Benefits of Bringing Creative Talent Into Contingent Workforce Programs
10 MIN
At MBO Partners, we’ve seen marketing and creative teams evolve faster than almost any other function. Many organizations once relied on in-house staff, long-standing agencies, and occasional freelancers.
Today, companies tap into global networks of independent creatives which offers deeper expertise and greater scale, while introducing new considerations around cost, compliance, and quality.
This guide shows how a structured contingent workforce program can help you secure top talent while keeping your business protected.
GATE
The Growing Need for Top Marketing and Creative Talent
Despite plenty of speculation, marketing budgets held steady in 2025 at 7.7% of company revenue, per Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey. Still, CMOs are under growing pressure to do more with the same resources, navigating economic uncertainty while meeting rising expectations.
The game has changed. Campaign cycles that once followed predictable seasonal patterns now evolve in real time—driven by shifting trends, data insights, and audience expectations. Marketing leaders are pushing for faster turnarounds and more engaging creative than ever before.
Meanwhile, AI has become one of the most powerful forces in marketing today, compressing production timelines and pushing creative teams to evolve at unprecedented speed. According to MBO’s 2025 report on AI in the workforce, 74% of independent professionals are already using AI, with 61% reporting significant time savings and productivity gains.
But AI can’t replace the human creativity and strategic thinking that turn good campaigns into great stories.
That’s why demand for skilled creative talent remains as high as ever. Organizations are increasingly turning to flexible, project-based models to access this expertise. A Fiverr report notes that more than half of marketing leaders now rely on freelancers or independent contractors more than they did before—a clear sign that the nature of work is experiencing a fundamental shift.
This trend reflects the broader growth of the independent workforce. According to MBO’s 2025 State of Independence report—the longest-running and most comprehensive study of independent work in the U.S.—72.9 million Americans now work independently. Together, they form a deep, motivated pool of creative professionals who bring the specialized, strategic thinking that AI alone can’t replace.
Key Stat: In 2025, 72.9 million Americans are working independently—nearly double the number from 2020, according to MBO’s 2025 State of Independence report.
How Independent Talent Delivers Results for Marketing and Creative Departments
Creative agility helps teams move quickly and turn ideas into campaigns that get results. Independent marketing and creative professionals bring the latest skills and proven expertise when it counts most. Here’s how partnering with them can benefit your organization:
Testing Bold Ideas Quickly
Creative teams can move ideas into market faster by testing new concepts—such as A/B variations of email or social content—without getting slowed down by long approval cycles. Independent talent handles execution and uses real-time performance data to fine-tune their strategy. The result is shorter campaign cycles and clear improvements in performance.
Accelerating Product Launches
When launching new products, timing is everything. Contingent workforce programs enable teams to collaborate seamlessly across time zones—a designer in Los Angeles and a creative strategist in Miami can work together to produce marketing and creative assets overnight. This model accelerates project execution while maintaining quality and consistency.
Developing Cross-Channel Campaigns
Independent professionals excel at creating cohesive stories across platforms—from TikTok videos to email campaigns. They adapt quickly to algorithm changes and emerging trends while keeping your brand voice consistent, ensuring every touchpoint feels seamless and builds lasting loyalty.
Turning Market Shifts Into Opportunities
With economic pressures mounting and AI reshaping how work gets done, the ability to pivot quickly has never been more critical. Creative teams need to deliver tailored content, fresh visuals, and smart analytics on demand—while structured programs keep projects aligned and on track.
Key Stats: In 2025, 74% of independent professionals reported using AI in their work, outpacing the 69% of traditional workers who used it, according to MBO’s 2025 State of Independence report. These independent professionals primarily use AI for three purposes:
- 39% for research and content generation to quickly develop article outlines and drafts
- 32% for creative and design work to produce original images, graphics, and presentations
- 27% as a marketing partner to create engaging content and streamline social media efforts
The Advantage of Having a Structured Contingent Workforce Program
It’s no surprise that marketing and creative teams, under intense pressure to deliver, often turn to informal sourcing. When a designer or video editor is needed quickly, reaching out to a trusted freelancer can feel like the fastest path forward.
Over time, though, this informal approach introduces hidden costs—compliance risks, budget overruns, and uneven brand quality. For many organizations, it’s reached a breaking point. Skipping essential talent acquisition processes creates issues that compound, including:
Compliance and Classification Issues
Independent creatives often work much like employees—joining meetings, using company technology, and reporting to internal managers. When they aren’t classified correctly, organizations risk violating key regulations, turning small oversights into significant liabilities. For example:
- DOL Regulations: U.S. Department of Labor rules on worker classification can trigger fines and back pay if independent contractors function as employees without proper safeguards.
