Slated for SHOOT’s annual Directors/Producers Forum on May 22 at the DGA Theatre in NYC is a Producer Perspectives session which will feature select agency and production company producers discussing evolving responsibilities, disciplines ranging from spots to shorts to webisodes to TV and features, and issues of concern, among other topics.
As a partial preview of what might be in store during that conversation, SHOOT now sounds out a couple of the scheduled agency panelists—Steve Humble, executive VP/managing director of production & development at The Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., and Matt Bonin, chief production officer at Ogilvy & Mather, NY.
We also add to the mix a new colleague of Bonin: Jenny Gadd, who just joined Ogilvy as executive director of content production, coming over from Johannes Leonardo where she served as head of integrated production. Gadd will be a judge on the Film Craft Jury at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Following are some observations from Humble, Bonin and Gadd.
Steve Humble
Recently Humble articulated his case (SHOOTonline, 4/1) for keeping creative agencies very much involved in the production process, working closely with production and post houses, and filmmaking talent. He was prompted to take a public stance upon reading a World Federation of Advertisers survey citing the benefits of decoupling production from ad agencies.
Decoupling is a process where the agency handles the strategic planning and creative concepting of a commercial and then hands off the production to a third party that hasn’t been involved in the creation or the strategy of the work. Proponents of decoupling contend that bringing specialist production agencies or an outside production team or cost consultant/production partner to work with directors, editors and other artisans spanning the production, post and visual effects communities can help realize tangible cost savings. According to the WFA survey, decoupling is generating average savings of just over 21 percent.
However, Humble believes this and other alleged advantages are misnomers. While decoupling, he said, hasn’t gained major traction in the U.S.—and certainly not among clients at The Martin Agency—Humble felt the need to speak out against the practice. “As with any professional service,” he said, “you can always find someone cheaper. But when you’re looking at top-tier ad agencies working on major productions for major brands, I believe cutting the agency out of producing the commercials can ultimately be more expensive. It requires an outside company to get up to speed on the client’s business and to get to know the agency creative and account teams. Great creative is developed during the course of weeks and our producers at Martin are involved all along the way—informing the team and costing out various scenarios. That’s not going to happen when production is a linear handoff. Additionally, deciding to add an extra hour on set to get a take just right might be the difference between a good and a great spot. And if you have a big budget media buy, why would you want to have producers on set who are truly focused on cost only?”
Humble added that “the creative process does not stop after a concept is sold. In fact, I’ve seen dozens of commercials evolve during the production process to ultimately a much better, more creative place. Our creative teams, including our producers, have such a trusting rapport with our clients that we are often able to make on-set decisions that lead to even better results. How does that happen with a third-party production company that doesn’t have those relationships and is focused solely on cost and not on producing the best end product?”
The Martin Agency’s managing director of production & development further affirmed that production is not a commodity. “If great production were truly a ‘paint by numbers’ process, almost anyone could learn to do it and brands should hire the cheapest they can get. But a great producer’s role on a shoot is as much a part of the creative process as that of a great director. Producers are consensus-builders and work to make the hopes and dreams of the creative team, the client and the director all come true. They are diplomats, cost consultants and creative production experts all rolled up into one person. Buying production is simply not analogous to buying staplers, no matter how many procurement consultants try to tell you otherwise.”
As for the impact of decoupling on advertising agency/client relationships, Humble contended, “If you hired a top contractor to build your dream home but insisted that he hire the lowest-cost painter you could find, could you really hold him responsible if the final product turned out poorly? Of course not—that kind of scenario only leads to finger pointing and excuses. The same goes with production.
Brands hire advertising agencies based on the caliber of their work and their creative reputation. Our producers painstakingly sweat every detail, all the way through production, to make sure the final product is up to our tough standards. Inserting a third party can often lead to details getting missed and confusion about ultimate responsibility for the finished product. And in our experience, that doesn’t foster a better agency/client relationship.”
On a separate front, Humble believes it’s important for his shop to not only be close to the production process but also in some cases to have the in-house production and post chops to deliver the content it creates. The Martin Agency maintains full-fledged in-house operations such as editorial house Running With Scissors and animation studio HUE&CRY.
