"Should we hire an agency or just find a freelancer?"

I hear this talking to a lot of CMOs. It's the right instinct. But it's actually the wrong question.

The right question is: what kind of content are you trying to make, and what does it need to accomplish?

Answer that first and the vendor decision gets a lot simpler after.

Here's the framework I use and an honest look at what each option actually costs you, including the part most agencies won't tell you about.

Not all content is created equal

Before you pick a vendor, you need to know what tier of work you're dealing with.

Cella and Amnet, two of the leading in-house agency consultancies, have both written about a three-tier content model that most marketing organizations use to categorize their production output. If you're spending $200,000 or more annually on video and photo production, this applies to you.

Tier 1: Strategic. High-stakes, brand-defining content. A hero brand film. A flagship product launch video. A campaign you're running nationally. This is where effectiveness matters more than efficiency. If this content fails, the brand pays for it. This is not the place to cut costs.

Tier 2: Adaptive. Content built from an established brief or Tier 1 concept. Seasonal campaigns. Product demos. Case study videos. Regional cuts. You need it to look premium, but you're executing within a framework that already exists.

Tier 3: Tactical. High-volume, short shelf life. Social posts. Cutdowns. Banner resizes. Internal comms. The primary metric here is cost-per-unit, not creative breakthrough.

The most expensive mistake I see brands make: paying Tier 1 prices for Tier 3 work. Agency hourly rates applied to social resizes. That budget should be almost nothing. You're burning money on overhead that the work doesn't require.

The second most expensive mistake: putting Tier 1 work in front of Tier 3 resources. Overworked internal coordinators trying to produce a hero brand film. The brand pays for it in quality.

Know the tier. Then pick the vendor.

The three options

A production agency manages the full process of creating video and photo content. Planning, crew, equipment, locations, talent, shooting, editing, and delivery. We don't develop brand strategy or ad campaigns from scratch. We execute at a high level against a brief you bring us.

A creative agency focuses on strategy, brand positioning, and campaign concepts. They figure out the "what" and the "why." Many creative agencies outsource the actual production to a production company or hire freelancers to execute the work they've concepted.

A freelancer is typically an individual camera operator, editor, or videographer. Their own gear, basic editing, usually working alone or with 1 assistant. Some are genuinely excellent. Most have a hard ceiling on scope.

Each serves a different purpose. The mistake is picking the wrong one for the tier.

When a production agency makes sense

A production agency is the right call for Tier 1 and Tier 2 work. When you have a brief and need professional execution.

Specifically: multiple shoot days, locations, or markets. Coordinating crew, travel, equipment, and logistics across complex setups is what production agencies are built for. A freelancer doing this solo runs into a wall fast.

It also matters when brand consistency is non-negotiable. If you're producing content across regions, platforms, or campaigns, you need a team that holds a consistent visual identity. Hard to do with a rotating roster of individuals.

And it matters when budget stewardship matters. A good production agency maximizes shoot days, batches content intelligently, and gives you transparent line-item budgets. If you're spending $20,000 or more on a project, this protects you.

The 5th project is smoother than the 1st. The institutional knowledge compounds. That's the long-term case for a production agency. Not just execution, but a partner who learns your brand.

When a creative agency makes more sense

A creative agency is the right call when you don't have a brief yet.

If you're not sure what to make, what to say, or who to say it to, you need strategic thinking before you need production. That's what creative agencies do. They figure out the "what" and "why" before anyone picks up a camera.

They're also the right call when the video is one piece of a larger campaign. Brand identity, media planning, digital strategy, campaign architecture. A creative agency can manage the full picture. If you need all of that, and not just a great-looking video, start there.

One thing worth knowing: the production portion of a creative agency's scope is often outsourced to a production company or a team of freelancers. Which means you may be paying the agency's margin on top of the production company's margin. It's worth asking how the production actually gets executed and where that money goes.

More on that below.

