Types of Creative Team Structures: Choosing the Right Fit for Your Business
An inefficient creative team setup can result in brand inconsistency and missed opportunities—issues that can hinder growth rather than propel it. On the other hand, a well-organized creative team can drive innovation, strengthen your brand, and ensure every resource is put to good use.
But how do you build a creative department structure that works today and adapts as your business grows? I’ll break down key team models—from in-house teams to hybrid agency setups—and provide practical strategies to align your team with your business goals.
What is a creative team?
A creative team shapes your brand’s visual identity, messaging, and storytelling. They take ideas and turn them into campaigns, visuals, and branded content that engage your audience and achieve your business goals. Whether in-house, part of an agency, or a hybrid setup, creatives bridge your brand’s vision with its marketing and communication efforts.
Having a reliable creative group is a strategic advantage, especially today. They help your brand stand out and stay consistent—all while connecting emotionally with your audience.
Roles within a creative team
A creative team typically includes a mix of specialized roles, such as:
- Creative Director/Brand Strategist: Oversees the team’s vision and ensures all projects align with brand goals.
- Graphic Designers & Illustrators: Focus on visual storytelling and creative asset creation.
- Copywriters & Content Writers: Craft compelling messages and narratives.
- Marketing Strategists: Align creative projects with broader marketing goals.
- Video Producers & Editors: Handle long-form and short-form video production for campaigns, static and video ads, and digital platforms.
- Web & UX Designers: Design and optimize websites and user experiences.
Different types of creative team structures
Research indicates that team structure significantly influences coordination and overall effectiveness. This makes choosing the right setup is essential, especially since each structure has its own strengths and challenges. The best fit depends on your organization’s goals, resources, and needs.
Here's a quick rundown of the main creative team structures:
Centralized creative team
Here, all creative functions come under one department, acting as the hub for the entire organization. This setup ensures a unified creative vision, keeping branding, marketing, and communications consistent.
As you centralize control, you can strictly enforce brand guidelines and minimize fragmented messaging or mismatched visuals. And since prioritization and resource allocation happen in one place, workflows are simpler as well. For example, a centralized team can produce cohesive campaigns aligned with company goals without duplicating efforts.
However, the centralized model has limitations.
With all requests going through a single team, bottlenecks are common, especially in large organizations. Departments may face delays, and their specific departmental needs may not be addressed as quickly or thoroughly. That's because the creative team may lack the immediate context or proximity to understand department-specific nuances.
💡Pro Tip: Create cross-department liaisons to act as go-betweens for the centralized creative team and individual departments. They can help communicate departmental needs clearly, ensuring the creative team responds quickly while maintaining brand consistency and quality.
Embedded (distributed) creative team
An embedded creative team places designers, writers, or other creatives directly within specific departments.
The idea is to integrate creatives into the workflows of their assigned teams so they can fully understand department goals and challenges. This close collaboration allows them to respond quickly to changes and create tailored solutions. For example, a marketing team with an embedded designer can produce campaign materials faster without needing approval from a central team.
However, this model can lead to inconsistencies if different departments interpret brand guidelines in their own way. Additionally, without proper coordination, teams may end up duplicating efforts, wasting time and resources.
💡Pro Tip: Host regular brand alignment workshops to reinforce guidelines and encourage collaboration. This will prevent teams from working in silos.
Matrix creative team
The matrix model combines centralized and embedded approaches. Creatives report to both a centralized leader for overall vision and their department for specific projects. The result? Ensured brand consistency and close alignment of creatives with departmental goals.
The strength of a matrix team is its flexibility. For instance, a designer might contribute to both marketing campaigns and internal communications, fostering collaboration across departments. However, dual reporting can complicate priorities, slow decisions, or create conflicts between managers.
This model works well for organizations managing complex initiatives like product launches or global campaigns.
💡Pro Tip: Clearly define decision-making roles and conflict-resolution processes to prevent confusion between leaders.
Pod-based creative team
A pod-based structure organizes creatives into small, autonomous teams (pods) assigned to specific projects, products, or clients. Each pod operates as a self-sufficient unit, with its own mix of creatives—writers, designers, and strategists—working collaboratively from start to finish.