“It makes sense for us to bring certain work in house where we can do things faster and cheaper,” explained Humble. “We have digital production, editorial, finishing and animation capabilities. We have six or seven animators now as part of a division which is getting some attention in the marketplace. Half of the animated Oreo spots we’ve done have been produced in house. We’ve done some animation work for GEICO and other clients. We are getting inquiries as to who did that Oreo spot, opening up possible opportunities for us to do animation work for other agencies.” In that HUE&CRY is owned by a separate entity of Interpublic Group (parent to The Martin Agency), such opportunities can more easily be explored.
On the in-house post score, Humble noted that sometimes Running With Scissors uses its own editors while other occasions have had it four walling for editors who are brought in from elsewhere.
Humble noted, “Being in Richmond, we don’t have someone down the street and thus need to be able to do more things in-house. It might be different if we were in L.A., New York or Chicago. And in building our production and post capabilities, we’re not taking agency people and retraining them. We’re bringing in people who have been in the production and post worlds in L.A. and New York. When we started editorial and post house Running With Scissors, we brought in Scott Friske to help run and manage it. Scott was executive producer at a couple of different post facilities in L.A.”
Still, in the big picture, the lion’s share of The Martin Agency’s work is done with outside production and post vendors. Humble estimated that about 85 percent of his agency’s projects go that route with 15 percent done in-house. “We don’t carry the expectation to do work in-house,” he affirmed. “We want to work with the best people. We want to be inspired and pushed by them.”
Matt Bonin
“Clients are pressing us and rightly so because we are the stewards of their brands. They need help ranging from a $5,000 video all the way up to a $1 million or $2 million commercial,” observed Ogilvy’s Bonin. “Brands don’t want to work with some Joe Blow corporate video house. They want their agencies involved in everything. So how we work, how we respond, who we partner with is shifting. Any contemporary production department at an agency today can pivot to do the small budgeted video on occasion. They can work at times on a favor-based model where they get a production company they do a lot of business with to execute a smaller job with no money. But this isn’t a sustainable approach as demand grows. New executional models have to emerge, including building our own internal production capabilities.”
In that vein, Ogilvy has formed two teams that tap into one another as needed but are structured independently. First, the NewsRoom team consists of people who monitor and analyze social media and other conversations happening around the agency’s brands and help craft responses in the short, near and long term. The second team, Agile Video, is built around a journalist/writer, staff director, agency producer/line producer hybrid and editor. Complementing them are designers/infographics experts. The teams are smaller, independent and self-contained. The teams can deploy quickly and, out of necessity, skirt some of the protocol for campaign-based marketing, such as pages of briefs, layers of oversight, and rounds of internal and external check-ins. This requires a disruptive leap of faith for the agency teams in creative and production and a high level of client trust.
Much of this has been prompted by the emergence of “Content Marketing,” said Bonin. He observed that “‘Content Marketing’ describes the shift from campaign-centric thinking and doing to always-on thinking and doing—a shift away from big-moments-in-time and toward near-real-time communications. ‘Content Marketing’ could prove to be as disruptive a change to agency structure as digital was almost 20 years ago.
“You’re probably thinking: Isn’t everything an agency does ‘Content Marketing’? Yes and no,” continued Bonin. “Content Marketing needs to be planned using tools like editorial calendars and partnership opportunities, but much of it needs to be envisioned, created and distributed on the fly, and it’s always-on. The opportunities for a “brand as a channel” forces a different team structure and mentality for producing work.
Finding high caliber in-house talent to meet “Content Marketing” and other needs has become essential, related Bonin who noted that Ogilvy still continues to work heavily with high-end, talented outside production vendors.
“No matter how many talented people we collaborate with outside the agency, though, it’s imperative,” he said, “that we have talent here that is comparative to what we can find externally.” Bonin cited as an example director Brandon LaGanke, a director at Eyepatch, Ogilvy’s in-house production arm.
Underscoring LaGanke’s filmmaking acumen have been varied projects as well as his recent inclusion into SHOOT’s 2014 New Directors Showcase, noted Bonin. LaGanke earned the Showcase slot in large part for an emotionally moving British Airways web documentary short titled A Ticket To Visit Mum.
