In recent months, a high-profile promotion and hire underscore that a number of ad shops are starting to look to heads of production to take a lead role in navigating a path to the future. The leadership mantle reflects the fact that in an ever evolving media landscape, a premium has been placed on the producer skill set, which is coming to be regarded as a key dynamic in helping to shape an agency’s vision and realize it.
Consider the case of John Garland, whose international producer pedigree spans both the production and agency sides of the business, and extends from short-form to feature-length fare. This past May, Garland–who had been director of broadcast production and entertainment at JWT New York–was promoted to COO of the agency. Concurrently general manager Megwin Finegan, an account management vet, was upped to managing director. She and Garland represent a new management partnership at JWT New York, with both reporting to president Rosemarie Ryan and co-president Ty Montague.
Garland will be responsible for managing such areas for JWT New York as production (digital, print, broadcast), entertainment and intellectual property, as well as other ventures into new media. Garland had already been a member of the management team in his head of broadcast production and entertainment capacity, but the ascent to COO moves him into an even more integral role in defining the agency’s future and furthering integrated marketing on behalf of clients.
As for the earlier alluded to hiring, Brian DiLorenzo, former director of broadcast production at Fallon Minneapolis, was named a couple of months ago to the newly created position of executive director, content, for BBDO North America. DiLorenzo will be responsible for helping to spearhead BBDO’s move into all areas of content, working in concert with. Hollywood, mobile and digital carriers, the production industry at large and other relevant communities.
When DiLorenzo came aboard, David Lubars, chairman/chief creative officer, BBDO North America, said, “This [executive director, content] is a position for which there is no precedent. Our goal is to create the world’s most compelling content. Doing that requires a trailblazer mentality. Brian is that kind of person. We worked together [at Fallon] on BMW Films and, more recently Amazon Theater. His head is wrapped around content-based work. We’re ecstatic that Brian has agreed to join BBDO in this new role.”
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS “We are entering an exciting time which is replete with opportunities for people with production skills,” relates Garland, noting that video on the Internet is maturing and the creation of entertainment properties for clients is staring to pick up momentum. In the big picture, he observes, the mandate to grow agency and client business into new spaces, all with a guiding integrated marketing mantra, calls for having the right mix of in-house expertise and partnerships with outside talent and resources.
Experienced producers inherently possess the required skill sets, with Garland having the added dimension and benefit of working on the production house side domestically and globally. Savvy heads of production/producers have or can develop the Rolodex to bring in the proper outside resources for partnership, while possessing the organizational skills to project manage, the wherewithal to hold a project–traditional or nontraditional–to a budget and, says Garland, “the ability to pull together a team, imbue those team members with a vision and work through to a successful conclusion.”
Garland relates that his professional experience, the forward thinking leadership of Ryan and Montague and the market forces themselves “began to make it logical to take someone like myself, a production person, and move him into a more central role, with expanded responsibilities…My job now is to create a very efficient machine that runs here to execute what we’ve traditionally done and at the same time move forward into our growth area, integrated marketing, and to begin to manage how we’re going to deal with our intellectual property.”
One such piece of intellectual property is Love Bugs, a short-form “micro-series” set to debut on Sept. 13. In a partnership with client Unilever and cable network TBS, JWTwo Entertainment, a recently formed division of JWT, is producing the show in tandem with Paul Reiser’s Nuance Productions. Ten-time Emmy nominee Reiser, creator of the hit sitcom Mad About You, serves as co-executive producer of Love Bugs, which will help introduce Unilever’s international haircare brand Sunsilk in North America.
The series, which speaks to Sunsilk’s core demographic, centers on the romantic life of Katie, a witty, spirited 20something woman. There’s no overt product placement for the brand, says Garland who explains that the brand connection is more along the lines of a “brought to you by” approach.
Two-and-a-half minute episodes of Love Bugs will run during TBS’ comedy block, including as an “out-tro” to Sex and The City and Seinfeld. Web site episodes not seen on TV will also be available, as well as unique episodes at in-store Wal-Mart Television.
Producers themselves need to be far more multifaceted, notes Garland, citing Love Bugs as an example. “With this kind of show, we need to find people who can produce across multi-discipline events–live event PR, digital iterations of the brand, interfacing with Wal-Mart and its TV distributors, working to get the show made in the first place….And generally with an integrated marketing approach, there are other forms of content, including being able to make commercials….The person sitting at the top of this moving ant heap of communication needs to be a very capable executive producer, moving through different and new spaces, helping our clients to communicate with target audiences in every and any way possible.”
Having those sensibilities in a central agency management role makes all the more sense in today’s changing media landscape. “It helps an agency to advance what it does best. We’re good at taking the essence of a brand and communicating that. In a sense agencies are beginning to evolve entertainment from a brand brief sort of perspective,” say Garland. “….The founding of JWTwo Entertainment is a departure for JWT which allows us to extend our assets into intellectual property.” The new division’s programming content will be available to consumers via traditional network TV, the Internet, mobile wireless and other platforms.
On the Internet front, JWT Detroit and New York have teamed with bicoastal/international @radical.media on assorted short Web films for Ford. The films are slated to appear through the rest of 2006 as a weekly documentary series, Bold Moves: The Future of Ford, on www.fordboldmoves.com.
HUB BBDO’s DiLorenzo observes that over the past six years or so, there’s been an evolution in the skill set of the agency producer. He recalled his first new media endeavor at Fallon, an integrated campaign for Lee Jeans featuring a Buddy Lee online video game, a package of TV spots, short viral videos and wild postings–for which DiLorenzo served as a hub of sorts, coordinating these different elements and the considerations that went along with them.