The good thing about these pods is they promote agility and ownership. This makes them ideal for managing multiple projects simultaneously, such as in agencies or media companies.
Resource management can be tricky, though. Overstaffed pods may waste resources, while under-resourced ones risk burnout or missed deadlines. Without proper coordination, pods might also develop silos, reducing collaboration and consistency across teams.
💡Pro Tip: Rotate team leads across pods periodically to share best practices. You must also encourage collaboration and maintain alignment with company-wide goals.
Hybrid/on-demand creative team
The hybrid model combines an in-house creative team with freelancers, contractors, or agencies. This structure is particularly effective for businesses with fluctuating creative needs (think: seasonal campaigns or product launches).
By tapping into external talent, companies can access specialized skills without the financial commitment of a larger permanent team.
For example, an ecommerce brand might handle routine creative tasks in-house while bringing in freelance videographers or designers for a major product launch. However, one key challenge is ensuring consistency across outputs, as external contributors may not be fully familiar with the brand's guidelines or voice.
💡Pro Tip: Build a reliable network of vetted creative team members—freelancers and agencies. Provide them with detailed brand guidelines and set clear expectations for deliverables. Regular check-ins and constructive feedback are super important, too. They help maintain alignment and ensure consistent quality across projects.
How business context shapes your creative team structure
Your company’s size, industry, and growth stage determine your creative team's ideal structure. Think about it: what works for a scrappy tech startup likely won’t suit a global retail giant managing complex campaigns. So, to build a team that delivers results, you must tailor your structure to your unique needs.
Creative team structure by different company sizes
Small companies
Small businesses have limited resources, which makes a flexible team structure—like hybrid or embedded models—a good fit:
- Hybrid model: A small in-house team handles daily tasks while freelancers or agencies provide specialized support.
- Embedded model: Creatives work within specific departments, staying closely aligned with business priorities.
These models give you the agility to manage fluctuating workloads without overextending your budget.
Here's what a small company org chart might look like following a hybrid model:
- Creative Director (Part-Time or Freelance)
- Designer (In-House)
- Copywriter (Freelance)
- Videographer (Agency Partner)
Larger companies
As businesses scale, a centralized or matrix models can make more sense:
- Centralized model: Keeps brand messaging consistent across regions and campaigns.
- Matrix model: Balances individual department needs with overarching brand goals.
Both structures support growth by creating clear workflows and allocating resources effectively.
Here's what a larger company org chart can look like (for a centralized model):
- Chief Marketing Officer
- Creative Director
- Project Manager
- Design Team Lead
- Content Team Lead
- Writers & Editors
- Video Team Lead
- Producers & Editors
💡Pro tip: Review your team’s capacity and workflows quarterly to spot bottlenecks and ensure resources match organizational priorities. A well-aligned team drives both efficiency and results.
Industry requirements
Tech & SaaS
In tech and SaaS, agile and embedded creative department structures are ideal because they align with the industry's fast-paced product development cycles. These structures enable quick and coordinated execution by embedding creatives directly within teams like engineering, product, and marketing.
This close integration streamlines collaboration and ensures rapid delivery of launch materials, demos, and customer communications.
Below is a potential org chart example for tech & SaaS under the embedded team structure:
- Product Marketing Manager
- Embedded Creative Team
- Graphic Designer
- Copywriter
- UX/UI Designer
- Embedded Creative Team
Retail & ecommerce
Retail and ecommerce companies rely on frequent updates for products and promotions, making pod-based or matrix structures ideal.
Pod-based teams concentrate on specific areas like product lines, seasonal campaigns, or sales events. This ensures focused and efficient work. Meanwhile, matrix structures provide the flexibility to deliver rapid creative outputs while maintaining long-term brand consistency.
Here's a pod-based org chart example for retail & ecommerce:
- Creative Director
- Pod 1: Seasonal Campaigns
- Designer
- Copywriter
- Marketing Strategist
- Pod 2: Product-Specific Campaigns
- Designer
- Copywriter
- Video Editor
- Pod 1: Seasonal Campaigns
💡Pro tip: Align workflows with customer engagement cycles, like product launches or subscription renewals, to ensure creative output hits the right moment for maximum impact.