- IRS Guidelines: The IRS scrutinizes control over work, tools, and schedules—leading to reclassification, tax penalties, and owed benefits.
- U.S. State Laws (e.g., California AB5): Strict “ABC tests” presume workers are employees, placing a high burden of proof on companies to justify independent contractor status.
- EU Directives: For companies operating within the European Union, strict self-employment regulations require clear proof of worker independence, and violations can result in significant fines across member states.
- UK’s IR35: This legislation, enacted in 2018, targets “disguised employment” through intermediaries and imposes tax liabilities on both contractors and hiring organizations when engagements fall “inside IR35.”
Brand and IP Protection
Creative work shapes how audiences perceive a brand. Without standardized contracts, ownership and usage rights often remain unclear. Missing NDAs or vague IP clauses can create disputes later, especially when content gets repurposed across campaigns.
Budgeting Issues
Informal sourcing often leads to inconsistent rates. One team might pay $5,000 for a video edit while another pays $3,500 for similar work—especially under deadline pressure. And when expenses get tracked differently across departments, it’s difficult to see the real total cost of your creative work. This lack of visibility means you can’t manage what you can’t see, making strategic resource allocation near impossible.
Lack of Visibility
Talent visibility poses another big challenge. Without a centralized system, teams struggle to answer even the basics:
- Who’s performing the work?
- What are the contract terms?
- How much are we spending on a monthly or annual basis?
- Are deliverables consistent with brand and compliance standards?
This lack of oversight often leads to duplicated efforts, budget surprises, and inconsistent quality across campaigns.
Regulatory Scrutiny
Governments around the world are paying closer attention to worker classification than ever before. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor recovered $274 million in back wages related to misclassification, highlighting the growing scrutiny in this area. Across Europe, regulations such as IR35 continue to tighten controls on independent contracting. In this regulatory environment, informal or ad hoc sourcing models are becoming increasingly unsustainable.
Key Stat: 65% of large enterprises now use MSPs for contingent workforce management, up from 45% in 2022—driven by creative/IT categories (Staffing Industry Analysts, 2024).
Building a Better Model: Bringing Creative Talent Into Contingent Workforce Programs
Today, many companies manage their contingent creative workforce through multiple specialized partners—MSPs handling operations, VMS platforms providing technology, and various point solutions filling the gaps. This fragmented setup adds unnecessary complexity and friction.
More organizations are simplifying their talent strategies with all-in-one providers like MBO Partners, which integrate sourcing, onboarding, compliance, and payments into a single, seamless platform. This approach enables teams to connect with vetted independent professionals more quickly and confidently, while incorporating safeguards for cost management and compliance. These solutions typically include:
Compliance and Risk Management
Every engagement is reviewed and documented from the outset. Standard contracts clearly define deliverables, IP ownership, and usage rights, which keeps teams audit-ready at all times. Consistent oversight maintains compliance and minimizes risk across all projects.
Cost Governance
Central oversight gives finance and procurement a real-time look at all creative spending. With clear rates, early budget alerts, and easy reallocation, teams can stay on top of costs and avoid surprises. It’s a smarter way to manage spend and get more value from creative work.
Speed in Acquisition
Pre-vetted talent pools make it easy to fill creative roles in days instead of weeks. Teams can quickly bring the right people on board, keeping projects moving and deadlines on track. Beyond speed, a structured program builds a trusted community of creatives who understand your brand—something you can’t replicate easily with one-off engagements.
Work Quality and Consistency
Structured contingent workforce programs help build trusted networks of writers, designers, and strategists who already know your brand. Consistent onboarding and performance tracking keep quality high from one project to the next. The result is reliable creative work you can count on every time.
Organization-Wide Visibility
A shared system gives marketing, HR, finance, procurement, and legal teams access to the same real-time information. This visibility breaks down silos, improves collaboration, and—most importantly—removes the heavy administrative burden, including:
- Administrative tasks: Contract negotiation, invoicing, payment chasing, and tax form management.
- Compliance issue: Making classification decisions, ensuring proper documentation, and managing audit trails.
- Vendor management: Sourcing talent, conducting background checks, and validating insurance.
- Onboarding/offboarding: Granting system access, managing asset retrieval, and ensuring clean project handoffs.
When everyone’s working from the same data, decisions get faster—and much easier.
Key Stats:
- Contingent workforce programs achieve 20-30% cost savings through better spend visibility and supplier consolidation (Everest Group CWM/MSP PEAK Matrix 2024).
- Organizations with advanced VMS/CWM see 25% improved compliance rates and real-time spend tracking (Everest Group VMS PEAK Matrix 2024).
