innocent do away with their ad agency

A couple of weeks ago I posted on the power of bringing creative resources in-house, using innocent as an example. innocent already did pack copy, PR and events in-house. Today I read in Campaign they have gone one step further and done away with their ad agency. They have called off the pitch they were running, and decided to go DIY on the advertising as well.

Bringing advertising in-house makes sense for innocent:
1. They truly believe tone-of-voice is a strategic asset, not just a nice-to-have

2. They have real in-house creative resource: 18 people I think at last count, with an active search for more people, as reported in the last post.

3. They were already doing most of the marketing comms. work in house anyway. So, why not go all the way?

In fact as someone reminded me the other day, this is of course not a new idea. The agency Lintas, merged into Lowe in 2001, was created back in 1899 as Unilever's own in-house ad agency. Lintas stood for "Lever International Advertising Services".