Why Liberty Mutual’s IHA works for external clients

On 3rd October, for the latest episode of The In-House Life, in partnership with ITG, we spoke to Warren Marenco Chase, who heads up Copper Giants, the in-house agency of Liberty Mutual insurance.

Copper Giants is one of the few IHAs to take on external clients, so we wanted to ask him how the model works. IHALC members can watch a recording of the Session here, but we wanted to share some key points from the conversation:

• Copper Giants decided to work for external clients mainly in order to attract and retain the talent it believed it needed as it transitioned from a studio to a creative agency.
• Work for Liberty Mutual always takes priority: Copper Giants aims to do no more than 20% of its work for external clients. Utilisation rates and capacity are carefully monitored in order to make sure the agency has the resource available to take on external projects.
• The primary reason for Copper Giants’ existence remains the money it saves the business: Warren said that the IHA saves the business 42%, or around $4m a year, compared to what it would have cost to do the same work with external agencies.
• Copper Giants is not a profit centre. In fact, it operates as a separate business when working for external clients.
• Why do clients come? Warren believes it is a combination of the experienced talent that the agency has and the fact that it can draw on the research capabilities of Liberty Mutual. Although Copper Giants does not use any Liberty Mutual customer data in its work, it can make use of the business’s wealth of research into customer behaviour.
• Warren’s ambition for the agency is to win In-House Agency of the Year at Cannes Lions, even though the category doesn’t exist yet!

The In-House Life is IHALC’s series of online interviews and debates with in-house agency leaders. Members can watch our archive of over 30 episodes in The Sessions section of our website here.