Let’s talk about creativity at scale and why creative matters.

Last Friday, I attended the Creative Operations Summit and saw how this is very much alive and well. Not necessarily the shiny, big-budget kind. The kind that runs lean, moves fast and still delivers beautifully crafted work with consistency and impact.

Take Skyscanner. Their small in-house team is producing high-volume, multilingual assets across social, OOH and DOOH. How? Through a clearly defined Brand World, built-in motion guardrails and tight alignment across teams. Combine that with Martech tools like Figma and Frontify and they’ve been able to slash production timelines by nearly 50%.  

Creativity with velocity – and without chaos.  

This is also possible because of a clear, defined process. And no, process isn’t bureaucracy. It’s clarity. It’s protection. It’s the thing that lets teams move fast and stay brilliant and as one of the speakers said:

“Ops people aren’t here to make life difficult. We’re here to help creatives create – at scale.”

Walking the floor matters too. Scaling creative work requires deep collaboration - not just between creatives and ops but across leadership, production and strategy.  

We were also reminded that external agencies often embrace data instinctively, but in-house teams need to catch up here. This is because data shouldn’t be the enemy of creativity. It’s a friend with great instincts.

At Trinny London, they have moved beyond traditional agency-client relationships. They have empowered their teams to a position where a leader's role isn’t to have the ideas - it’s to build a culture where everyone feels empowered to share them. Alignment across client services, creative and production is the secret sauce.

Meanwhile at Tommy Hilfiger, they’re tackling the old enemy: subjectivity. You’ll never remove it, but you can manage it:

• Arbitrate – bring in the team’s view

• Aggregate – use the data to your advantage

• Ask AI – yes, it should be used for this

And finally, interesting insights from Medialake AI who have flipped the script: what if tech leads strategy, not follows it? With over 71% of created content escaping central audit and siloed tech stacks costing businesses over 30% in efficiency, visibility to the creative output has to come first. It’s the foundation you build on. Creatives probably won’t change how they work. So, the tech needs to work around them - not the other way round. Because when you get the visibility, process and tools right, creativity doesn’t just scale. It flies.

Thank you for a fascinating event as always from Henry Stewart Events and very much look forward to returning next year.

At LOOP Agencies, we help regulated industries build in-house teams, who in turn create better governance and clarity for your brand. Get in touch to see how we can help you take charge of your brand.