Liberty Mutual Insurance built its in-house agency, Copper Giants™, for all of the expected reasons—faster speed to market, stronger access to first-party data and insights, a team that lives and breathes the brand, expense consciousness, and overall business impact. So, how do we set ourselves apart in an era where attracting top talent is harder and harder, where talent is an essential driver of growth, and where, at first glance, insurance isn’t the sexiest of opportunities?

Liberty Mutual made a conscious effort to be as planful and proactive as possible by developing a five-year plan for Copper Giants that’s focused on people, process and technology, enabling us to be a consistent driver of marketing year over year. It started with a vision—could we ever be strong enough operationally to provide an external offering to external partners outside of Liberty Mutual?

Wait, what? Why? How?

By focusing on people, process, and tech, and aligning the goals of the in-house agency with the goals of the marketing department, Copper Giants is able to track annual plans, individual projects, and resources down to the hour, providing a holistic talent-management capacity, productivity, and financial value back to the business. With the capabilities and teams of a full-service agency combined with a core-team model to complement Liberty Mutual’s marketing groups, Copper Giants’ approach to talent management and planning helps the agency scale up or down depending on business needs and priorities.

But, that’s just solid planning. It’s the people who create the work who are our most valuable asset and agency leadership always wants to identify opportunities for creative-minded, strategic thinkers to flex. This focus is not classic in nature; it makes the day-to-day work stronger when creative-minded folks have small dedicated pockets to stretch outside of insurance or have an open brief. It helps teams think about Liberty in a different way. And, they are better at self-filtering, as they know what will and won’t work for the brand. In turn, the cycle creates stronger work, more opportunities for teams to advance their skills, and identifies opportunities where they need to grow.

If we could build the agency and develop our capabilities to be able to handle most marketing challenges, we could ultimately handle most project-related work for any brand based on our capabilities and capacity.

We’re not there yet and we may never completely get there with ongoing external project work, but our model suggests we can manage productivity and capacity as we gather stronger data to show our high-volume and low-volume periods. We are now discussing opportunities with partners who want to do small project work, reduce costs, and work efficiently with a single core team, without overheard and with less infrastructure to build out.

If the rise of project work is the true north in this marketing and advertising cycle, what better way to recruit and maintain top talent than to give them creative options once or twice a year to further their own development and help Copper Giants add additional value and thinking back into the business?

If interested in learning more as you plan for 2020 or 2021, email Cliff Stevens. And, to keep up with the Copper Giants, follow us on Instagram.