What is a CaaS (Creative as a Service) Solution?

At the end of 2021, we launched a creative subscription model, a revamped way of pricing creative with the ultimate aim of helping brands to scale high-quality assets in a cost-efficient manner. 

Fast-forward to the present and we’re seeing a growing number of brands adopting the model to great effect. Health-Ade, for example, just three months into their subscription were able to produce over 80 eye-catching creative assets for a diverse range of digital campaigns spread across multiple platforms and are experiencing the many marketing benefits that come from an always-on creative approach.

However, this move to subscription pricing is just one — albeit important — aspect of how Shuttlerock is combining people, process and technology to form a unified, digital creative solution. 

We call this unified solution: Creative as a Service (CaaS).

Coined by us here at Shuttlerock, we thought it would be useful to define exactly what a CaaS solution actually is and how it works to solve key challenges faced by today’s marketers. 

An update to the creative production process is well overdue

Before we jump in, let’s first set the scene and explain why a new solution to creative production is desperately needed. 

Cast your mind back to 2006. It was Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond, Nelly Furtado was dominating the airwaves and Pluto lost its status as a planet. It was also an especially important year for digital media. Facebook was made available to the world, Google purchased YouTube, and the iPhone was on the cusp of being launched. The digital era was heating up and evolving fast. However, when it came to creative production, many processes were still the same as back in the Mad Men days. 

Then as we moved into the 2010s we saw the smartphone age hitting its strides. Instagram was launched in 2010 and promoted posts were made available in 2013. We also saw key developments such as programmatic begin to explode, becoming the new way of trading media. But what about creative production? **crickets**. 

More recently, we have seen the arrival of TikTok and the huge impact it’s had, boosting the popularity of short-form video. We have also experienced the rise of influencer marketing, connected TV, social commerce, interactive ads and augmented reality. So much new stuff! What about creative production? Ahh… not much to see here. Creative is still priced by the unit, production output vs. time to delivery occurs on a very linear model, and the power of tech hardly comes into play — at least not without compromising hugely on quality.

In other words, digital media has progressed massively over the past two decades. All aspects of marketing have been transformed. One however, has resisted the change: creative.

We think it’s time to do something about it.

Revolutionizing creative production... finally

CaaS is a much needed fresh take on creative production, one that is purpose built for the needs of modern marketers. 

We identified that traditional creative production methods were forcing marketers to make compromises on factors such as quality, speed, scale and cost — ultimately hurting the overall performance of their campaigns. So, we went back to the drawing board and have come up with a new and improved solution that combines people, process and technology in a way that avoids compromise and fulfills modern creative needs requirements. 

To highlight this, let’s walk through three core aspects of CaaS…

1. All-in-one creative technology platform

Marketing tech-stacks have become increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated over the years, with a variety of cloud-based tools ranging from project management, SEO, email, lead generation and many many more. These tools have unlocked significant productivity improvements for marketing teams. 

It’s time for creative technology to join the party. 

ShuttlerockCloud is a first-of-its-kind creative technology platform enabling marketers to say goodbye to long email threads and clunky file sharing and streamline the creative production process all within a centralized location.

2. Subscription pricing

Today’s marketers are needing higher and higher volumes of creative assets spanning across various platforms, targeting different audience segments with personalized and localized variants. They also need the ability to make changes, to edit a line of copy or swap out a product (often without much notice). This is difficult to achieve under traditional production methods that price creative by the unit. Unit-based costing is inefficient and it makes budget blowouts inevitable. 

That’s why CaaS — which draws upon the inherent and easy-to-understand pricing characteristics of SaaS solutions — employs fixed-cost subscription pricing plans that give marketers the freedom to produce all the creative they need without the worry of incremental costs. This provides price-certainty, giving brands a clear picture of their upcoming creative costs, allowing them to plan ahead with confidence.

3. Human creativity, scaled through tech

Scale is hugely important, no doubt about that. But quality of creative is equally crucial, especially when targeting capabilities are becoming less granular. The problem is, you usually have to choose: quality or scale.

Adopting CaaS enables you to have both. 

With CaaS, huge importance is placed on human creativity, we don’t seek to replace it through automation or templates. When you work with Shuttlerock, you’re working with an in-house team of experts: motion designers, art directors, animators, sound engineers and solutions managers. These people ensure that quality creative is delivered, consistently. To scale this, we also use a unique, streamlined production process that integrates technology at different stages, enabling greater quantities of creative to be produced within short turnaround times.

Learn more about CaaS

Now you have a good idea of what a CaaS solution is and some of the key benefits that it offers over traditional creative production methods. If you’d like to explore more features of CaaS, you can book a free demo with one of our team or get in touch with any questions that you may have.