Building Distributed Creative Teams
Want to massively scale creative work without doubling your budget?
Brands are building distributed creative teams instead of traditional in-house departments. Why? The legacy model of handling creative services internally doesn’t work anymore.
Creative teams are stretched too thin. Deadlines keep mounting. Budgets get slashed. Hiring great talent in-market is nearly impossible these days.
The solution? Ditch the in-office-only mindset and source creative talent from around the world.
Advertising agencies and brands have been using offshore hiring practices for years now. Using remote talent to create web content, design graphics, edit videos, and much more allows brands to trim down their marketing costs without sacrificing quality.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Why Brands Are Going Distributed
- The Benefits of Offshore Creative Teams
- How To Build a High-Performing Remote Team
- Don’t Make These Mistakes
Why Brands Are Going Distributed
COVID had a lot to do with it. Once companies realized they could have distributed teams who worked remotely… they kind of liked it.
A lot of teams ended up MORE productive when working remotely versus sitting in-office. So brands didn’t want to go back.
But they’ve gone one step further by staffing creative departments with talent in multiple countries and time zones.
But there’s another reason companies aren’t rushing back to the office.
Creatives.
Brands are realizing they can hire a team of world-class designers from anywhere. But since they don’t have to hire locally to fill remote roles, companies can access skilled talent at a fraction of the cost.
Need I say more?
They’re going distributed to cut costs and hire better talent. End of story.
Many companies we talk to leverage outsourcing services from the Philippines to grow their creative departments while saving money. It’s becoming a huge trend across all industries.
Offshore Creative Team Advantages
Let’s dig into a few benefits of offshore teams that go beyond just “saving money”.
Although saving money is a BIG benefit.
Massive Cost Savings
The most obvious benefit of hiring offshore is cost.
Depending on who you’re hiring and from where, you can save anywhere from 40-70% over hiring locally.
If you’re a growing company that needs to keep overhead low, those are numbers you can’t ignore.
$120k salary? Move to $50k.
Easy.
Pro-Tip — Senior level designers and marketers can command salaries upwards of $120,000 in the United States. You can hire the same level of talent in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe for around $50,000/year including benefits.
Not only will you be cutting labor costs significantly, but you’ll also save on benefits, office space, equipment, software, and more.
Larger Talent Pool
When you limit your hiring search to one city or even one country, you’re severely limiting the pool of candidates.
The best talent is not located in a 10-mile radius of your office.
They’re distributed all around the world.
Building a distributed team allows you to hire the best person for the job REGARDLESS of where they live. Need a motion graphics whiz? A brand strategy expert? A UX/UI designer?
Got ’em.
24/7 Productivity
This one is pretty wild…
Let’s say you have team members working in Manila, Philippines and New York City.
The Manila team works during their business hours, but wraps up early to hand things off to the NYC team.
The NYC team overlaps with London, UK and so when they’re done for the day, the London team continues the work.
Boom.
You’ve just wrapped the planet and never stopped.
Teams who have remote employees in different time zones experience this benefit quite frequently. And it allows projects to be completed much quicker than traditional teams.
Scalability
If your team is 100% in-office, scaling up can be a long, difficult process.
You have to hire the person, onboard them, buy them a computer, put them in a desk, assign health benefits…
It all adds up.
When you have a distributed team, scaling up (and down) is way easier.
Need to bulk up for an upcoming project? Add a few remote creatives to the team.
The project ends and you no longer need as many hands on deck? Scale back down without the headache of laying people off.
Building High-Performing Remote Teams
If managed correctly, remote teams can seriously outperform teams that work only in-office.
But that doesn’t just magically happen.
Successful distributed teams adhere to a few practices.
Set Clear Processes First
Before you hire your first remote employee, spend time documenting every process.
How will you share files? Who needs to approve what? How many revisions are allowed? What is expected turnaround time?
When managing remote workers, set some rock-solid processes and you’ll never look back.
Invest in Tools
Communication tools, project management software, and design software are absolutely necessary for successful remote teams.
Successful distributed teams use:
- Slack or Microsoft Teams for team communication
- Asana, Monday, or ClickUp for project management
- Figma or Miro for design collaboration
- Loom for asynchronous video updates
Not sure where to start? Don’t sweat it. We’ll dive into this later.
Communicate Constantly
As mentioned above, set “golden hours” where both teams are working at the same time and schedule daily/weekly check-ins.
Outside of those hours, communicate asynchronously.
Share screens, send Loom messages, create videos of your progress.
Just communicate constantly.
Hire the Right People
Technical skills are important. But when managing creative teams in different locations, you need people with more than just skills.
They also need self-management skills.
Look for candidates who can hit deadlines on their own. Proactively communicate issues before they happen. Can they work independently without micro-management?
Remote work is all about trust. When hiring, look for people you trust to do their jobs well.
Mistakes We See Too Often
Before you get started building out your dream remote team, watch out for these goofs.
Micromanage Remote Staff
I can’t stress this enough. If you think you’ll need to manage your team’s every move, don’t hire a remote worker.
Seriously.
Many managers are afraid to let employees work remotely because they think they’ll lose control of the team. If you feel this way, distributed teams are not for you.
But if you hire the right people, defined processes, and use the right tools — you’ll never want to go back.
Culture Clash
Imagine you hire someone in the Philippines to be your video editor. They send you the first draft of an edit. You think it’s terrible. They think it’s fantastic.
Who’s wrong?
Both of you.
Here’s why.
Every country has a different working style. For example, Filipinos are very indirect when communicating. If you don’t know that before hiring, you’ll run into issues.
When building out your remote team, make sure you educate yourself on the country’s working style.
Rushing the Onboarding Process
Just because your team is remote doesn’t mean you should rush the onboarding process.
Take your time when hiring new employees. Make sure they know what they’ll be doing. Educate them on the brand, team structure, expectations, deadlines, etc.
A good onboarding process can go a long way when building a remote team.
Settling for B-Teams
Finally, don’t just settle for the cheapest team out there.
If quality was no object, who would you hire to build your creative team?
Now keep cost in mind.
You don’t want to hire the most expensive team, but you also don’t want to hire the team that costs “WAY less than everyone else”.
Hire the BEST team you can find that fits your budget.
Research shows that 62% of B2B companies outsource creative services to specialized creative agencies. These companies know that quality comes first. Price is secondary.
Wrapping Up
We could go on for days about why more brands are building distributed creative teams and hiring offshore talent.
But here’s the short version:
Distributed teams = benefit.
If you haven’t considered building a remote team yet, there’s no time like the present.
You get to cut costs, hire the best talent (not just who is available in your city), and scale on demand.
Those who figure this out will crush their competitors who choose to stay stagnant with tired legacy team structures.