Meet The Panellists: Fast and Vast: Scaling Content Without Losing the Plot
On Monday 16th June at 14:30pm, production leaders will take to the LBB & Friends Beach stage for a fast-paced panel titled, 'Fast and Vast: Scaling Content Without Losing the Plot.'
In this no-nonsense discussion, three top production leaders will break down the content-at-scale challenge — revealing how they’re building high quality content engines that deliver creative firepower without ever sacrificing storytelling or creativity.
Tará McKerr, Americas reporter at Little Black Book, will sit down with:
- Steffen Gentis, Global Production Director, MCA
- Alissa Hansen, North American CEO, Omnicom Production
- Andrew Swinand, CEO, ITG
Fast and Vast: Scaling Content Without Losing the Plot
Media channels are exploding; so too is the need for more personalised marketing efforts. And brands are feeling the pressure – required to produce unprecedented volumes of content without compromising creative quality.
This panel brings together three industry leaders at the forefront of this challenge to discuss how they are reinventing content production for scale.
Attendees can expect to gain insight into how the industry is balancing big ‘hero’ campaigns with continuous ‘halo’ content – cutting waste and redundancy from the content pipeline, and speeding up execution.
The session promises honest insights into how top industry minds are building high-quality content engines, that never sacrifice storytelling or creativity, no matter how vast or fast production demands get.
Steffen Gentis, Global Production Director, MCA
Steffen Gentis is a creative force with an instinctive ability to move between worlds — equally at ease in London boardrooms, Paris fashion studios, or alongside African kings, Hollywood celebrities, and directors of UNESCO, the FEI, or the IOC. With over 40 years of experience, he brings a proven track record of delivering innovation, production excellence, and growth for top global brands across markets and platforms. His career is driven by deep curiosity, transformation, and collaborative leadership.
Today, Steffen leads the global MCA production team at Reckitt, where he designed a production ecosystem that integrates hi-tech into the content supply chain. His work is central to Reckitt’s Marketing Excellence program — raising creative and production standards while driving agility, efficiency, and scale.
For 17 years, he served as Chief Production Officer at BBDO Group Germany and Managing Director of CraftWork, leading output across eight agencies. Under his leadership, BBDO reached the #1 creative ranking in Germany. He produced 40+ Cannes Lions (including a Grand Prix for Good), and helped win 6 Grand Prix, 100+ Gold, 100+ Silver, and 100+ Bronze awards across The One Show, Clio, LIA, Eurobest, NYF, ADC, Red Dot, and the German Design Prize.
In 2010, he pioneered the CUT!CO₂ carbon calculator, reducing production emissions long before sustainability was a standard.
Steffen has been published in leading trade media and served on top juries including Cannes Lions Film Craft (2016). He’s spoken at SXSW, Cannes Lions, Boards Summit, AICP, APA, GWA, and ADC.
Born in South Africa, raised between Malibu and the African bush, he studied photography and began his career shooting for Vogue and other European magazines in the 1980s. He moved into film with a Martini campaign in Italy and Rammstein’s first video in Berlin, ha also founded the city’s first TV commercial film company in the ’90s. He’s directed/produced 300+ commercials, music videos, and TV shows.
A committed creative community builder, he founded the GWA Forum Film Production, Regielounge, and was the first agency Head of Production in the German Art Directors Club. He also founded the Royal Lesotho Horse Riding Society in Berlin — a meeting point of art, sport, and African heritage.
In 2018, he earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Business (MIT/Columbia), reinforcing his belief that creativity, technology, and culture must evolve in symphony.
Alissa Hansen, North American CEO, Omnicom Production
Alissa Hansen is CEO for North America at Omnicom Production, Omnicom’s global practice area for modern production, content experience transformation, and global delivery. OP was founded last year to connect expertise across the holding company, transform the production service model to meet clients’ soaring content needs, and harness the power of AI.
For 20 years, Alissa has established and grown some of the marketing industry’s most powerful content services. Prior to joining OP, she was the first Chief Production Officer at Critical Mass, the global digital experience agency headquartered in Calgary.She helped found the agency’s end-to-end content studio, and later recognised the need for a new kind of content service—one that could help complex, global brands pivot to creative automation, optimisation at scale, and performance marketing in a streamlined, ultra-efficient way. The result was ArtBot, Omnicom’s intelligent content automation product, which effectively modernises the content optimisation cycle by uniting technology, content, and media.
Alissa’s unique blend of traditional and automated production experience enable her to drive transformational change across the network’s agencies and clients.
Andrew Swinand, CEO, ITG
Andrew Swinand is currently CEO of ITG, the world’s leading, independent AI-enabled agile content company. ITG’s Content Marketing Platform (CMP), Storyteq, is a Gartner Leader in both CMP and Digital Asset Management (DAM). With over 250 global clients and 2,100 employees, ITG is helping brands realise the promise of AI by simplifying the complicated, automating the tedious, and creating the beautiful.
MODERATOR
Tará McKerr, Americas Reporter, Little Black Book
Tará has spent the past six years uncovering the human side of the story. After an early career in law and financial crime at top investment banks, she shifted her focus to journalism – writing green finance and business columns for online and print magazines before joining Little Black Book three years ago.
Now Americas reporter at LBB, Tará is a nerd for strategy and covers creativity, culture, and the people shaping the industry. A lover of in-depth interviews and narrative-led features, she digs into the why behind standout craft and brave ideas.
Outside of journalism, Tará is an avid spoken word poet, regularly performing across Ireland and the UK.
Read the full ‘Better Together’ content programme.
Content Sponsor:
Partners:
72Point. | Adobe | APA - Advertising Producers Association
AudioStack&Claritas | Bauer Media Outdoor | Cannes Lions
Croud | Girl&Bear | GPN - Global Production Network
IAPI - The Institute Of Advertising Practitioners In Ireland
ICA - The Institute of Canadian Agencies
ICCO – International Communications Consultancy Organisation
| KEEP | LIA - London International Awards
| MSQ | Nouri Films | Peach | Porter Novelli | Razorfish
RWS Small World Studio | Shutterstock Studios | thenetworkone | Zulu Alpha Kilo
