It wasn’t that long ago that CMOs collaborated with teams of in-house colleagues: creative directors, marketing managers, staff photographers, copywriters, strategists, and videographers to list a few. When it was time to create a new strategy or campaign, those teams assembled around conference tables where ideas were slapped about, refined, and eventually executed by in-house project leads.

For many companies today, that traditional org chart no longer exists. Collaborators have largely been dispersed into the 1099 economy.

Still, today’s CMOs—often fractional themselves—are tasked with creating impactful storytelling to hit very specific targets without internal resources. That’s a challenge, because even the most talented marketers eventually run out of fresh ideas. As nice as remote work is, its greatest pitfall is isolation—the antithesis of collaboration. The result is all around us in the form of redundant campaigns produced in-house or by agencies known for one type of output.

The good news? Zestless storytelling has made original work more valuable. And that’s where open source collaboration comes in. With open talent, a marketer can tactically find a director of photography that knows every location in the Mid-Atlantic, and strategically a marketer can even construct top-shelf virtual agencies, but a smarter way to look at it might be that open talent lets a CMO build a virtual marketing department to collaborate with too. 

That’s the bigger thought. Here are the highlights:

Ultra-Specialized Teams 

No agency on earth knows your business like those internal marketing departments of yesteryear. But when you cast your net into the broader open talent environment you can find those people. Need a content strategist that gets your vertical and project? They are out there for hire on a project basis. Same with brand strategists and product people. It’s as if you had the best talent from a dozen specialized agencies on your team—the ideal collaborators for every project.

Established Freelancers Speak Truth To Power

Like your former colleagues in the marketing department, freelancers tend to challenge your beliefs. And they’re talented enough to deliver ideas and campaigns that set you apart from your competition. Have you ever wondered if your agency’s account manager is too afraid to lose your business to push back? We’ve seen it firsthand. 

You Get to Pick Your Account Manager—And Everyone Else On The Team

Call that the super team idea, but let’s unpack it. At an agency you talk with the boss at first, then you get the dreaded hand off. Sometimes it’s great. Other times it blows up and that account lead disappoints. With open talent, you pick the lead—and everyone else on the team. That means that instead of a staff writer who doesn’t speak your business’s language, you get someone with a lifetime of voice. Same deal with photographers, filmmakers, and every other creative you need. Open talent is infinitely customizable.    

There’s No Ceiling To How Open Talent Can Help

Have you ever called a former mentor to bounce ideas off? Thinking big means connecting with exactly those types of freelance strategists and consultants to help make executive level initiatives coherent—like redirecting your brand, identifying new markets and target customers, and then building multi-media campaigns. Instead of taking the expensive road and hiring the agency du jour, with open talent collaboration you take a bolder path and build super teams that you oversee and collaborate on so you control the outcomes. 

Here’s how all this might work in practice: Imagine you are in the premium product business, and market changes have revealed an opening in a larger category. It’s an easy transition for your product designers, engineers, and sales team, but first you need to build a strategy that aligns product positioning with brand positioning so that you have a foundation on which you can build your marketing and storytelling.

Back in the day, that work would have happened in house—if you had a large marketing department full of pros—or it would have been outsourced to a slow and expensive agency. Today, everyone you need to build a virtual marketing department can be found in the open talent ecosystem: Here’s a brand positioning specialist associated with the biggest launches in the industry. Need a filmmaker who can authentically capture your world? Check. A writer who can turn your strategy sessions into a working guidebook? Check. A project lead who can herd the photographers, videographers, copywriters, and recruit the fixers and logistics pros for each phase? Check again. Open talent works from the top down or the bottom up.

But more than anything, open talent allows you to collaborate again—and that’s how great work gets done.