• Advancing Your Client/Creative Relationships

    June 16, 2014

    Relationships between creative team members and clients can be good, bad or downright ugly. Whatever it is, your goal should always be ongoing improvement of your client relationships.

    The interaction between clients and creatives during projects often invites opportunities for conflict. When …

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  • Jump Start Your Creative-Development Process

    June 11, 2014

    As an in-house agency, you have a choice. You can have a closed ideation ecosystem or one that pushes the boundaries and opens up the ideation process to a broader team. IHAF Member, Vistaprint, recently proved that the latter choice can jump start the creative process. 

    Vistaprint's in-house …

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  • Balancing Creativity with Practicality

    June 09, 2014

    • by John Jacobin, IRS

    Considering how fast organizational needs are changing, it has never been more critical to be flexible and creative in problem solving and decision making. We've seen many adaptive organizations survive who have embraced their workers’ creative thinking as a core business practice and we have seen …

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  • Changing Your Relationship Status

    June 02, 2014

    As the service-minded design group that once was blossoms into a strategic superpower within your organization, you’ll find your team’s credibility growing—and your responsibilities tripling. What do you mean you can’t design an award-winning logo, lead an international conference call, present …

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  • Are You Stuck in 51/49 Thinking?

    May 19, 2014

    A number of years ago, when I was at Bose, we embarked on a transformative journey—a journey to eradicate 51/49 thinking. What is 51/49? It’s a term we used to characterize the balance of power between the in-house agency and its clients. On one hand when you’re in house, you all work for the same …

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  • Managing Clients with a Creative Spark

    May 12, 2014

    I often hear that in-house client relationships can be like walking a fine line of diplomacy, where negotiation can determine the creative direction. Well, I think it’s the creative process that can determine the direction of the relationship.

    The Creative Advantage. Having world-class creative …

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  • Getting Started with Gamification

    May 05, 2014

    Did you know that according to Gallup, 70% of U.S. employees are not actively engaged? That amounts to $380 billion in lost productivity each year. At Inward, we’re passionate about employee engagement which is why we recommend that our clients consider gamification to drive their engagement …

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  • Hey Clients, Don’t Drink and Draw

    April 28, 2014

    At the ripe old age of 24, I was given the unique opportunity to design a complete corporate identity for a commercial real estate development that was to be erected on the South Shore of Massachusetts, a region that runs south of Boston along the shoreline of the Massachusetts and Cape Cod Bays. I …

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  • The Journey from Print to Digital

    April 16, 2014

    Ah, the journey from print to digital. Can we get there from here? Yes, we can. Is it a direct route? Nope.

    Evolving with business today is harder than ever. There isn’t a speed limit. The autobahn is wide-open. And in-house agencies are faced with a dilemma: How do we stay relevant, continuing to …

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  • Are We There Yet?

    March 31, 2014

    The digital journey for most in-house agencies has been a dizzying one, to say the least. At last year’s IHAF Huddle discussion group series, the topic of digital and social media came up often throughout our five-city tour. On the one hand, the journey can be exhilarating as we embark on new ways …

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