If you haven’t heard the good news yet, WPP’s Deliver Offshoring and Hogarth Worldwide have officially joined forces to become a diverse marketing implementation agency with the technology and production expertise to deliver efficiencies and vast savings for global brands.

While Deliver is known for its global digital production and decoupling solutions with an emphasis on offshore utilization; Hogarth has made its footprint in global decoupling involving TV & audio, print, production technology, DAM systems, and transcreation expertise.

This union creates a complete cross platform marketing production solution that offers efficiencies, cost savings and centralization of production and implementation services across all media. Be sure to stop by soon to hear of new developments and read upcoming articles around this exciting merger!



We have already seen horizontalism occur with media services across agency networks and we see the same trend occurring in production services.  The benefits for both agencies and marketers are simply too attractive to ignore.

We all win when we play to our strengths

Strategy and creative thinking have always been attributes that differentiate both agencies and brands. Shifting production to centralized specialists within the same holding company allows agencies to focus on what they do best. This translates to a net win for both agency and marketer in both quality of thinking and integrity of deliverables.

An increase to the bottom line

Perhaps the most significant and tangible benefit is cost savings.  The allocation of production services to in-network resources in emerging markets can generate remarkable efficiencies. At Deliver, clients consistently realize savings between 25-50%.

Like Sir Martin, we believe that “horizontalism” is the new reality in agency delivery. Becoming a part of this increasing trend may hold the strategic key to keeping marketing revenue moving in a vertical direction as the global economy continues to remain horizontal.

The larger entertainment companies have been taking advantage of lower cost offshore animation resources for years. But tight deadlines and revision cycles inherent to marketing have made it more challenging for corporate clients and creative agencies to leverage the talents of their offshore 3D animation production providers. The best providers have reacted to this obstacle by creating collaborative tools similar to the ones used for standard digital production workflow for websites, banners and application designs for overall development.

When we first saw the opportunities in 3D animation, we realized that the primary limiter for adoption would be the creative aspect. Animation is a dynamic high-energy team sport by nature, so we realized that we needed to create a production platform that would provide creative agency talent with an even greater level of access than our existing digital production clients enjoy.

The resulting solution provides “screen sharing” and markup capabilities that allow creative teams to collaborate and comment on complex motion and modeling work as it is being created. This paired with the existing asset and project management features of our DEPP platform now provides a very satisfying experience for hands on creative partners in the States. It all works the same as it always has: agencies submit storyboards, scripts and sketches to direct our team to execute their vision.  Our agency partners love the fact that they don’t have to sacrifice creativity and quality for cost savings.

Our production hub in Colombia has built a stellar team of 3D modelers and animators that have been delivering high-end projects for one client for over a year.  This partnership has yielded some amazing work and we have seen client savings of up to 40% vs. the standard service pricing in the States.

We are very proud of this new offering and our stellar animation group in Colombia.  They provide an awesome compliment to our global network of digital designers and developers.

*Courtesy of “The Cursor’s Curse” animation short

We believe there are five best practices for getting digital production right on a global scale.

1. Invest in a dedicated and focused team that’s working toward executing your creative strategies. An experienced production partner will design a production solution that provides talent in the locations and time zones that best meet each client’s individual business objectives and production goals.
2. Develop a global rollout plan to streamline the transition to offshoring. At Deliver, we recommend clients develop an incremental rollout plan to perfect their production process and quality control measures. A proven, repeatable production process can then be rolled out globally, allowing brands to execute swiftly and with confidence.
3. Establish clear roles and responsibilities between creative agencies, local marketing teams and the production partner. Establish upfront what needs to be approved by global creative and marketing teams, and what your production partner can manage with local marketing resources. This enables global teams to stay focused on priorities that revolve around strategy, and allows local marketing teams to execute regional campaigns in a timely manner.
4. Engage local marketing resources to ensure success. Leverage local team expertise to understand the cultural variances that impact local campaign production. With this insight, you can ensure campaigns meet global standards, yet allow for local market flexibility. By involving local marketing teams in the process, brands get the buy-in they need to deliver high-quality campaigns globally.
5. Create a global repository of creative assets for local market adaptation to maximize reuse and minimize unnecessary effort. This approach empowers brands to produce more assets, tailor them with more precision to local markets, while launching campaigns more efficiently and with greater speed-to-market.

