The Evolving Production Landscape

Much has changed in the world of production, but audiences’ appetite for engaging video and audio isn’t going away. And, as such, production teams have never been more important to agencies or better placed to make tomorrow’s advertising. 

Sometimes it’s a blockbuster TVC pitched by the best directors and their production companies. Sometimes it’s zinging social content that needs to be nailed-on-native to the medium and in-culture with audiences. Increasingly, advertising production is exploring fresh areas such as long-form programming or harnessing the latest automation to produce personalised content as scale.  

With the rise in project over retained work, agencies are increasingly getting one shot at a campaign, so flexible production approaches are key to delighting clients and driving business growth.

It’s no coincidence that agency-side production really took off in parallel with the explosion of digital advertising. And agency studios are still going gangbusters because they’re doing a great job of nimbly making the plethora of creative that brands need, with deep knowledge of their business and customers and the continuity of insight on comms planning and strategy that makes campaigns effective in the real world.  

 

Just look at the recent offering by adam&eveDDB / adam&eveStudios; their CALM – ‘The Last Photo’ campaign swept the awards board last year and arose out of a nimble collaboration between agency creatives and the director over an idea that was beyond the client’s scope. Or Burger King’s ‘Foodfillment’ major brand campaign of multiple TVCs by BBH / Black Sheep Studios, which showcases top-end production values and comedy-performance casting and direction – a genre once off-limits to agency studios. These are, of course, just a couple of recent examples that highlight the diverse potential of full-service agency production, of which there are many more.

The point I’m making is that agencies will always seek to work with the right talent for the production, whether through traditional pitches with external production companies, or drawing on brilliant independent individuals and credited partnerships with third-party production and post-production companies in a flexible, rewarding and diverse creative ecosystem.

Brands increasingly want a raft of highly integrated and cost-efficient advertising services for their multistrand, data-driven campaigns. And this ‘making’ side of the production process is an important part of the creative and media agency offering. The many decades of graphic design studios, print production services and smaller video projects at agencies has proven this model is highly creative, works well and need not be controversial. Brands are making a rational and informed commercial choice to go with flexible agency production services, including full-service production models. 

On the very rare occasion that an agency is pitching its own production offering against third parties, something that agencies would always avoid unless there’s a client procurement mandate in play, transparency and integrity is a must and third parties can participate or not as they wish. In theory, the brand has fixed the budget at the very start of the process, so having several directors treat through an agency studio to give creative competition and choice, but on-budget, sounds like an ideal scenario for the client brand.

Making consideration of agencies’ overall production capacities and people a bigger part of the agency-client pitch process, whether for retained or project work, is also a great way for brands to have choice and competition between highly integrated, flexible, lean and loyal agency-side production approaches.

At the IPA we take the work and best practice of our in-house agency production teams very seriously. Which is why the IPA has established a thriving Agency Production Company Group (the APCG) with these aims:

• To be a forum for knowledge and insight sharing around in-house production.

• To be a network which enables the IPA to coordinate:

for IPA member agencies’ in-house production.

• To represent in-house production within the wider production industry and raise the profile and standing of in-house production within agencies and brands.

• To promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the development and employment of talent for in-house production.

• To promote sustainability within in-house production.

• To promote transparent and ethical dealings with all parties in the production industry.

If you’d like to find out more, please do get in touch with me (eliot.liss@ipa.co.uk).