Baby Lion Roars Louder and Louder
This year marks the three-year anniversary of Baby Lion Media, the minority-owned production company headquartered in LA. Founded by executive producer, Ramon ‘Ra’ Nuñez, and director Jerry Digby, widely known as ‘Digby’, the company was launched to build a “new era of a production company that does multi-platform, creatively-driven work” and pushes for cultural fluidity in everything they do. A bilingual company with an Argentinian creative technology partner, Ketama Collective, and a majority of diverse talent, Ra says that each Baby Lion project begins with a “holistic cultural lens” that goes beyond simply casting diverse people.
“It’s cultural nuances in the production design and the environments, POVs that reflect diverse communities, the generational differences and similarities.” He continues, “Whether it's sports, pharma, cars… we're trying to be truly different with ingredients that make up a story or brand.”
In 2020, when the pair founded Baby Lion Media, Digby says that, after 20 years each in the business, they recognized how skewed the perspective remained towards the white experience of America. Seeing the need for Black and other minority stories to be crafted and told by voices from those communities - and an industry unwilling to change at an acceptable pace - Digby and Ra set about starting a company with that philosophy at its core.
“We wanted to have a company that had underrepresented artists, and to be able to bring new talent into the business, not just sign established talent,” says Digby. “We have a variety of artists that speak for today and our company represents more of America's demographic, but we’re not creating just minority content. We create content, but we have that lens that we bring to everything we do - through casting, through our thought process, through execution. It’s not just behind the lens or above-the-line positions, we're also bringing up a new generation of underrepresented people on the crew side as well.”
He adds, “We're going to help producers and production managers come up… we consider everything. We don't hire people just for their race, or their skin colour or their disposition - we hire people that can execute at a high level of creativity. We also make sure we take that extra step to hire as broadly as possible and mentor because it's the only way the industry is going to change.”
Through this hiring process, Baby Lion has curated a diverse roster of directors that are working with some of the world’s biggest brands, as well as on some non-commercial projects. After working with Google, director Angel Gracia is currently shooting a feature film with George Lopez, while Rachel Myers is working on a Savion Glover documentary, following the success of her two films premiering at Tribeca this year. In the ad world, however, Rachel just completed a UPS project with The Martin Agency, while Baby Lion’s automotive filmmaker FORMAT67 has been busy shooting for Lamborghini, Formula 1 and Red Bull. In the last year, Digby himself has directed the likes of Jamie Foxx, Rita Ora and Justin Hartley for Reserve Bar - not to mention championing Black adventurers for Walmart’s ‘Black & Unlimited’ campaign.
Launching during a pandemic presented more ways for the young production company to be nimble - something that Baby Lion had an advantage in over larger, less agile companies. Describing it as a “blessing in disguise”, Ra says they took advantage of their lack of red tape and embodied the ‘Baby Lion’ spirit - “the idea of a fearless animal that is born fearless and agile by nature.” Quickly adapting to the remote workflow, they overcame the challenges posed by the pandemic - namely the added costs and process associated with maintaining covid regulations and the wellness of a crew during production - and even capitalised on the growing virtual experience sector that emerged as a result.
Above: Baby Lion Media founders, Ramon ‘Ra’ Nuñez and Jerry Digby
Baby Lion has a creative technology division with several teams that allow them to fabricate and manage full digital experiences for clients, on top of the traditional production company offerings. This was vital during the pandemic, as the team could generate the 3D web and AR experiences that became many brands’ lifeline in a time of social distancing, keeping business flowing for Baby Lion.
Recent success came for Baby Lion’s creative technology partner, Ketama, when they won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions for Creative Data, alongside Stella Artois and GUT Buenos Aires. ‘The Artois Probability’ analysed famous artwork going back 600 years to determine the likelihood that the beer shown in specific paintings could have been an Artois.
Even with restrictions now lifted, Ra says that their many programmers, web developers, animators and more have allowed Baby Lion to reach “a great balance” between its traditional production and experiential outputs. “We haven’t seen the 3D web experiences, the AR, some VR and other virtual touch points fully go away - we've actually seen them complement the world opening up and being in live experiences again,” he says.
“People are very excited about experiencing these things at stadiums, at malls, and on the street. You have a lot more takeaways, a lot more QR codes where people can take a mobile experience with them. We've been able to explode back with the world opening up to physical experiences and brand activations, but at the same time, not fully let go of the virtual way of keeping those things alive.”
