HATCH Serves up New ‘Eat In or Dine Out’ Video Series

HATCH, an independent, women-owned agency that serves growth-hungry brands a customizable combo of creative capabilities and expertly sourced talent, today announces the launch of its new video series, Eat In or Dine Out.

Arriving at a time when marketing leaders are increasingly wrestling with resource allocation decisions, each freshly baked episode features marketing leaders who step into the kitchen with Jennifer Harrington, CEO and founder of HATCH, to tackle the perennial marketing dilemma: Build an in-house team or partner with external agencies?

"At mealtime, we're all faced with a choice: Eat in, or dine out? Most brands wrestle with a similar question when it comes to getting stuff done: Make it in-house or outsource to an agency?" said Jennifer. "Spoiler alert: It's not quite as easy as ordering a pizza."

The debut episode features serial CMO Kathy Klingler sharing candid insights over Union Park Pizza, which gets an enthusiastic on-screen endorsement. Drawing from her experience leading marketing at global corporations like Santander Bank and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts as well as tech companies like Rapid7, Kathy doesn't hold back.

“What I observed is that there are terrific internal teams, but there are often gaps in talent,” she said, crediting partners like HATCH for helping CMOs navigate the challenge of deciding whether to 'hire full-time people for the gaps that I see' or 'hire agency partners.'

Discussing the realities of building marketing teams in fast-moving tech environments, Kathy has found that, “What they need is exactly what the big companies need — the difference is you have a quarter of the money to do one versus the other.”

When faced with such a recipe that calls for high growth with limited resources, Kathy admited, “You don’t have the time to say ‘Oh, I’m going to do a big RFP and bring in all these agencies and evaluate them.’ I don’t have three months or six months.”

Upcoming episodes of Eat In or Dine Out will feature Kerry Salerno, vice president of marketing and communications of Babson College, and Derek O'Brien, CMO of Peabody Essex Museum. Each conversation will continue to explore how marketing leaders make strategic decisions about resources, talent and agency partnerships as they flex, adjust and pivot to stretch fluctuating budgets.

“There's no one model, it's not a cookie-cutter model, that's gone,” noted Kathy. “You have to be really nimble with your customers. The ability to work with a lot of different configurations is actually a hallmark of what successful agencies need to be able to do. If you can't do that, it's going to be tough out there.”

The first episode of Eat in or Dine out is available now, with new episodes releasing every month.