On June 3rd, ad agency producers received a crash course in the ever-increasing digital aspects of advertising campaigns at the 2010 Summer Digital Roundtable presented by Therapy Studios and Stopp. Held at Therapy in West Los Angeles, the educational seminar featured presentations from Venables Bell & Partners, Stopp Interactive, Therapy, Textopoly, FEED Company and Blush/LA, moderated by longtime ad scribe Becky Ebenkamp.
With the ad industry undergoing a sea change – in that more campaigns are integrating interactive online components to coincide with traditional print and broadcast – agencies are looking to their broadcast producers to steer these interactive elements as well. The seminar worked to answer questions on many traditional broadcast producers’ minds, such as what entails integrated production and what is an agency producer’s role within that production. It also provided an overview of technical aspects and presented creative approaches to interactive production, digital production, mobile engagement and social media.
Not every agency wants a do-it-all producer. John Eagan and Mandi Holdorff of Venables Bell & Partners, who served up the keynote address, provided a case study on their integrated Audi Super Bowl campaign, The Green Police that illustrated this point. “While many agencies believe that there is one super producer who can produce both interactive and broadcast components flawlessly, that’s not the position that Venebles takes,” says Holdorff. “What makes an interactive campaign successful in our opinion, is having collaboration and transparency between your broadcast and digital producers.” Eagan adds, “From an interactive producer’s standpoint, my job was to control the conversation about the Green Police. The biggest challenge was to get the best partners in the room and teach them how to deal with messaging around the Super Bowl. That’s when my job shifts from doing a site to controlling the flow of media.”
Executive Producer Jesper Palsson of Stopp helped the group to understand the technical space in which interactive production occurs. Palsson noted that the workflow for interactive is much less linear than for traditional media. “We wanted to give them an idea of what to expect as far as how the process goes and how much information is enough information to know, in working with agencies effectively.” Palsson pointed out that producers don’t necessarily have to know how to program code for such a project, but at least speak the technical language to better communicate with the creative team.
To explain timelines and digital production further, Palsson shared a case study of Stopp‘s The Hero campaign for Radiotjänst, which was one of the first to utilize user-submitted content. It spread virally in the company’s native country of Sweden and has lead to a U.S. version of the spot.
Executive Producer Joseph DiSanto of editorial and post company Therapy Studios echoed the importance of collaboration between broadcast and digital producers. He shared some of Therapy’s recent work, including an interactive microsite his company built for Atlantic Records to support recording artist B.o.B’s single “Nothin On You”, through which viewers could upload their own photos into an online version of the music video and share it. Additionally, DiSanto brought producers up to speed on the more common digital tools being used in these projects, and the impact they have on production, postproduction and interactive development. The seminar also highlighted workflow variables that come into play when digital assets are being shared across platforms and multiple vendors now.
Seminar attendee Leah Bohl, a producer at the Team One advertising agency in L.A., found this educational opportunity indispensible. "Bringing industry people together,” she says, “to discuss and learn how we grow as producers no matter what discipline we specialize in is important. It’s all the same skill sets that we draw from, but having a general technical knowledge as a broadcast producer is becoming imperative. I was happy to be included in the sharing of experiences with other agencies and technology companies about how we stay on the forefront of technology in the ever-changing advertising landscape."
Other interactive discussion points came from Naushad Huda, founder of Textopoly, a mobile engagement agency that creates dialogues between brands and their consumers, and from Josh Warner, founder of Feed Company, which “seeds” advertiser videos on the Web for maximum exposure.
Independent producer Anne Kurtzman was impressed with the seminar and came away with a better handle of the role of producer in an integrated production. “The roundtable was really beneficial,” says Kurtzman, a member of The Poolhouse collective. “This profession changes every time you blink. When you read a lot of job descriptions for producers they include terminology for and references to digital production that, as a broadcast producer, seem extremely foreign, and it was really educational to find out where the overlap is. It behooves all us producers to keep current on technology and be able to talk the talk.”
DiSanto adds, “The participants were so excited about this educational discussion that they were wondering when we were going to have another one.”
Participants were given an educational resource book that included a comprehensive interactive and digital production glossary compiled by Therapy and Stopp. The book introduced “Stndrd_@” (http://www.stndrd.org), a new consortium that has devised an open source approach to creating best practices for the interactive production community. Also included in the handout was Creativity’s “Integrated Production White Paper,” which reports on the opinions of some of the country’s largest agency heads of integrated production. The digital version of this book is available for download on Therapy’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TherapyStudios).
http://www.stopp-la.com
http://www.venablesbell.com
http://www.textopoly.com
http://www.feedcompany.com
http://www.blushla.tv
ABOUT THERAPY
Therapy Studios is a fully integrated post-production company whose unique, award-winning work spans commercials, features, music videos, and online media. The Los Angeles based company was founded in 2005 by executive producers Joe DiSanto and John Ramsay, and artists Wren Waters and Doobie White. They have since expanded into a collaborative team which includes top artists in all areas of post-production, including creative editorial, graphics, color correction, finishing, sound design, mix and interactive. Therapy’s facility is located at 2010 S. Westgate Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90025. For more information, call 310.917.1507 or visit www.youneedtherapy.tv.
