Soapbox 2025: Brett Alexander Says, “Long Live Producers!”
Our LBB community is buzzing with ideas, opinions, and visions for a better advertising industry. So this year, we invited you to dig out your megaphone and climb onto our figurative soapbox to share your hopes for 2025: What change do you want to see? How can the inner workings of the industry improve? How should it adapt to the tech, social, cultural, economic, and political shifts shaping the market?
Taking the mic this time is Brett Alexander, SVP, managing director, and head of production at The Martin Agency. He delivers an ode to the ‘humble producer,’ and shares his thoughts on why agency production is an instrumental strand in marketing’s DNA.
We’re living in what I believe is the biggest period of upheaval and change production has ever seen. One where the promise of technology has changed the “better, faster, cheaper...pick two” mentality to an “it HAS to be all three” reality. With the rise of digital platforms, new channels and formats, and the demand for personalised content, production has become an extremely complicated process. Agencies are expected to produce high-quality ideas at lightning-fast speeds while navigating data-driven, fully integrated marketing cycles of social media, influencer partnerships, activations, content creation, and more.
As our industry continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, I worry that we’re losing sight of the one thing that’s always made advertising great: the people behind the work.
Don’t get me wrong, technology is amazing. But let’s not forget that it’s just a tool – and a tool is only as good as the person wielding it. We need people who can create, empathise, and connect with others on a deeper level. Those are the things that truly drive our field forward. It’s a lot to handle, but amid all this chaos, it is easy to lose sight of what truly matters: a great producer. So, how about we take a step back and remind ourselves what’s important here? Let’s finally put the spotlight back on the people who make our industry tick. The ones who often don’t make the “people to watch” lists or get credited for their immense contributions to making ideas live in award shows - the humble producer.
With that said, the producer has some work to do as well. To pivot from simply executing creative visions to driving business outcomes, agency production needs to become part of the DNA of the marketing/agency organism itself. Sitting at its core with just as much relevance to a brand’s identity as creative and strategy. It’s time to rethink the way we approach agency production as a discipline.
To do this and be successful, we ALL must go on the offensive, breaking traditional agency hierarchies, gaining deeper access to clients, and fully immersing ourselves in the business goals. If we’re to survive and thrive, we need to embrace both the right and left-brained thinking that good producers are blessed with. Creativity and business understanding are not mutually exclusive. In fact, that intersection is where we prove our worth every day.
Long live producers!