- MSP programs report 28% higher external workforce visibility across categories like IT/creative (Everest Group Contingent Workforce Management report 2024).
6 Steps for Creating a Successful Contingent Workforce Program
For organizations ready to shift from informal practices to a more intentional contingent workforce program, success begins with a clear roadmap. From our experience, these are the key steps to take before getting started.
Assess where you are today. Start by auditing your creative spend, talent sources, and contracts. This quickly pinpoints your biggest pain points—whether that be cost overruns, compliance risks, or hiring delays.
Build a cross-functional team. Bring together your marketing, HR, legal, finance, and procurement teams from the start. Aligning everyone early establishes clear goals, defines shared ownership, and ensures smoother collaboration and stronger results.
Define what success looks like. Choose your top priorities—savings, compliance, speed, or quality. Then set simple, measurable metrics to track progress and spot wins along the way.
Start small, scale smart. Start with a focused pilot in one business unit or project type. Strong early results make it easier to scale the program with confidence.
Communicate early and often. Help hiring managers and creatives get the “why” and “how” of the changes. Clear guidance ensures smooth buy-in and keeps everyone engaged long-term.
Choose the right partner. Partner with a talent solutions expert like MBO who understands the needs and motivations of independent professionals and brings experience in talent sourcing and placement. They bring both industry expertise and proven technology to ensure seamless execution.
Key Stat: According to Fiverr’s 2025 Freelance Economy Impact Report, 63% of corporate marketing leaders plan to increase use of freelance or project-based creative talent in 2026.
Contingent Workforce Program Success: Case Study of a Fortune 100 Client
MBO Partners brings nearly 30 years of experience helping enterprises safely, efficiently, and strategically engage independent talent at scale. We’ve partnered with organizations of all sizes—from Big 4 firms and Fortune 100 companies to government agencies—to build, manage, and grow marketing and creative teams within structured, compliant programs. Each year, we deliver flexible talent solutions and manage billions in independent talent spend across creative, technology, and professional categories.
Case in point: a Fortune 100 consumer brand partnered with MBO Partners to reimagine its creative operations, gain better control of spending, and deliver stronger results.
Challenge
The organization relied on over 400 independent creatives across multiple divisions. Costs were rising substantially for a variety of reasons:
- Teams paid different rates for similar tasks.
- Duplicate efforts and inconsistent IP ownership created major inefficiencies, especially during a high-profile rebrand.
- There was zero visibility into total spend or talent performance.
Solution
By partnering with MBO Partners, the client moved from ad hoc freelancer sourcing to a unified contingent workforce program that aligned with corporate compliance and brand goals. Over nine months, the company centralized all creative sourcing within this program, building a vetted creative community managed through a single VMS.
Results
In its first year, the program delivered measurable improvements in cost, compliance, and candidate quality:
- 23% reduction in creative spend
- 98% compliance pass rate
- 40% increase in creative output
- Time-to-engage cut from 23 to 12 days
Predicting the Future of Contingent Workforce Management
The success of this Fortune 100 client underscores a broader shift across the industry. As organizations increasingly recognize the value of structured contingent workforce programs, they’re moving away from ad hoc sourcing toward strategies that balance speed, compliance, and brand alignment.
This evolution mirrors what happened in IT, engineering, and professional services years ago. Those teams once managed talent informally—until structured contingent workforce programs delivered the measurable results they needed. Creative work has reached that same pivotal point.
Independent marketing and creative professionals are at the heart of the customer experience. Organizations that manage this talent effectively gain a clear advantage in brand differentiation and market growth.
Looking ahead, companies that invest in scalable, strategic engagement models for marketing and creative talent will unlock greater innovation and flexibility. As demand for skilled independent professionals continues to grow, the ability to build and sustain trusted programs will define the future of the workforce.
Key Stat: 70% of enterprises with over $1B in revenue plan formal contingent workforce programs by 2026, up from 42% in 2023, citing creative talent as the top category (Ardent Partners, 2025 CW Survey).
Summary
In today’s always-on world, independent marketing and creative talent drives brand differentiation and authentic customer connections. Modern contingent workforce programs turn this talent from a potential risk into a strategic advantage—delivering the speed, scale, and flexibility today’s brands demand.
Structured contingent workforce programs help today’s organizations find and attract the right marketing and creative talent while protecting their future.
Key benefits include:
- Reliable access to top talent
- Smarter financial control
- Stronger brand protection
- Faster speed to market
At MBO Partners, we help enterprises tap into and manage independent creative talent with both clarity and confidence. For more information, visit mbopartners.com/enterprises.
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