“When you have varied platforms for a campaign,” says DiLorenzo, “producers find themselves being asked more fundamental questions earlier on in the creative process. You’re asked to figure out talent usage and contracts for new media that allow you to optimize opportunities down the road…You’re working towards a schedule of different elements, maximizing a budget across these elements, weighing the importance of one element as compared to another, and contributing to the strategy of how to best utilize the media.
“At the same time,” continues DiLorenzo, “you’re a go-to person for outside partnerships, trying to identify and then secure the best creative collaborators with expertise in different areas for nontraditional media projects and entertainment content.”
These expanded responsibilities have broadened the scope of a producer’s/head of production’s expertise. Whereas traditionally an agency producer would be working with an account team and creatives, emerging media and long-form content now have him or her also more closely involved with media and interactive people much earlier on in the process, with a hand in creative strategizing.
Thus within the internal dynamics of an agency, a heightened awareness has emerged relative to what the head of production, executive producer and producer can bring to the table in terms of playing a central role in expanding an ad shop’s offerings and capabilities across multiple platforms, and then intelligently coalescing them to take the form of an integrated marketing effort.
This “hub” perspective has translated into a number of agencies looking to their head of production for leadership in terms of helping to shape and chart a course for the future. “The evolution of the role has been exciting and is opening up new opportunities for heads of production and producers within agencies,” relates DiLorenzo whose Fallon exploits included producing the second season of the BMW Film Series, the aforementioned Amazon Theater, campaigns for PBS, Citibank, Lee Jeans and Holiday Inn, and most recently executive producing Brawny Academy, a currently running reality show on the Web produced for Georgia Pacific.
AGENCY CULTURE But the opportunities remain dependent on how progressive the particular agency’s culture is, observes Vic Palumbo, who recently succeeded DiLorenzo as director of broadcast production at Fallon Minneapolis. Prior to joining Fallon a year-plus ago as an executive producer, Palumbo served as a senior producer on the Nike account at Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., his roost for some six-and-a-half years.
“I’ve been fortunate to be with two agencies that have embraced nontraditional forms,” says Palumbo whose eyes were first opened on that score with the ’00 “whatevernike.com” campaign for Wieden in which viewers had to log onto the Web to see and choose different endings to three TV commercials. “We filmed five endings per commercial and generated a terrific response,” recalls Palumbo. “That was my initial look at how the computer and the Internet were going to impact broadcast media….Then bandwidth and picture quality improved, and there was the first round of BMW Films [from Fallon], and the industry was off to the races.”
Fallon’s new media endeavors figured prominently in Palumbo’s decision to join the agency in May ’05. “That’s the main reason I came aboard after talking with Brian. There was the opportunity to do great advertising–traditional and nontraditional and to integrate the two. “
That integration is a dynamic that has expanded the responsibilities and opportunities for producers,” assesses Palumbo. “For integrated media, the departments have to be integrated. There has to be communication between broadcast, interactive and creative. And here at Fallon the communication paths are wide open. There’s a lot of meaningful communication going on, which involves the production department earlier on in the creative and strategizing process…Producers are given the opportunity to be more creative, not just executional. Yes, we come up with financial solutions, but we’re expected to help from a creative standpoint as well. Being a producer at a place like Fallon or Wieden is what really helps to make you a better producer.”
Palumbo’s work at Fallon includes a BMW 3 Series launch documentary, the multimedia “ESP Billy” project for MSN, which entailed such elements as a Web sitcom, and the recent Travelers’ TV campaign consisting of the spots “Big Fight” and “Bridge.” (The latter earned the number one slot in SHOOT’s Top 10 Spot Tracks Chart covered in this week’s issue.)
VERHOEF
For the past seven years, David Verhoef has been freelance agency producing in the Bay Area, working on such fare as Microsoft Xbox 360’s lauded “Jump In” campaign out of McCann Erickson, San Francisco, and 72 and Sunny, El Segundo, Calif.. Prior to moving to San Francisco, he served as head of production at Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York. He recently wrapped his freelance run to become director of broadcast production at DDB San Francisco.
Verhoef thus has the perspective of how the agency head of production role has evolved from the time he last held such a position in New York some seven years ago. Clearly, he observes, emerging new forms represent the biggest difference between his head of production tenure at Cliff Freeman and the one just started at DDB.
“There are a whole lot of new media to play with, ranging from the Internet to i-pods and the like,” he relates. “That’s largely what attracted me to the opportunity at DDB. I love doing commercials, but now to get the chance to also move into other areas, including different formats and lengths, at DDB and via Tribal DDB, San Francisco, opens up an exciting new dimension….And with heads of production gaining expertise in these new fields–and accessing the outside partners necessary for certain projects–I can easily see why new positions of agency leadership are being created for executive producers and other heads of production who have a pulse on this brave new world. It’s expertise that is needed to help leverage the fact that agencies understand brands better than virtually anyone other than the clients themselves. That brand understanding is essential to producing relevant content.”
At the same time, the more things change, the more they remain the same. “My job,” quips Verhoef, “is still trying to figure out how to get [director] Noam Murro to play with me for a couple of weeks….We got Frank Budgen to play with us for a stretch [on the ‘Jump In’ campaign including the spots ‘Water Balloons’ and ‘Jump Rope’] and look what that resulted in. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a two-minute piece for the Web or a :30 for the Super Bowl. You have to be able to attract great talent to collaborate with.”
