Producing Tomorrow's Producers: Anna Murray and Emma Davenport on Encouraging Experimentation

Anna Murray is chief production officer at Mother London, working across all the agency’s integrated projects delivering multi-channel campaigns. She is incredibly passionate about the craft and quality of the creative work. During her 13 years at the agency, she has spearheaded production of some of Mother’s most famous and awarded work.

Emma Davenport is Mother’s chief production officer; she has been a part of the Mother family for the last 14 years and has worked across almost every client in Mother in some capacity over that time.

She was Mother’s original production director and spent seven years leading IKEA and their integrated productions, as the driving production force behind ‘The Wonderful Everyday’ as it went from strength to strength. Emma has also been integral to Downstairs at Mother, Mother’s event space, which we open to the creative community to use as a platform to inspire and inform.

LBB> What was the biggest lesson you learned when you were starting out in production - and why has that stayed with you?

Anna and Emma> There is a way to bring (almost) every creative idea to life, but you don’t need to have all of the answers immediately at your fingertips. One of the most exciting things about advertising is the collective drive to try something that will engage an audience in a way that they haven't seen before - but you only get to do this with a culture that encourages experimentation, continually asking ‘what if?’.

It would be unrealistic to expect producers to be an expert in everything, so keep growing your network, try to meet with as many - and as varied - production partners as you can, this will help you to access the right people to ask advice from when those head scratcher projects come along, which they do… regularly.

Alongside this, be nice. Treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. Relationships and trust are everything. 

LBB> What advice would you give to any aspiring producers or content creators hoping to make the jump into production?

Anna and Emma> Have a passion for the creative industries and immerse yourself in all things entertainment, art and technology.

Advertising is a competitive market and there is no one route into working with an agency, what we look for is energy, passion, a willingness to learn and an appreciation for the power that ideas can have.

LBB> There are young people getting into production who maybe don’t see the line between professional production and the creator economy, and that may well also be the shape of things to come. What are your thoughts about that? Is there a tension between more formalised production and the ‘creator economy’ or do the two feed into each other?

Anna and Emma> The lines are becoming ever more blurred for sure.

We are seeing projects call for increasingly varied outputs and as such, approaches to ‘making’. In some spaces the originators of the idea are no longer just creatives, they are the producers, and they could well be the talent.

There is always a space for different approaches, the sweet spot lies in knowing when to apply a formalised or fluid approach to a production being clear on the path you are taking and bringing the team and clients along with you. Then ensuring in all of this that there is a brand wrapper that ties up everything so we fulfil everything expected of us as agencies in a branded space. 

LBB> If you compare your role to the role of the producers when you first joined the industry, what do you think are the most striking or interesting changes (and what surprising things have stayed the same?)

Anna and Emma> When we started producing you picked a lane and you stayed in it. TV and stills shoots were the norm and usually run separately by different producers. You most likely chose your lane based on your passion; be it film or photography. Or were steered in a very one dimensional way. The most striking difference in the last five to ten years is the proliferation of media. The movement away from a pure emphasis on TV and stills. 

Now, we are rarely required to make campaigns with a purely traditional media output, which has meant that producers who have entered the industry in recent times haven’t picked a lane. Or haven’t had to pick a lane. They are by nature increasingly more multi-disciplined and can turn their hand to all shapes of work and mediums - their role is to help bring the idea to life. 

LBB> When it comes to educating producers how does your agency like to approach this? (I know we’re always hearing about how much easier it is to educate or train oneself on tech etc, but what areas do you think producers can benefit from more directed or structured training?)

Anna and Emma> Experience is everything - there is no substitute for having done something similar before, or working side-by-side with someone who has. So we encourage our producers to lap up the skills and experience around them. 

We haven’t found better training than in real life, on a real job.

Pairing up production assistants with a mix of producers that they can learn from whilst getting stuck into the task is (and always has been) invaluable.

We tend to move people around so that they follow different producers and experience different styles and productions.

But we will also apply this thinking with more experienced producers who want to learn to produce for a wider variety of media, we try to find multifaceted productions and partner up producers so that they can learn from each other live in production, with the safety net of each other's expertise.

LBB> When it comes to broadening access to production and improving diversity and inclusion what are your team doing to address this?

Anna and Emma> As an agency we have clear principles on diversity and inclusion that we weave through everything we do. Our approach in production is to embed DE&I thinking and considerations within our creative process. From representation within our agency, to the work we produce and who we work with. 

As an example, we have an internal online platform called Curated, that is run and managed by a team of producers showcasing and highlighting diverse talent. It’s a searchable database that creatives and producers use when developing their long (and short) lists for directors and photographers.

We purposefully don’t use a wild card approach to treatments, as a personal agency choice. Rather, we approach our short listing very consciously to ensure we have a broad approach to talent and Curated has been key to us in this. 

LBB> It seems that there’s an emphasis on speed and volume when it comes to content - but to where is the space for up and coming producers to learn about (and learn to appreciate) craft?

Anna and Emma> Where there is an opportunity to create something new or bring an idea to life, we believe there is always craft.

It might just have a different framing and show up in a different way. As there are multiple different interpretations of ‘content’ there must surely be multiple and different ‘craft’ approaches to it. Part of the creative and production challenge, especially when speed and volume are at play, is to find the craft. Maybe we need to adjust our perception of what the definition of ‘craft’ really means within a space of evolving deliverables, media, budgets and timings. 

LBB> On the other side of the equation, what’s the key to retaining expertise and helping people who have been working in production for decades to develop new skills?

Anna and Emma> The skills that experienced producers have are so valuable and very easily transferable to the new asks of the ever evolving production landscape.

All great producers have the ability to take a creative thought and turn it into a tangible real life execution, whatever the final deliverable. 

But as businesses we need to be able to provide the investment in time to help them to try out new skills in a supportive environment.

LBB> Clearly there is so much change, but what are the personality traits and skills that will always be in demand from producers?

Anna and Emma> Being collaborative and forging genuine relationships.

Much of what we do depends on the relationships you have with others and the more respect that we garner from (and also show) our colleagues and partners the better the final output for our work.