Resetting Production as an Empathetic Outsider with X-15’s Brian DiLorenzo

Brian DiLorenzo is the president at X-15, a strategic production partner he founded during the covid pandemic to ‘fundamentally reset’ production outside of existing infrastructure.

Since then, the aim has been to use all their tools in the most independent way possible to best serve clients – especially in a climate where more brands and agencies are bringing different aspects of production in-house.

“We are enablers and facilitators, and we want to strengthen those internal capabilities,” says Brian, sharing that, as well as classic executional work, X-15 has worked in a consulting, “connective tissue” capacity for the likes of Best Buy’s internal studio. “There's a need for helping these people get better at what they want to do internally,” he says.

“A lot of places were building capabilities that they wanted to internalise. I grew up in an era that made me a fan of [independent] companies that nurture directorial, editorial and VFX talent. That's where the sharpest, best and most frontier-facing people are. And I just don't think that you build that stuff internally.

“By being independent, we're able to find those great external partners and just be the best possible orchestrator of those people, to hit the schedules and budgets,” he adds. “We figure out what makes sense in-house, and what we should absolutely outsource, to find talent that's going to bring something to the party. We try to be extraordinarily honest about what we're really good at and what we think other people are really good at, and try to build the best model that fires on all cylinders.”

Curating these balanced combinations of talent is a skill that Brian has developed throughout his decades-long career as a hands-on producer that took him through the doors of Fallon, BBDO, McCann and CP+B – all starting after earning a degree in film production and climbing the production ladder as a Midwest transplant in LA.

Brian quickly fell in love with the daily variety of commercial production, and over the next decade – his “sponge years” – he became a line producer and then EP for a director, finding his production community in Minneapolis and producing indie films, ads, and even music videos for Prince out of Paisley Park. Then, at the turn of the century, his agency journey began at “young, vibrant” Fallon, exploring the internet as a new production playground. “All of a sudden, I thought ‘I’ve got a career here!’.”

There, Brian helped bring exciting, diverse filmmakers onto short films for BMW – “ads where the rules are: don't be an ad; be a story” – and credits the project with ‘flicking a switch’ in his brain with regard to how online ads needed to be produced differently. Working with interactive teams and even creating an online reality show for a brand, Brian leant on his curious nature to become the person who always said yes to trying something new.

After eight years of building out Fallon’s integrated production department, Brian moved to BBDO New York where he acted “almost like a production guidance counselor” in the creative department, helping the traditional agency adapt its creativity to the increasingly non-traditional asks and ideas of the internet age. Being embedded early in the process allowed Brian to offer solutions and shape more embryonic ideas – like with the 2008 D&AD Graphite Pencil-winning work, ‘HBO Voyeur’.

^{Above:  BBDO New York - 'HBO Voyeur'}

“We created this silent film that was going to be projected on the side of a building,” Brian explains. “The idea was very ‘Rear Window’, where you would see inside a building with eight different apartments – all had stories, and some of the characters would interrelate. I love putting together puzzles like that.”

The production challenge, at first, was finding a building in the middle of Manhattan with an ideal white wall and dimensions for the projection. Not to mention the high-depth cameras and other equipment required. But then came the idea for an online version to accompany the IRL activation, for which Brian brought in digital agencies to support a Flash-powered online experience. “To this day, that's what I do,” he says. “I like being very hands-on, seeing each process come to life and trying to manage it.”

However, this management style has had to adapt as classic formulas for production have been ripped up and re-written over the last 20 years. “Now you're bringing in different kinds of storytellers – people that can code, different kinds of composers… You end up becoming a bit of a technical orchestrator, making sure communication is good between people that maybe haven't worked together.

There's a lot of head scratching in those processes,” he adds. “So [being] hands-on becomes more about making sure everyone gets what they need to execute well together – sometimes ‘play well’ together – oftentimes, letting the client know that everything's going to be alright. Even with brave clients, everyone knows that when you're pushing things in a new frontier, there's going to be obstacles and turbulence. You’re compelled to be in the middle of it because, at the end of the day, you said you can do it!”

A particular head scratcher during his time at BBDO was a holiday campaign for Starbucks. It saw the brand partner with Bono and Bobby Shriver’s Product (RED) charity initiative, and turned an already international idea for a music video into a global production challenge for Brian. “The director looked at everything and said, ‘Why don't we just get everyone in the world to sing on it?’.” An ambitious concept, even on paper.

Six intense weeks of global planning and coordination later – and the result? A world record-setting livestream of The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, performed by musicians in 156 countries at exactly the same time.

“It was 2009, so it was pushing everything you could do, technically,” says Brian. “But that one aged me about 10 years – because of the live factor, because no one knew if the streaming could work, because I had to get talent releases for about 3,000 people across the world, and had a very small amount of time to negotiate for a Beatles track. We had a composer who had to give everyone keys – Uruguay was going to play the guitar parts, another country was going to do the percussion, and lead vocals.

“We never knew what we were going to get until we saw it together,” he says, describing the spine-chilling moment when the team, filming behind-the-scenes footage with the director in London, watched as all the different feeds from around the world switched on. “I was blown away by the fact that countries can't even cooperate like this, but we got all these people to unite for Starbucks and Product (Red). We bandy about the word ‘authentic’ a lot. But that truly was an authentic moment,” he adds. “You could see that in the way that people responded to it.”

Following BBDO, Brian became the chief production officer at McCann, overseeing the New York and Detroit Commonwealth offices, and leading global production for the Chevrolet business. He then moved to LA, co-founding independent agency Ming Utility and Entertainment, and its offshoot Ming Studios, with Mother New York founder, Linus Karlsson. He applied his approach in this new, boutique environment until MDC Partners acquired the company in 2017, and CP+B hired Brian as interim CPO.

“At that point, I became more interested in leaning into production in a very hands-on and innovative way, building the framework of what X-15 is today,” he says. “And that is: bringing together this operational production experience, with resources from working across multiple agencies, different holding companies, and with different production companies, while still putting myself in the seat to learn and be a part of it.”

^{Above: X-15's 'Teen Tech Center' work for Best Buy}

Still very hands-on as president at X-15, Brian puts this into practice across a variety of nuanced projects, working end-to-end – from budgeting, talent management, contracts and clearances, to execution and delivery – for brands that are themselves adapting to a new production landscape. With higher demand for more content, and more types of content than ever before, Brian understands brands’ need to house capabilities themselves. However, “every company,” he says, “benefits from an empathetic outsider.”

“That dynamic – being on the inside and making something that is really well put together that they can then staff and operate – is really good in what we do… [And] it’s a different kind of challenge. That's why we think of ourselves as strategic production partners.” He continues, “Everyone needs a little bit of an outside perspective. That original dynamic between brands and agencies had an incredible purpose… It’s just a shift, and everyone's trying to figure out how to build the best models for it. And obviously, we've got legacy models that just don't do certain things well anymore.

“You should always have a very core understanding of what you're doing and stay very true to that,” he adds. “The fact that we can reach people so directly, with such immediacy, and create content sometimes without a thought, just means that we could make a generation of the most God-awful stuff none of us wants in our lives anymore.

“I’d like to think that, as advertisers, we want to put out stuff we’d like to see for ourselves. There's a lot of pressure to feel like you're behind the ball if you're not doing certain things, and flooding stuff out there… [But] think about your audience. Think about what you're really trying to do, what the core idea is, and how you want your brand represented. That's a pretty good North Star in general, especially when we're inundated with so much stuff we can do.”