Above: 'Father's Day' for Buchanan's from Baby Lion director Esca
As Baby Lion has evolved in the last three years, one of the proudest achievements for Ra and Digby has been the chance to live out their mission of bringing diverse talent to the forefront, executing at the highest level of creativity. Ra adds that he and his co-founder are “cut from that fabric”, and therefore familiar with what it takes to succeed at - and help the next generation of diverse talent achieve - the industry’s elite levels. This is derived from their experiences at some of the world’s most influential advertising agencies and production companies - from Fallon Worldwide, CPB, and The Community for Ra, to MJZ, RSA, and Park Pictures for Digby.
However, this isn’t without its challenges. Ra says, “It's a very difficult road when you have your own platform, your own brand, your own issue to push forward with new voices, new diverse artists, and then say, ‘Trust us, trust these voices, trust this is the right artist for the project, and that we’ll get you there in an amazing way with a new fresh perspective. Fortunately, our agency and brand partners have been listening.”
While creativity holds a high degree of significance for Baby Lion, another focus is something they term ‘positive disruptions’. These are projects that are rooted in philanthropy, awareness or societal and industrial change. Examples of this include campaigns with Google for International Women’s Day and to help support Hispanic small businesses during the pandemic. For the latter, the company’s bilingual approach played a strong advantage, as they had to research and film Hispanic businesses across eight American cities - resulting in “a big lift” in custom that went beyond the normal auspices of a standard advertising campaign for a brand.
Above: The production team for Baby Lion's 'Resident Evil - 72 Hours' activation
Some more recent triumphs include Baby Lion’s experiential campaign for Netflix’s ‘Resident Evil’ series, which has amassed 37 million views, as well as another bilingual campaign, this time for Comcast featuring reggaeton artist Becky G. “We were able to do every spot seamlessly, both in Spanish and English with her,” says Ra. “That was a huge plus for Comcast as they ended up running this even more than the general market campaign because it reached a much broader audience.”
Another ‘positive disruption’ that saw a great reception was ‘The Closer Look’ for the charity United Way - a 3D web experience, in collaboration with VIA Agency, that showed people what poverty looks like in the US, helping the non-profit receive donations during the pandemic. One of their other successes was a One Show award-winning project that was also picked up by Jimmy Fallon; ‘Rescue Matches’ is a Tinder campaign they developed with agency Mischief at No Fixed Address that helped dogs get adopted (and single people get dates).
Emphasising the importance of ‘positive disruption’, Digby states, “A lot of work that we've done is positive for the community at large - with the Tinder job, we even helped several dog's lives. We're not digging ditches, we're not saving lives as doctors, but we love what we do - we're creatives, and we're actually doing impactful things. So we really love to lean into our ‘positive disruptions’ whenever we have a chance.”
Where ‘positive disruption’ isn’t quite taking place, however, is internally in the industry when it comes to diversity. While Digby and Ra pay homage to the companies making strides - namely the minority- or female-owned Prettybird, Eleanor, Park Pictures, and Invisible Content, to name a few. The “bad news”, says Ra, is that there aren’t yet enough opportunities being created by bigger companies.
“It’s important to say that we acknowledge our agency and brand partners who are doing the work and are at the forefront of the change, but we do need more of those partners and allies to join us in making the change… There's still a lot of work to be done and we need more brands to jump in to help.”
At Baby Lion, the team works hard to build a strong platform for the best diverse artists to take off. “We're building a foundation,” says Ra, “a platform and a springboard for these artists to help them build their careers.” When hiring new talent, the Baby Lion team looks for culturally fluid, like-minded and well-rounded people from a variety of backgrounds. Keeping the value of storytelling and the company’s ‘positive disruption’ mission at its core, the company is building a team that is designed for the future of the industry - “storytelling meets culture meets technology”.
However, while technology is a big priority for Baby Lion, he adds, “the heartbeat will always be great stories.” Social media, software and platforms are the new tools of the industry, but at the soul of it all, says Ra, remains culture. “Those who know how to balance all of this will see great results, but people only tend to only talk about technology.”
After three years of technological innovation, pushing boundaries in the virtual experiential space, overcoming the challenges of a pandemic and ‘positively disrupting’ the status quo, in terms of diversity and representation, where does Baby Lion go next? Well, for the remainder of 2023 and beyond, it’s their continued goal to break and grow opportunities for underrepresented artists and other crew members in the industry, whether that be Black animators, Hispanic programmers or LGBTQ+ directors. Baby Lion wants to continue to pioneer the kind of work that will put these diverse artists on the map and they’re very proud of that.