By following these five steps brands can accelerate the performance of their marketing initiatives on a global scale.

Joe Zhou is a production coordinator with Deliver.

This means that the number of ways in which people can interact with or experience brands is rapidly increasing – presenting new opportunities and challenges for advertisers.

With the rise of digital technologies and the Internet, consumers are now in the driver’s seat.  They have the power to choose whether or not to interact with brands, skip or turn off ads or simply opt out.

The future of advertising is not just about technology, but delivering an experience that adds value to a consumer’s shopping experience. And that experience will increasingly be delivered on mobile devices. Mobile advertising presents a significant opportunity for advertisers, as 90% of mobile users will own smart phones in the next two years, according to a recent Guardian article.

Here at Deliver, we work with clients and agencies to produce their online advertising to meet these new challenges and create opportunities. Below are some of the key trends we’re seeing and the challenges we are helping our clients solve:

1. Online advertising will be increasingly interactive and personalized to deliver relevance and utility to value-driven consumers.
2. As content marketing continues to gain popularity, advertisers will need to find new ways to customize their messages and make them contextually relevant to their target audience.
3. Multi-screen consumers want consistent and interactive advertising across devices.  This requires advertisers and production partners to understand how to best tailor and optimize content and interactive characteristics to fit various devices or ad formats.
4. Capitalizing on the success of sites like Pinterest, advertising should include visual tools that provide experiences that increase user engagement.
5. With a challenging economy, advertisers need to deliver value added offers to consumers that create brand loyalty.

Advertisers that get it right will provide an engaging, diverse and interactive experience for consumers to meet their campaigns goals.

Yasir is a project coordinator at Deliver. He can be reached at Yasir.Dhannoon@deliveroffshoring.com.

Since joining Deliver, I’ve experienced what’s truly possible.  As a digital engagement manager for two global consumer packaged goods companies, I see first hand the tremendous benefits companies can achieve by leveraging an offshore production model.

I recently visited our Bogotá, Colombia production hub, and wanted to share some of the best practices our team utilizes to maximize quality and productivity.

1.    Set realistic deadlines, project expectations, and clear technical specifications to keep everyone on the same page.

2.    Invest in team building.  Team building cements the relationship and lays the foundation for good communication and issue resolution.

3.    Provide a clear escalation plan that allows your offshore team to raise issues quickly.

4.    Establish daily status calls to strengthen team project knowledge, streamline workflow and ensure projects are on track.

5.    Give credit where credit is due.  When your team makes the impossible happen, or goes that extra mile, make sure you acknowledge it.  Everyone around the world likes to work with people who appreciate what they do.

Every day, Deliver’s 1,300 global production resources help clients execute mobile applications, websites, microsites, online ads and e-newsletters at a fraction of the cost they were previously paying, while providing quality work that meets or surpasses onshore production teams.  I am proud to be part of this team!

Manny (in the Khaki pants) with his new friends from our Colombia office.

Get everyone on the same page

Introducing a production partner into an existing client/agency mix can create apprehension.  To set the stage for effective collaboration it is imperative that the client, agency and production partner:

1. Must be 100% on-board and want the relationship to work

1. Fully understand the business objectives of the new relationship
2. Clearly define roles and responsibilities that play to each partner’s strengths

Ensure a smooth transition

An experienced production partner will work with all parties to collect materials and assets, as well as define detailed work steps, deadlines and deliverables to make the transition to production offshoring seamless.  As a result, work won’t miss a beat and deliverables will be produced with the quality and timeliness everyone expects.

Have agility and flexibility built in

Agility is key to marketing success.  Production partnerships need to have flexibility built-in to:

1. Deliver the skills, domain expertise and specialists to scale as project needs dictate

1. Provide talent in locations and time zones that meet campaign requirements
2. Create adaptable engagement models that can evolve as the relationship grows

Facilitate team communication and project workflow

With teams distributed over multiple locations and time zones, it is imperative to have a collaborative work platform in place to facilitate communication and provide visibility into all active projects.  Features such as automated review and approval processes, task assignment and follow-up are essential to efficient workflow.

Partnerships built on these principles will grow and deliver long value.

Marina Petrova is VP for Deliver, North America. She can be reached at MPetrova@deliveroffshoring.com.

