agencies as agencies. And I’m starting to take off the “‘in-house” when I even talk about it, because I actually feel like why am I putting this disclaimer. Because truthfully it doesn’t even matter, we’re doing the same type of work. And so why label it that, unless it’s to my advantage of really speaking from the brand point of view. 

But we’re also in a slightly different point in our agency lifespan where we’re starting to take on other business. We’re starting to take on some work from Pizza Hut, from KFC, The Habit. We have these sister brands at YUM. We’re actually starting to break out of just Taco Bell, and we’re actually opening up to outside work as well. So we’re becoming almost an in-house agency that takes on agency work. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. So that’s kind of the progression that Taco Bell is seeing, which is cool.

Adam Morgan: That’s interesting. I’d say my experience of seeing the transition back and forth has been slightly different. I’ve seen in hiring on a lot of resumes, people who have jumped back and forth and back and forth, especially in California. In the area, I’ve seen it feel more fluid than in some. Maybe just because there are a lot of big brands there.

Jess Kirkman: There’s a lot of brands out here and there’s a lot of agencies as well. Again, I am coming from New York agency to California brand. I definitely think it’s probably a lot easier if you’re starting at a California agency to move to a California brand and then back. Because there’s a different kind of mentality in California. I can’t speak to all the different markets, but in New York it’s a little more cutthroat, a little more… you know there’s some edge and grit. I think it might be harder to go back and forth versus California, it might just be an easier progression.

Adam Morgan: That could be, that could be, I’ve also seen some who were in-house their whole life and then they switched over to agency and they’re like, this is the best thing ever. There’s so much freedom and there’s not the bureaucracy and there’s blah, blah, blah.

And then I’ve seen some have done agency work their life and jump over like, I have ownership, I get control. I think it really is interesting that it is so fluid. And that’s what I’m seeing. For a little while, I’d say maybe eight years ago, seven years ago, I saw a huge flood because it was like the doors finally opened in-house. That you could own things and creative leaders, like I want to do that you know. So I saw a huge movement, but now I’m not seeing like a big one way or the other, but it is more fluid from what I’m seeing.

Jess Kirkman: I’m seeing that as well and it’s just nice. Like I said, they’re equalizing a little bit where it’s not such a big, drastic change to go from one to the other, at least mentally. And I think people are starting to be more comfortable making those moves and having that on their resume versus before it might have looked like a failure if you went in-house and then back to an agency. I don’t think that’s how it’s viewed anymore.

Adam Morgan: Well, last question then. I know we’re getting along in time here. So just advice, someone starting out in their career and they’re deciding which way do I go in-house or agency? What advice would you give someone early in their career versus later in their career of what they should do?

Jess Kirkman: You know I only have my personal experience to speak from and that could make me slightly biased. But I actually think it is important to, if you’re just starting out, I would start out at an agency. Like we’ve talked about, you get plenty of experience, you get to understand agency structure and agency culture and you get to decide what you like. You might think you like one thing or you like working on one thing and then you do it for six months and you’re like, oh my God, I can’t do this anymore. An agency allows you to test out where your passions lie, where your skill sets lie, figuring out what you’re good at. And I don’t think there’s as much room to figure that out right off the bat if you just go straight to a brand.

So I would say that when you’re really looking to get to the point where it’s less about variety, and expanding your book, and testing out your portfolio, and trying a bunch of different things. When you’re ready to settle down a little bit, and just get some comfort and some ownership, and really grow your individual position and career. 

And sometimes when you are at an agency, especially from the top down, you could be looked at as just, we can swap him in with the next guy. And when you’re in house, you’re part of the team, you’re on staff. You are, I am a Taco Bell employee before I am a Taco Bell design employee. And so you have those relationships all the way up to the CMO, to the CEO. I speak to our CEO and our CMO regularly. You have those relationships that you can’t really foster at an agency side.

Adam Morgan: Well, that’s awesome. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you, so much for all your personal insights. Hopefully when listening in, at least whether it confirms your experience or you’re starting out and you’ve learned a few lessons. I think this has been a really great discussion on the benefits of in-house versus agency.

You personally, viewers or listeners out there, will have to just try and figure out what is the next step in your career? What is the next thing that you need? Or what are you looking for? And hopefully some of this advice can help you navigate that decision. 

But thank you, thank you. And Jess, just as we’re closing up here, where can listeners follow your career? And I know you’re a visual artist, so where can they look at your art or anything about you. Just give us an idea of some of the channels that we can find you.

Jess Kirkman: Yeah, for sure. Well, first I would say I would check out Taco Bell design on Instagram. That’s where you really can see what we’re doing across the board and culture, and how I lead, and how I build that team. And so that’s just an exciting outlet there.

And then, if you want to follow me and my creative journey on Instagram, I’m Manifest.Jess, you can find me there. And I do a lot of trying to inspire and educate. And I do fluid art. If that’s your thing, check me out. And I do respond to people through Instagram. So if you really do want to reach out, that’s the best way to reach me versus email and stuff, which gets lost in the corporate shuffle.

So, find me there. And I’m always happy to continue a dialogue and debate and learn. Honestly, if there’s anything that anyone has from their experience on agency or in-house, I love adapting what I’m doing, and I always have more to learn. So please reach out.

Adam Morgan: Well, thank you. And we’ll put those links in the show notes, just so people can find your Instagram channels. That’s awesome.

Jess Kirkman: Cool.

Adam Morgan: As always, you can find us at realcreativeleadership.com. You can watch this show or a past show. You can also watch it on YouTube, that’s another great way if you like the video version of this. Email us a question, suggest a future topic, we love the engagement. You can find out and follow more on Real Creative Leadership on all of those major channels.

Me personally, you can find me, my website is adamwmorgan.com. You can learn more about me and my books, and speaking, and articles. I have got a Medium magazine that you can follow as well.

And then also, if you’d love to learn more about The Stoke Group, the digital marketing agency that produces this show, you can find them at thestokegroup.com. If you’re looking for an agency to help you extend your team and do great work.

And we’d love to invite you to connect or engage on in some way, whether it’s leaving a comment on one of the shows, or liking or sharing. We’d love it if you’d share episodes with your fellow creative class and see what they think about stuff. Post a comment or question on social media, whatever it may be. We just love to get some engagement.

So thank you again, and thank you for joining us in Season 3. And we will hopefully see you on our next episode. So take care.