Craft, chemistry and collaboration: What clients really value in production partners

In-house creative teams are now a standard part of how major brands operate. But, as they’ve grown, so has the debate about what role external production partners should play.

From a client perspective, that debate misses the point. 

External partners bring fresh perspectives, creative challenge and specialist expertise. 

The best work rarely comes from choosing between in-house and external teams, it comes from knowing when to bring external craft in, how to collaborate and how to create the conditions for great work to happen.

Above: Like a jigsaw, you sometimes need to find the right approach for the right strategy.

The false binary: in-house vs external

Our in-house team knows more about the Postcode Lottery and our players than anybody, so it makes sense for us to develop and produce much of the work we deliver across our media channels. But in-house teams can’t - and shouldn’t - try to do everything.

The real issue isn’t around in-house versus external teams, it’s around finding the right people who care about making brilliant work.

External partners bring fresh perspectives, creative challenge and specialist expertise. As a client overseeing a high volume of production, I know the right partners will enhance our creativity and, crucially, help us maintain the pace and scale needed to deliver a cohesive, multi-channel presence year-round. The real issue isn’t around in-house versus external teams, it’s around finding the right people who care about making brilliant work and giving them the clarity and trust to deliver it.

At Postcode Lottery we create work across TV, entertainment formats and brand storytelling. Our fit-for-format creative strategy means no single production model fits every brief. Different ideas require different expertise. That variety reflects the scale of what the format supports. The Postcode Lottery was created to raise funds for charities and, in the UK alone, players have already helped generate more than £1.7 billion. Every campaign contributes in some small way to that wider mission.

Above: The Postcode Lottery partnered with gameshow creators Hello Dolly for its ITV show, Win Win.

When external production is essential

After more than 30 years working in agencies and now as a client, I’ve seen how quickly teams can become comfortable. When that happens, the work inevitably starts to feel dated. External partners help prevent that and great directors bring craft and creative instinct that push teams outside their comfort zone.

For example, working with Vincent Peone brought a level of storytelling and visual craft that really elevated the work. On one shoot we even had two drone operators who had worked on The Lord of the Rings, capturing our latest campaign from the cloudy skies of Brighton. Sometimes the value lies in specialist expertise. When we launched Win Win, our primetime ITV quiz show, we partnered with gameshow creators Hello Dolly, whose knowledge of interactive entertainment was integral to shaping the format.

As AI increasingly becomes part of the production process, the value of people who are exceptional at their craft will only increase. 

In other cases, the value is efficiency and execution. Production specialists like BLOC help us deliver high volumes of OOH and social content quickly while still adding creative polish. As AI increasingly becomes part of the production process, the value of people who are exceptional at their craft will only increase. It’s about finding people who understand your brand, deliver distinctiveness and know which lane to swim in. It’s this combination that has allowed us to develop an instantly recognisable creative platform that is also fit-for-format across all channels, balancing consistency with freshness.