When a freelancer is the right call

A freelancer makes sense for Tier 3 work. When the scope is small, the stakes are moderate, and speed or budget is the constraint.

A single-camera interview. A product unboxing. A quick social video. If the project is straightforward and you've got $2,000 to $3,000 to spend, a skilled freelancer with their own gear can produce solid content.

Freelancers are also useful for testing a concept. Before you invest $25,000 in a full production, you can pressure-test the idea at a lower budget. If it works, scale up. If it doesn't, you learned something for a fraction of the cost.

The real risk with freelancers is capacity and consistency. One person can't direct, operate camera, manage audio, and produce simultaneously. If your needs grow, they often can't grow with you. And if you're using different freelancers across different projects, maintaining a consistent visual identity becomes a real problem fast.

The thing most agencies won't tell you about

Some creative agencies own production companies. No employees. Just a legal entity set up to take a second cut.

Here's how the math can work:

• The agency takes a 15 to 25% markup on production

• The agency's "production company" (same owners, no staff) takes another 15 to 20%

• They then hire an actual production company, who takes their own margin

• The client's working budget is cut by nearly half before a single frame is shot

Industry research on production decoupling has found that agency fees can hide markups on production vendors exceeding 20 to 50% of the total budget. On a $500,000 production, that's potentially $250,000 in fees and administration. Not the work itself.

Most VPs of marketing don't know to ask about this. Most agencies aren't going to volunteer it.

The question to ask: what does the agency provide, and what does the agency's production company provide? What value does each layer add? They should be able to answer that clearly. If they can't, that's your answer.

This is also why decoupling has become standard practice at larger brands. Contracting directly with a production company instead of routing through an agency middleman. It introduces line-item transparency. You see exactly where the money goes.

What about building in-house?

It's a legitimate option. A lot of brands go this direction, and some do it well.

The math case is real: internal teams can deliver assets 25 to 44% cheaper than external agencies for comparable scope, primarily because you've eliminated the agency margin and overhead. If you're running high-volume content continuously, social, cutdowns, internal comms, eCommerce, an in-house team can make serious financial sense.

But there's a threshold. Industry benchmarks put the ROI crossover at roughly $50,000 per month in production spend. Around $600,000 annually. Below that, the fixed costs tend to eat the savings before you see them. A fully loaded videographer salary, benefits included, runs $100,000 to $110,000 before you've bought a single piece of gear.

The other thing I've seen repeatedly: brands start this process with good intentions, and then reality sets in. Turnover in creative roles is high. Top talent wants variety, and working the same brand every day gets old fast. Quality control becomes a problem nobody anticipated. The brief that worked in month 3 doesn't work in month 14 because half the team has changed. A lot of the brands I've talked to who went that direction eventually came back to an outside production partner, often after spending more than they would have by outsourcing it from the start.

In-house works. But it works when the volume justifies the fixed cost, when there's real leadership in place to manage a creative culture, and when the organization is honest about what it's signing up for.

If you're at the scale where in-house genuinely makes sense, that decision deserves its own analysis. The math, the hiring, the hidden costs, the things that go wrong. We'll cover it in a dedicated post.

How to decide

Start with the tier. Then pick the partner.

What we do at Chalant

We're a production agency. We live in Tier 1 and Tier 2. Brand campaigns, multi-day shoots, content that needs to look like it had a real team behind it.

We work directly with brands who have a clear brief. We work alongside creative agencies who need a production partner they can trust. And we bring in freelance specialists when the project calls for it. A drone op, a food stylist, a motion graphics editor.

If you're figuring out which option makes sense for your next project, we're happy to help you think it through. Even if the answer isn't us.

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McClain McKinney is the founder of Chalant, a production agency specializing in commercial video and photo production for brands nationwide.

Sources:

• Tiered content model: Cella Inc. and We Are Amnet

• Agency markup / decoupling research: MikeTeevee and MXPIQ