Jenny Gadd
Bonin has a new colleague in Jenny Gadd who came aboard Ogilvy on May 5 as executive director of content production. She will oversee Ogilvy’s broadcast, film and online video production team, as well as business affairs, talent and business operations. Gadd had most recently served as head of integrated production at agency Johannes Leonardo.
Gadd said she jumped at the opportunity to be part of Bonin’s team given their shared vision and experience, the latter for Gadd encompassing 10 years on the ad agency side, five years in the production company community and three years in the digital arena. She enjoyed a tenure at digital agency North Kingdom while her production house pedigree includes her running the New York office of Believe Media and later the U.S. operation of London-based Thomas Thomas Films. Gadd noted that Bonin’s depth and breadth of experience also spans the agency, production house and digital sectors.
“I grew up as an agency producer in the 1990s back when you kind of made a choice and you stayed on either the production company or agency side,” recalled Gadd. “I decided to do more, gaining experience at production companies and in the digital space. It makes you more well rounded and these different experiences have proven invaluable to me. My job as head of production is very much to nurture and educate my producers to be as well rounded as possible. My hands-on experience in these different areas has helped me to develop my producers.”
Such a well-rounded perspective becomes all the more important as the role of agency producer has evolved significantly in recent years. Gadd noted that for instance, “A huge integrated project might need a broadcast producer, an interactive producer, a print producer, a full-time producer who deals with installations or the experiential part of a campaign. We used to think that one producer could do it all but new areas have emerged that often require specialized producers. I wouldn’t put a digital producer on a $2 million to $3 million TV commercial shooting all around the world. I also wouldn’t put a traditional broadcast producer on a complex web build.
“Having said that, though, there are a lot of projects in this gray zone that require hybrid producers. A new generation has grown up in this integrated world so they’re more hybrid already. We have to tap into these hybrid talents and encourage them. The older generation like myself needs to embrace these opportunities. That’s what motivated my choice years back to join North Kingdom.”
Gadd said she is drawn to the creative wherewithal at Ogilvy, the momentum at the agency which she “could feel physically when I walk through the doors. There’s a strong leadership team, great creatives have been brought in across different disciplines. There’s a strong creative culture and heritage here doing work for an impressive roster of clients. And Matt has adjusted to the times. I’m excited about the SWAT team he’s developed internally that can go shoot, edit and produce something on the fly, shortening the approval process so that a brand can be responsive to what’s going on in the marketplace.”
Next month at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Gadd hopes to gain an even stronger handle on the global pulse of the advertising industry from both creative and strategic perspectives. She will for the first time serve as a Cannes judge. Her initial tour of Cannes duty will be on the Film Craft jury, which will be headed by Brian Carmody, co-founder of Smuggler. Gadd’s fellow Film Craft jurors include: Abhijit Chaudhuri, director, Q.E.D. Films, India; Augusto Gimenez Zapiola, director, Argentinacine, Argentina; Corey Esse, managing director/executive producer, Exit Films, Australia; Felipe Vellasco, director, Sentimental Filme, Brazil; Kerstin Heffels, producer, Heimat, Germany; Martin Loraine, deputy executive creative director, AMV BBDO, UK; Pia Dueholm, executive agency producer, INGO Stockholm, Sweden; Roel Welling, director, Wefilm, The Netherlands; and Thierry Buriez, creative director, Being, France.
Gadd said she considers it “a huge honor” to be asked to serve as a Cannes juror. “What I love about this awards show compared to others is it is truly global. It’s a place where the international community comes together and to be serving side by side with talented creative people from all over the world, to compare notes with them, to review the best work from so many different countries is a great opportunity to be educated and inspired. You can gain a sense of where the industry is heading, how our world is changing and how you need to adapt or change.
“I’m especially excited to have been selected for the Film Craft category. I’ve always been a believer in the power of creativity and storytelling. I felt that craft was lost for awhile in our industry as we embraced new technologies. All of a sudden everyone could shoot and edit. Digital projects for at least awhile had such tiny budgets and some didn’t feel it mattered if the work didn’t look all that great. I spent a few years at a digital agency, North Kingdom, where that wasn’t the case. They really cared about the craft. Our saying there was that there was ‘love in every pixel.’ We wanted our interactive experiences to be as entertaining as a great movie or game. We did everything in our power to make the experience fully immersive. The craft of what we produce in advertising has always been very close to my heart.”
