One of the biggest challenges of working with an external agency is getting those teams familiar with the brand.

Often we're moving so fast, and in these days where a lot of brands aren't working with traditional Agencies of Record, a lot of our relationships aren't as long as they were previously. And it's not because we're not committed to our agencies it's just that the traditional advertising model of having one AOR that works on your business for 20-30 years, I mean... in technology, a lot of our companies haven't been around that long. In technology, a lot of the creative work we do is not advertising related because it doesn't necessarily drive our business.

When we're working with outside teams one of the big challenges is just getting them familiar with the audience, getting them familiar with who our user is, getting them familiar with the brand. Getting them to a place where we can send them a brief and they'll make perfect work off the bat the same way an internal team would, without having anyone who's actually in-house.

As you work with outside teams, as you bring them up to speed, the longer you can work with them on a series of projects that are similar to each other, the better results you get, because the closer they are to the brand - the better they understand the work.