• Where Do You Go to Get Into the Zone?

    July 14, 2014

    I work from home. I used to work from a corporate office, but now I work from home most of the time and I have to tell you, I love it. I’m a hundred times more productive working from my home office than a traditional corporate setting. So as IHAF wraps its discussion on work environments this week, …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Space Matters

    June 23, 2014

    Corporate space design has evolved significantly over the past 15 years. Coveted corner offices are a thing of the past—replaced by open floor plans and low cubes. Where your employees sit and their personal space is a hot topic. When planning for space changes, you need to consider the different …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • 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 …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • 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 …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Seizing Opportunities for Improvement

    February 24, 2014

    Seven months ago, I was given the opportunity to lead the Corporate Marketing team at Nationwide. Prior to this, I served as CMO of our Property & Casualty business unit and most recently, led of our Financial Services marketing team.

    Now that I’m on the “other side of the desk,” there are …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Our Constant Evolution

    February 19, 2014

    The in-house team at Boston University has changed a lot in recent years. We’ve gone from a customer service group to a project management group to an account management team. And we're going to change—or should I say, evolve—even further.

    Early on our group was exclusively focused on print-design …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Meet Two New Board Members

    February 17, 2014

    This month, IHAF is exploring the topic of Operational Excellence and what it means to in-house agencies. As part of this series, I asked the two newest members of IHAF’s Board of Directors, Mark Gibson, Assistant VP of Creative Services at State Farm and Wayne Barringer, Director of Creative …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Embracing Continuous Improvement

    February 12, 2014

    As a recent returnee in house (after 18 years at NY ad agencies), I’m learning to adapt to a larger environment and a corporate culture where our clients are also our colleagues.

    One of the biggest advantages I’m seeing since my return is that everyone, no matter what their function, knows the …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Do You Want it Fast, Cheap or Good?

    February 10, 2014

    We may be witnessing a harmonic convergence of sorts in the name of operational excellence. While the inclination for any business may be to try to do as much as it can with the resources it has on hand, that’s not always effective. Sooner or later, what seems like the fastest, easiest path to …

    Read Moreright arrow

  • Operational Excellence: It’s How We Do It

    February 03, 2014

    Some years ago I had the privilege of attending an industry event that included CFOs from top-shelf advertising agencies. At the time, I had been in my current role for a short time. I was eagerly seeking nuggets of wisdom that I could apply to the day-to-day operation of the in-house agency for …

    Read Moreright arrow