What’s the impact of the pandemic on you, your company, your approach to doing business in the future? What practices emerged that you will continue even as restrictions are loosening?
After taking a pause to raise my son, then unexpectedly going through breast cancer treatment, I stepped back into the industry as Head of Production at Battery Agency during the height of the pandemic. Even relegated to Zoom, we got to know each other fast during a three-night virtual shoot spanning four time zones — the director in Canada, crew in Bulgaria, client in Shanghai and our team in LA — making each other laugh in the wee hours when little things start to kill your schedule and the talent gets tired. That chemistry and collective work ethic finds its way through the toughest situations.
When an opportunity arose to join CPB as head of production and I met the team here, I knew I had to make the leap. Again, the interview process was virtual, and again it came back to chemistry and connection. Even meeting in a virtual space, your intuition fires.
The beautiful thing from this year and half is that we all now know how to work together, find team spirit and make amazing work remotely. It’s brought down barriers and opened the opportunity to work with more amazing talent all over the globe.
How has the call for equity, racial and social justice affected, honed or influenced your sense of responsibility as a company in terms of the content you create and/or your commitment to opening up opportunities for filmmaking talent from underrepresented backgrounds?
We are at the exact moment when the advertising industry has a chance to fully change the deep-rooted, toxic behavior it has bred and condoned for way too long. There are no more excuses as to why inclusivity does not rule the table. It’s a fact: the work gets better when everyone has an actual voice, not just a role, at the leadership level. The dismantling has begun, but we need to keep pushing. And we can’t expect our clients or our production partners to solve this for us.
While gazing into the crystal ball is a tricky proposition, we nonetheless ask you for any forecast you have relative to content creation and/or the creative and/or business climate for the second half of 2021 and beyond.
This year has shown our true blindspots as an industry. It has challenged the assumption that we have now become diverse just because we hire one female director, for instance. In order to make authentic work and evolve brands, all voices must be represented, and that representation needs to show in the stories we tell. We’re already seeing so many make true commitments to diversifying their brands. We’re going to see a lot more. I hope. Brands are hungry to go big. To take big swings. And it’s imperative that we change the landscape together.
What work (advertising, entertainment)–your own or others–struck a responsive chord with you and/or was the most effective creatively and/or strategically so far this year? Does any work stand out to you in terms of meshing advertising and entertainment?
Outstanding music and sound design is an essential element of the work that stands out for me. The music supervision and score on most all HBO shows — most recently ‘Mare of Easttown,’ and a personal favorite, ‘I May Destroy You’ — are the added layers that lead you further into the story. And the importance of music in commercials cannot be overstated. Even though it came out at the end of 2020, so not quite ‘this year’, the “You Love Me” spot from Beats by Dre bridged storytelling and music perfectly, and hit incredibly authentic.
