Internal agencies have been a rising trend in advertising in recent years as marketers look to decrease costs and increase flexibility. Indeed, last year’s annual look at in-house agencies from the Association of National Advertisers found that 82% of ANA members had an in-house agency, an increase from 2018’s 78%.

The growing popularity is no surprise to Kelly Warkentien, VP and creative director at Wolverine Worldwide, the parent company of footwear brands such as Merrell, Chaco and Saucony as well as activewear label Sweaty Betty.

There, Warkentien has spent the last three years building up the in-house creative team and production studio to handle each brand’s marketing. She started with just Merrell and her remit, along with her team of roughly 50 people, has evolved to cover work for all of Wolverine’s brands.

“We really found ourselves moving quickly from predominantly handling resizes and maybe a couple of briefs in-house to spearheading the rebrand of Merrell as well as quickly turning into the team that handled most of our creative briefs,” she said, speaking on the latest episode of the Marketer’s Brief podcast.

As a full-service agency, her group, called The Agency, handles brand, creative and digital work as well as production services and PR. While Wolverine does maintain a few outside agency relationships, they are “minimal,” Warkentien said.

“We’re looking to eliminate our dependency on external agencies to foster a more streamlined and cost-effective approach to our creative development,” she said.

On the podcast, Warkentien discusses how her team works with each brand and its individual chief marketing officer within the Wolverine portfolio. She also talks about gathering consumer insights and how that research translates to marketing campaigns, such as recent pushes from Merrell and Chaco, and which marketing channels work best for which brands. For example, Chaco has an engaged customer base on social media that Wolverine refers to as “Chaco Nation.”

While Wolverine is not planning a Super Bowl ad buy this year, Warkentien and her team plan to monitor social media and watch the ads in case they have a chance to weigh in. She pointed to Oreo’s viral “Dunk in the Dark” Tweet from 2013. (Oreo is airing a TV spot this year.)

“There’s always an opportunity to insert yourself in the conversation even if you haven’t bought time in the commercials,” Warkentien said.