Just as survival of the fittest is a tenet of evolution, being able to evolve and adapt is the key to survival in today’s marketplace for agency producers. Indeed the emergence of varied content forms can cause some ad shop producers to reassess and in some cases alter not only their roles but what they are looking for in the marketplace at large.
Providing insights into a changing landscape is Jonathan Shipman, who was recently promoted to head of production at McCann Erickson, New York. While there will always be a place for both seasoned and new directorial talent, Shipman noted at the same time that hybrid artisans are coming of age.
“There are newer, younger, more creative suppliers emerging as opposed to just those who are strictly directors or editors or music people,” he related. “This is talent that’s taking on greater portions of production. We are finding young creative people capable of directing, animating, doing graphics and so on. It’s a talent pool that’s well suited to new types of content.”
Shipman added, “As we’re finding new and unusual resources, we’re working with them more as partners than suppliers. How we relate outside of McCann to the production world overall is changing. I’m looking for people to become partners with me, to delve into this new creative frontier hand in hand instead of one person being the supplier, the other the leader.”
For Shipman it’s “an incredibly exciting time” to assume the head of production mantle after nine years at McCann Erickson, first as an executive producer, then as deputy head of production and for the past three months as acting head of production. “Being able to help shape this department now as the industry is at a transitional moment, as we are entering a whole new ball game in terms of alternative media, is a wonderful opportunity,” he related. “To take a department whose main focus for so long has been broadcast television and to now be able to evolve it into this modern age is a creative challenge I welcome.
“Joyce King Thomas [McCann’s chief creative officer] is an amazing partner who has embraced the digital frontier and put trust in me to help support that,” continued Shipman. “She’s building our digital world creatively and we are mirroring that in the production department.”
Shipman is a veteran who’s embraced change. He started his career at Benton & Bowles, New York, which then became DMB&B, working primarily on Procter & Gamble brands. After nine years there, he spent the next six at Ogilvy & Mather, New York, where he served as a producer on American Express and Jaguar.
McCann’s Thomas said that Shipman fulfills the trio of prime prerequisites she had set for the head of production position. “In our search for a new head of production,” she related, “we were looking for three things–someone who cares passionately about the work; someone who will nurture, support and inspire the talent in the department; and most of all, someone who will move the department and agency forward in creating original content and developing our digital capabilities.”
“Transformation” Valeria Maldini, a producer at Grupo Gallegos, Long Beach, Calif., noted, “In the last couple of years, emerging forms of new media have forced agency producers to become more versatile. My role at the agency is no longer solely as a broadcast producer; it goes beyond traditional commercial production and has required developing content for other formats such as video on demand, viral spots and online content, mobile downloads, etcetera.”
Asked if diversification into new forms of content has taken hold in the Hispanic ad market, Maldini responded, “Yes, absolutely…The Hispanic consumer likes to be an early adopter of new technology, which means that new forms of content are an increasingly relevant touch point for this audience.”
She cited Foster Farms’ “Transformation,” a parody of Dove’s “Evolution” which shows artificial beauty being created not for a woman but for one of those zany disheveled chicken characters trying to foist himself off as naturally healthy and clean Foster Farms poultry.
Through makeup and then electronic manipulation of his photographs, this sorry chicken is beautified so that he looks like he’s of a pristine pedigree. This imposter than appears on a giant billboard heralding him as fresh, natural chicken.
A message then appears on screen which reads, “No wonder our perception of fresh chicken is so distorted.”
A succeeding message urges us to “Join the Foster Farms movement for real fresh chicken,” followed by the Foster Farms logo and the poultry company’s website address (www.fosterfarms.com).
Co-directed by Nicolas Kasakoff and Sebastian Schor of Flip Films, Santa Monica, “Transformation,” a recent SHOOT Top Spot (3/7) has aired on Spanish TV in the U.S., with an English-language version on Foster Farms’ website.
Maldini noted that “Transformation” was “concepted and produced initially for TV, and we saw the potential in creating a longer version for the client’s site. The spot has had a very positive result virally. We’ve received requests from media outlets all over the world to feature it. It has been uploaded on user generated content sites like YouTube and MySpace numerous times. You can never expect such an outcome, but when it happens, it’s a way to measure the audience’s receptiveness.”
Fantasy project Reflecting the coming into the mainstream of new content forms–and the seeking out of “new” sources to help bring that content to life–is ESPN’s “Endless Drama” campaign starting with a broadcast spot which drives traffic online so that viewers can partake of eight webisodes being featured on ESPN’s microsite, endlessdrama.com.
Conceived by a creative team at Arnold, Boston, headed by chief creative officer Pete Favat, executive creative director Roger Baldacci and creative director Mark St. Amant, the campaign premise is that those who play fantasy baseball endure and enjoy endless drama–player trades, strategies, injuries, intentionally feeding misinformation to competitors–over a regular season consisting of 162 games. So what better way to reflect the allure of fantasy baseball than a soap opera that lets the drama take center stage.
In one webisode, for example, a fantasy baseball competitor is on his death bed in a hospital room, a classic soap opera scenario. His wife/girlfriend bends down to hear his last wish, which is “Don’t trade Prince Fielder” (the power hitting first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers whose stats represent a fantasy baseball bonanza). In another webisode, Caught Cheating, we see an attractive guy and gal sitting at a restaurant table in front of a laptop computer plotting their fantasy strategy. A waiter approaches to take their order, makes some small talk and then unmasks himself to the couple’s utter horror. The waiter turns out to be her husband and he’s caught his wife red handed with his best friend consummating their relationship via a mock fantasy baseball draft.
“Endless Drama” represented the first major long-format work outside the traditional broadcast commercial arena for Arnold producer Paul Shannon, whose recent spot endeavors included Volvo television ads directed by Matthew Badger of bicoastal Epoch Films and a Fidelity campaign helmed by Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Venice, Calif.
For “Endless Drama,” Shannon worked with a cast of on-camera performers that consisted of Major League Baseball players (Hanley Ramirez, Chase Utley, Jorge Posada, Torii Hunter), ESPN fantasy baseball talent (Stephania Bell, Matthew Berry, Eric Karabell, Buster Olney, Steve Phillips) and ABC soap stars (John Brotheron, Rebecca Budig, David Fumero, John Paul Lavoiser, Cameron Mathison, Bree Williamson).
Even with a changing media marketplace, Shannon sees his bottom-line goal as unchanged. “While this [‘Endless Drama’] isn’t what I normally do, for me it’s the same thing,” said Shannon. “Whether it’s for theatrical release or a website or broadcast, you try to do justice to the concept and the story.”
In this case, doing such justice entailed exploring new talent sources and/or resources. Shannon related that Disney owns ESPN and ABC and “I wanted to see if we could exploit that tie-in. I called the account guys and asked if we could tap into ABC, my original thought being to be able to access the sets of [that network’s long running soap opera] One Life To Live.”
That initial intent then blossomed to getting One Life To Live executive producer/director Frank Valentini to direct the ESPN fantasy baseball soap opera, which was produced by Redtree Productions, Boston and New York.
Arnold, incidentally, is no stranger to web fare. The agency’s track record includes extensive interactive work for Volkswagen and the American Legacy Foundation’s “Truth” campaign.
