Creative services

Creative services are a subsector of the creative industries, a part of the economy that creates wealth by offering creativity for hire to other businesses. Creative Services also means a department within a company that does creative work such as writing, designing, and production. It is often a sub-department of the Marketing organization. Examples include:

• Design and production agencies
  • Studios
  • Ideation consultancies
  • Software development firms
• Marketing firms
  • Public relations agencies
  • Advertising agencies
  • Promotional agencies
  • Branding agencies
• Entertainment Industries
  • Talent agency
  • Guilds

Like lawyers and accountants in the professional services sector, creative services firms sell a specialised technical service to satisfy the needs of companies that do not have this expertise themselves.

Creative services firms provide creative services to other companies or to the public: they 'do creativity' to order.

Typical business models revolve around selling the time of skilled professionals, either on a project-by-project basis or through a service level agreement, and providing services on an ongoing basis for a fixed monthly fee. In this sense they share much in common with professional services firms but there are also key differences:

• Creative services firms tend not to be bound by requirements for professional accreditation
• There are low barriers to entry for new startup businesses