Companies that struggle with more than 5 of the factors below are poised to realize significant savings and efficiencies.

• Moderate to high volume digital production needs.
• Difficulty accessing specialized digital production resources when needed.
• Digital marketing initiatives that demand high quality and exacting brand standards.
• Multiple agencies (or teams) doing digital production work.
• Inconsistent, inefficient or undocumented production standards and processes.
• Difficulty executing global campaigns in local markets.
• No standardized approach or templates for digital campaign assets.
• No centralized automated digital production project management platforms.
• Insufficient resources when speed to market is critical.

On average our clients realize a 20-50% savings on their current digital production budget.  If you answered yes to more than three of these questions, contact us to learn more.

Ben Rolly is VP, Business Development for Deliver North America.  He can be reached at brolly@deliveroffshoring.com.

Digital production outsourcing is one way that marketers can realize greater efficiency and effectiveness in their marketing campaigns and programs. Outsourcing the production component of digital programs can accelerate the performance of your marketing initiatives in the following ways:

1. Stretch your marketing dollars: By leveraging an outsourced digital production model, companies achieve significant savings. For example, our clients typically realize savings of 20-50% off their current digital production costs. Savings are achieved by an optimized delivery model that includes: staffing in low-cost markets, team and activity consolidation, and process standardization. Companies are taking that savings right to the bottom line or reinvesting it to fund new marketing channels waiting for investment.
2. Access expertise as needed: Your marketing strategy should not be limited by the talent and skill sets that exist within your current practice. A digital production network should provide clients with deep expertise across a range of advanced digital platforms and technologies, so you can execute your strategies exactly. Once more, access is flexible, letting you efficiently manage the peaks and valleys of demand and budget.
3. Achieve faster time-to-market: Proven, repeatable production techniques and process optimization; including automation, templatization and standardization are essential to achieving both speed-to-market and quality. Well-defined production processes and quality control measures allow marketers to execute swiftly with confidence.
4. Gain complete visibility: When you consolidate digital production with one partner using a centralized workflow and project-reporting platform, you gain complete visibility across all your digital marketing programs. This level of transparency makes it easy to reduce waste and redundancy. For example, after consolidating production with Deliver, one of our clients realized that each of their operating units was purchasing similar visual assets. They were able to eliminate duplicate spend and implement an asset management program for more effective reuse.
5. Ensure brand consistency: Companies that operate globally are constantly challenged with maintaining brand consistency in local regions. Brands can achieve campaign consistency when they engage local marketing teams early in the production process to establish a mix of fixed global campaign assets along with flexible units that allow for local market adaptation.

By executing on the above principles with an experienced production partner you can achieve both efficiency and effectiveness, freeing up time and resources to think more strategically.

Cost-cutting is quickly becoming the primary driver of collaboration. Marketers continue to face cost and spending pressure, and as a result, are looking to their agency partners to help them deliver the savings. Some agencies are proactively responding to the call. For example, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of our parent company, WPP Group, has committed that WPP will strive to provide cost savings of 10 – 20% for clients on an annual basis.

One area that promises to deliver these kind of savings is on the production side of the marketing equation. Outsourcing production, particularly for digital initiatives, where spend continues to increase, provides not only cost-efficiency, but enhanced brand consistency and time-to-market. What’s more, by outsourcing to experienced production partners with production experts in low cost markets, marketing organizations can realize savings between 20-50%.

Agencies have long collaborated with marketing services partners to extend the reach of their campaigns into retail establishments, live experiences, and social media. However, many advertisers feel uneasy about introducing partners into production processes traditionally undertaken within their own agency. Agencies need not worry if they have a production partner that makes the collaboration process simple, seamless, and risk-free. When choosing a production partner, ensure:

• Offshore digital production experts have deep expertise across digital media, and are well versed in working with creative agencies.
• The production partner has a well-defined process to transition and manage work from the creative agency, as well as ensure quality deliverables.
• Collaborative communication technologies are leveraged to ensure all stakeholders remain up-to-speed on projects no matter the time zone they operate in.
• The production partner has broad execution reach, with staff in local markets globally.

Agency collaboration is here to stay. Clients are demanding it and agencies must master it.

Ben Rolly is VP Business Development North America at Deliver. He can be contacted at brolly@deliveroffshoring.com.