Growth stage
Early-stage startups
Flexibility is key for startups in the early stages. And a hybrid or distributed creative model is the perfect match here, balancing agility with cost-effectiveness.
With a hybrid approach, you can keep a small, adaptable in-house team while outsourcing specialized tasks. Whereas, a distributed model embeds creative professionals in essential areas like product and marketing, aligning them with your fast-changing priorities.
Below is a hybrid org chart example for early-stage startups:
- Founder/CEO
- Marketing Manager
- Freelance Designer
- Freelance Copywriter
- Product Team
- Embedded UX Designer
- Marketing Manager
Scaling businesses
As your business grows, creative demands increase, and aligning priorities across departments becomes crucial. A matrix or centralized creative model offers the structure to manage these needs effectively while maintaining brand consistency. You can better collaborate and integrate specialized roles, which will ultimately lead to streamlined workflows. Scaling agencies in particular can overcome key challenges by adopting these team structures.
Here's an org chart example for scaling businesses following the matrix team model:
- Chief Creative Officer
- Centralized Creative Director
- Brand Manager
- Designers & Writers
- Departmental Creative Leads (Embedded)
- Marketing Creative Team
- Sales Enablement Creative Team
- Brand Manager
- Centralized Creative Director
💡Pro tip: Review your creative department structure yearly. Growth brings new challenges, and regular assessments help identify when to scale, add roles, or tweak workflows for better efficiency and performance.
Why you should choose a hybrid/on-demand creative team model
A hybrid or on-demand creative team model gives you the best of both worlds: a core in-house team for consistency and external freelancers or agencies for flexibility. You’ll save on costs, scale up or down as needed, and access specialized talent without the commitment of a fully staffed in-house team. Expect:
Cost benefits
With a hybrid model, you pay for creative work only when you need it. You can bring in freelancers for specific projects and keep your budget lean. For example, instead of hiring full-time designers for occasional campaigns, you can onboard talent per project, cutting costs while still delivering quality work.
Quality advantages
Freelancers and agencies bring specialized creative and brand marketing skills and fresh perspectives to the table. You can match experts to each task, whether you need a cutting-edge designer or a social media strategist, so your campaigns stay sharp and aligned with the latest trends.
Scalability
A hybrid model lets you bring in more freelancers when you need to hit those urgent deadlines. And when the workload eases, you can scale back without layoffs or wasted resources. This flexibility keeps your operations efficient and responsive to changing demands.
💡Pro Tip: Set clear expectations for freelancers upfront. You should have established performance indicators and hold regular check-ins to provide feedback across projects.
Case study: How a hybrid team helped streamline campaign delivery and reduce costs
Springboard, a career education company, struggled with rising creative costs and disorganized workflows. They managed campaigns across consumer, B2B, and university audiences but lacked a unified process. Teams hired separate agencies, paying $1,700 per program refresh and $3,500 per launch. These costs quickly ballooned to $20,400 per quarter, draining resources.
Springboard's Creative Director, Brad Reid considered various staffing options, from interns to senior hires. Interns required too much supervision, and senior employees risked burnout from repetitive tasks. Instead, Springboard partnered with MarketerHire to onboard a junior designer as part of a hybrid model.
The result? A 70% reduction in costs and a 200% increase in production capacity. The junior designer delivered 32 assets per refresh within 4-6 weeks, cutting expenses and improving efficiency. “Using MarketerHire to find an in-house design assistant provided immense savings for Springboard. It allowed me to significantly improve our profit margins," says Brad.
Learn more about how MarketerHire boosted Springboard's profit margins, proving the hybrid model’s value.
Build your creative team through MarketerHire
MarketerHire simplifies building your creative team by connecting you with pre-vetted, skilled marketing professionals. Whether you need a creative strategist, designer, or copywriter, you’ll find experienced experts ready to deliver results without the hassle of a lengthy hiring process.

With flexible options for short-term projects, long-term roles, or ongoing support, MarketerHire helps you scale your team to meet your goals. Trusted by brands like Netflix, HelloFresh, and Lyft, it’s a proven solution for tackling creative challenges and executing impactful campaigns.
Get started today—book a free 15-minute consultation and build your creative team with MarketerHire.