In this first of a new diary series of his tour around the US, Chris Maxwell founder and CEO of lution and executive chairman of the In-House Agency Council, gives us the view from the floor on the Creative Operations Summit in New York. How trendy.
Day one of the US tour took us to the Creative Operations Summit, somewhere in downtown Manhattan: a room full of the in-house and creative operations leaders behind some of the world’s biggest brands, including Amazon, Google, NASA, Nestlé, GSK, Liberty Mutual, DocuSign. Almost all of them now run an in-house agency of some kind, and this year’s theme, Dare to be Different, set the tone.
AI was everywhere. But the longer you spent in the room, the clearer it became that the real conversation wasn’t about technology at all. It was about people – what they’re for, how they work, and what happens to organisations when the machines arrive.
The keynote captured the mood perfectly. NASA’s creative director David Rager and Executive Producer Sami Aziz walked us through the Artemis II moon mission – the kid-designed plush mascot that went viral, the jar of Nutella that drifted across the cabin and did the same, all produced by around 300 NASA creatives embedded across the organisation.
“Made by humans” was the line. It stuck.
In-house agencies are no longer the cheap option
The strongest sessions weren’t about tools, they were about proving value and raising ambition.
The head of GSK’s in-house agency pins his whole pitch to one number: every asset delivered around US$7,500 cheaper than an external agency, with AI aimed squarely at the grunt work, with more than 900 hours saved on approvals alone. None of those savings have come from creative work. That’s what the people are for.
At Liberty Mutual, in-house agency Copper Giants has gone a step further, taking on external client work to keep its edge. The message was simple, “don’t think like you’re in-house, think like a powerhouse.”
We made a similar case on stage too, sharing the APAC perspective alongside Stella Artois Global Vice President Tim Ovadia, whose AB InBev creative system has helped make the brewer the first company to be named Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year three times.
The throughline was clear: the in-house agency has gone from cost centre to competitive advantage, and creativity scales when you systematise it.
Creative operations are being rewritten
Monks’ founder Wesley ter Haar argued that the traditional agency model of billing for people and hours is no longer a useful proxy for value created, and that the real shift is “less the work, more how we work.”
He even had a word for the mood: exciety (excitement plus anxiety).
That sentiment surfaced throughout the day. The recurring advice was to stop thinking of yourself as a creative operations leader and start thinking like a systems architect.
Organisations are rethinking processes, rebuilding workflows and redefining roles in real time.
The next challenge isn’t technology. It’s burnout.
The counterweight to all the discussion about speed and efficiency came later in the day.
Several speakers returned to the same concern, teams are exhausted. As organisations chase productivity gains, leaders are increasingly confronting a different challenge – preserving the time, energy and mental capacity required for creative thinking.
There was also discussion of a quieter counter-trend. As work becomes increasingly digital, people are gravitating towards more tactile, analogue experiences: journaling, handwritten notes and activities that create distance from constant connectivity.
The faster the technology moves, the more leadership becomes about protecting people’s capacity to think.
What Australian teams should take from New York
Perhaps the most reassuring takeaway for Australian teams is that the US isn’t miles ahead.
The conversations in New York were similar to the ones we’re having back home. Everyone is wrestling with the same AI questions, where it fits how to integrate it into workflows, what skills are needed and how organisations need to adapt. Our own IHAC AI report, released this week, highlights many of the same tensions.
If anything, there’s an opportunity for APAC teams to move faster. Many are building from scratch and can leapfrog the legacy models that organisations in the US are still working to untangle. The winners won’t be the teams with the most AI tools. They’ll be the ones that redesign how work flows and create the conditions for people to do their best work.
The real challenge isn’t the technology, it’s finding better ways of working without burning people out.
