New Role Underscores Shifting Landscape In Production Management
By Robert Goldrich
Mark Huffman, associate director/advertising production at Procter & Gamble, is co-chair of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Production Management Committee. During the kickoff panel discussion he moderated at the recent SHOOT Commercial Production Forum, presented in partnership with Source TV, Huffman announced that he has taken on a new role at P&G–the Dean of How. (A full rundown of The Forum will be presented in next week’s issue.)
In this additional capacity, Huffman will oversee a small innovation team that will explore how P&G should best play in new media. In the process, he will help define the advertising production manager’s role in these emerging areas.
“Metrics aren’t there when you venture outside of TV, print and radio,” he observed. [When it comes to new media forms], instead you have to spend a little, test a little and learn a little–and hopefully build upon your small successes.”
Indeed the uncertainty about return on investment can be a difficult hurdle to clear at times. During the same Forum session, Susan Credle, executive VP, creative director, member of the board, BBDO New York, noted that the agency recently had two or three new media projects that were “almost a go but didn’t happen.” At the same time, said Credle, “Creative is ready to take off in new ways.” She noted that BBDO is launching a mini comic book on the Web that kids can interact with. “The opportunities to create are tremendous,” she assessed.
“You won’t know until you’ve done it,” related fellow panelist John Garland, executive VP, creative director of broadcast and development, J. Walter Thompson (JWT), New York. “It all comes down to risk….It’s a little bit like rebuilding a plane while it’s flying.”
So risk is what has to be weighed as client production managers try to navigate a successful course to deal with the fragmentation of mass media. Huffman noted that the TiVo or DVR effect underscores that fragmentation. He related that over 80 percent of TiVo users are not viewing TV live–and that 70 percent-plus skip commercial pods altogether.
Garland recommends looking at the situation as a stock portfolio when it comes to reapportioning budgets. “You keep 80 percent in a safe area, for example. And a smaller yet growing percentage in high risk for developmental and experimental media and content…There’s still a lot of trial and error.”
Panelist Greg Stuart, CEO/president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), advised, “Take a look at your media plan. Pull out one from three to five years ago. If the two look pretty close, you need to examine what you’re doing.”
In that vein, panelist Lee Ann Daly, executive VP, marketing, at ESPN, affirmed that clients and agencies need to come clean as to whether we’ve used any [new media] and have a sense of it. We need to get in boxer shorts and be blogged, get a feel of how short form is served online. We have to look at what’s out there in our everyday lives.”
Both Daly and Huffman contended that television advertising still has considerable value. Daly observed, “:30s aren’t a panacea but they still can be powerful. We need to smartly use them and new tools that are emerging.” But the pricing has to better reflect reality, added Huffman. While major TV network audiences have steadily eroded over the past decade despite there being 30 million more people, the rate for media buys has gone up significantly. Whereas the increase in TV time rates was 7.64 percent in 1994 over the prior year, the hike was nearly 20 percent in ’04, cited Huffman.
The entertainment factor is still key, said Daly. ESPN reinvented the role of promo time. She related that the objective of ESPN’s promo fare is simply “to make people like us and want to spend more time with us.” That approach has been so successful that research has shown that a number of viewers tune in to watch the sports network’s promos, which have become a popular entertainment form unto themselves.
For Garland, the integral factor is not injecting brands into entertainment but rather entertainment into brands. He stressed that opportunities abound in a marketplace which is still being shaped. “What was just a TV production department [at JWT],” said Garland, “is now driving the entertainment offering. Production is about finding solutions.” JWT is currently in co-production on a sitcom that figures to get play both on TV and cell phone screens.
The bottom line for advertising production managers and the industry at large, said Credle, is the fact that there’s still a need for advertising. “The dynamics of “informing, entertaining, branding and making people care about brands are not going away.”Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More