Why smaller brands are turning to in-house teams for outsized impact

From scale-ups to charities, cost efficiencies are only one factor behind a desire to build internal creative capabilities.

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When the oral wellness company Suri decided it was ready for its first out-of-home campaign in 2025, it was a big moment for the sustainable toothbrush brand.

With revenue approaching £24m as it entered its fifth year, Suri planned to use a creative agency for its OOH debut on the London Underground. Work began to identify a suitable partner.

But the search was short-lived, according to Nick Lawson, Suri’s director of growth.

“We spoke with a couple of potential agency partners, but we didn’t find they were nailing something that was right for the brand,” Lawson says. 

“So we took it in-house and moved forward from there.”

It was decided that Suri’s two-person “creative studio”, which has since grown to a team of five, was better placed to deliver the campaign, using assets from a previous shoot with photography studio Handover.

A post shared by SURI (@discoversuri)

“We’ve always been a pretty in-house brand,” Lawson explains. “And there has been a belief that by doing that, we get better executions. 

“We know our products better, we know our customers very well and we have amazing insight that flows through the business.”

Suri saw its monthly sales growth in London double during the campaign compared to the same period in 2024, according to Lawson.

Suri is not alone among scale-up brands in building its own “mini ad agency” to fulfil creative briefs at speed, enabling it to tweak campaigns in response to performance data and customer feedback.

The in-house team at Passenger Clothing, a company founded in 2012 under a mantra of “meaningful escapism” outdoors, delivers about three-quarters of the company’s creative work, according to head of brand and marketing Alex James.

James describes the speed and agility afforded by the in-house team as “Passenger’s superpower”. 

He says: “Passenger has this culture and ethos of ‘let's just get stuff done and get it done right’, and an encouragement to fail hard, fail fast and then let's go again.”

This sentiment is echoed by Anna Greene, vice-president, marketing, at recipe-box provider Gousto, who celebrates the “creative velocity” brought by the........

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