Inside Jen Harrington’s “Eat In or Dine Out”: A New Menu for Modern Marketing

How HATCH’s CEO is helping CMOs navigate talent gaps, cultural complexity, and the shift toward blended teams. “Eat In or Dine Out” Reframes the Agency–Client Relationship.

When Jennifer Harrington launched HATCH, she wasn’t trying to build just another agency — she wanted to build a new model of creative collaboration. One that gives marketers a flexible menu of talent, ideas, and cultural intelligence they can scale as needs evolve.

Now, she’s taking that mission into the spotlight — or rather, into the kitchen — with Eat In or Dine Out, a new YouTube series designed for CMOs and senior marketers. Each episode serves up candid conversations with marketing leaders who wrestle daily with familiar questions: Do we build internally, or do we partner externally? What work belongs inside… and what’s better sourced outside?

“At mealtime, we all face a choice — eat in or dine out,” says Harrington. “Marketers are facing that same decision, but the answer isn’t as simple as ordering a pizza.”

The metaphor resonates because the stakes are real. As Jennifer notes, CMOs are juggling capacity and competency challenges in an environment where the fundamentals of brand building remain essential—but the tools, timelines, and talent sources are shifting rapidly. The rise of AI, platform complexity, and always-on content demands have collided with new freelance ecosystems and hybrid internal teams. The result? A marketing world where the “lines” between internal and external partners have blurred, if not disappeared entirely.

In the debut episode, Kathy Klingler (pictured at the top of this article), a veteran CMO who’s led marketing at Santander Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Rapid7, joins Harrington over a slice from Union Park Pizza to share hard-earned insights about today’s marketing mix.

Klingler doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges: “There are terrific internal teams, but there are often gaps in talent,” she notes. “The question becomes — do you fill those gaps with full-time hires or with an agency partner?”

Across the series, Harrington explores that gray zone between in-housing and outsourcing — what she calls “the flexible middle ground where modern marketing actually happens.” New episodes feature leaders from Babson College and the Peabody Essex Museum, reflecting the breadth of industries grappling with the same dilemma.

The launch of Eat In or Dine Out follows another HATCH innovation — the Cultural Advisory Council, a diverse group of cultural thinkers who help connect brand work to real-world trends and community truths. It’s part of Harrington’s larger goal: to design a new agency model that thrives in what she calls an “entropic” advertising world — one defined by constant flux and creative reinvention.

“There’s no one model anymore,” says Harrington. “The most successful agencies are those that can reconfigure quickly and work seamlessly with client teams. The future of creativity is collaborative.”

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 In our conversation, we discuss the following:

• Jennifer, what inspired Eat In or Dine Out? Why frame the in-house vs. agency conversation through something as universal—and inviting—as food?

• You launched this at a moment when marketers are redefining what “in-house” even means. Why now, and what were you hearing from CMOs that made this the right moment to serve this series?

• What’s it like hosting these conversations in such a relaxed, relatable setting—literally your kitchen? Does it change the way people open up about business challenges?

• You’ve said it’s “not as easy as ordering a pizza.” What makes this “In-House vs. Outsource Talent” dilemma so complex today for CMOs?

• In your conversations, what patterns have emerged about how the best marketing organizations are blending internal and external talent?

• Many of your guests talk about nimbleness and adaptability. What are agencies like HATCH doing differently to stay flexible without diluting creative excellence?

• You recently launched the HATCH Cultural Advisory Council. What was the vision behind this? How does it feed back into your client work and creative output?

• How do you ensure that the Council’s insights about culture translate into work that actually drives growth for clients—not just headlines?

• Does this new model shift how agencies and brands co-create ideas, especially in what you’ve called an “entropic advertising world”?

• What’s your take on how marketing leaders should be sourcing and sustaining talent in 2025 and beyond?

• What do you wish more CMOs understood about working with agencies—or about letting agencies push them creatively?

• After filming your first few episodes, what surprised you most about how CMOs think today?

• What’s next for Eat In or Dine Out—and how do you see it evolving as the lines between “inside” and “outside” continue to blur?

• If every marketer listening could take away one truth about building better partnerships, what would it be?

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Finding the Right Partnership Mix

As marketers confront shrinking budgets, shifting consumer expectations, and the rise of AI-driven production, Harrington’s message is refreshingly human: The best marketing isn’t built in a vacuum — or confined to a single kitchen. It’s crafted in conversation, around a shared table, with the right mix of ingredients and talent to meet the moment.

That “right mix” of determining what should be “in-house” and what should be “outsourced” depends heavily on the organizational lifecycle, budget, and required work velocity. Increasingly, agency relationships are project-based rather than anchored in long-standing AOR models. Independent agencies have surged in response, offering senior-level expertise with the speed and adaptability that modern CMOs need.

Additionally, remote work has changed expectations. Rather than viewing it as a disruptor, Jennifer believes people have adopted it naturally, and marketing structures are simply catching up. Yet this shift raises new questions about how brands maintain creative excellence when consumers themselves now control large parts of the narrative. She emphasized the importance of clear processes, inclusive review structures, and defined roles—areas where lapses have caused even iconic brands to stumble.

Ultimately, Jennifer Harrington argues that today’s most successful client-agency relationships are blended partnerships—where external teams feel connected to internal operations, and creativity benefits from a shared sense of purpose. Her Eat In or Dine Out series continues that exploration, and she’s planning to extend it through C-suite roundtable dinners where marketing leaders can debate these issues together, off-camera and candidly.

It’s all part of a larger movement: a shift toward modular, flexible, culturally aware marketing models that reflect how work truly gets done today.

HATCH is a Boston-based, independent, women-owned agency that serves growth-hungry brands with a customizable combination of creative capabilities and expertly sourced resources. Eat In or Dine Out is a video extension of how the agency helps marketing leaders with on-demand access to both fresh creative ideas and ready-to-roll talent.