Gary Szabo Shares Smoke & Mirrors’ Evolution and Continued Focus on Creative Excellence

The past twelve months have brought a certain amount of change to Tag. Gary Szabo, chief creative officer for Tag, says it’s been “quite a year”, adding that “throughout the changes, we have always tried to keep the focus on what we all love and that’s the creative output.”

The Smoke & Mirrors team within Tag, experts in craft and post-production, has been busy with creative work, new hires, and an expansion outside of London. “We’ve been doing some stunning CGI work for Rolls Royce, innovative and cool work on M&Ms social campaigns and worked on the VFX, edit and grade for the powerful creative for the Red Cross’s ‘#Help2Heal’ campaign,” Gary adds.

“In terms of hires we have been active behind the scenes, hiring talent in London and Amsterdam, and aligning with The Gate Films in Manchester as we expanded outside of London into another great creative city.”

Gary sees Dentsu’s acquisition of Tag as a great opportunity for the company, and the benefits are already starting to proliferate. The Tag team is connecting with even more creatives around the globe and having creative conversations with increasingly bigger ambitions. “The fact that this is an acquisition with long term plans primarily means we can properly plan for the future. Being much more involved in the creative origination process has been really educational for our creative teams – to see first-hand the immense effort and talent needed to get a client to buy into your creative idea has helped us to empathetically connect with creatives around the industry. Now we can also feed our ideas into that process which is genuinely exciting.”

As for Smoke & Mirrors, “It will continue to stand for independent, creative thought and be a core part of what Tag has to offer to clients,” Gary says. Not only is it going to continue doing what it does best, it’s also in the process of growing and expanding its presence. Gary is excited to share that Smoke & Mirrors Manchester is joining the fold. “We’re connecting the Manchester studios to our global network (London, Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Chennai) and also investing in local talent and really beefing up the Manchester post production offering. Being able to add things like colour grading and CGI to the party is a fantastic opportunity.”

Creativity has been a driving force from the very start, and the team is working hard to evolve what this driving principle will continue to mean tomorrow. “As we all know, it used to be an almost linear hand off to post-production. Then post houses evolved to be part of a director’s vision but now we are taking that even further by helping shape original creative. We just had a situation where we were part of the agency presentation to a client. Four ideas and we had direct input in all four. Plus, the one we wanted to make was the one that got chosen – so a double result!” Gary shares. 

“Next on the horizon for Tag and the Smoke & Mirrors team is futureproofing our capabilities and ensuring that changes, like the expansion, are implemented successfully” Gary says. “It’s been a challenging year, but we need to recruit to cope with everything we have coming through the doors. At some point soon we will take a breather and look at next year. It will be about growth, but we need to make sure we have resources in the right areas – talent diversity as well as geography.”