By Jeremy Warshaw
A funny thing happened to me during a recent shoot.
I got what I wanted. I mean everything.
I didn’t think storyboards would be helpful.
Said the Agency, “We think they’re silly anyway, no need to be locked in.”
I recommended an editor and they said “fine.”
Same thing with wardrobe; Client said, “You don’t want me to pick out their wardrobe. Look at the way I’m dressed!”
I suggested that protecting for 4:3 was limiting and unnecessary.
“Give me a minute,” he said, leaving for the powers that be, came back and said, “no problem.”
One of the 6 shooting days looked like it might rain so the Client said, “I’ll go for a weather day.” A smart move, and we didn’t have to spend ages thinking how we might shoot a board that was all about the outdoors, indoors.
In fact this spirit of “let’s just keep the issues to those that directly impact the work” stayed present throughout the shoot. And while this was as it should always be, it was so far from the norm as to be a little disorienting.
My producer and I would look at each other and say, “This is weird. Are they on drugs?” (Ironic really as we were shooting for a pharmaceutical company.)
Weird because every job now seems to be a struggle about issues that have more to do with job security than what is best for the work itself. If I had a dollar for every time an account exec anticipated a problem that was either not theirs to solve or inherently not a problem, I would be, well, richer.
Commercials are a classic case of compromise by incremental ‘requests’ that have nothing to do with bringing out the best in the script. It seems to me that many of the Agency world’s troubles can be located at the intersection between insufficient respect for the creative team and too much tolerance for those who operate out of fear.
Agencies are facing seismic shifts and are trying to stay relevant and profitable. There is no clear answer yet, but if they don’t stand for excellent creative work there is no rationale for their existence. In today’s noisy and fractured world, creating great ideas and being relentless in bringing them to life has to be the sine qua non of this business. Without this as their central mission they will join the dodo and the golden toad as once living beings that are now extinct.
Oh, that job I was working on? I heard 2 weeks into the edit that the Agency lost the account. No one said it would be easy!
Jeremy Warshaw is a veteran commercial director.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More