“The times they are a changin’” (as Bob Dylan sang)—not just in terms of time shifting but a shifting of power when it comes to media. It’s not just the different platforms on which people consume information and entertainment but how they react to that information and entertainment. This dynamic has been demonstrated repeatedly in 2014, a prime example coming last month at the AFI Fest when what was to have been a 30-minute preview of the Ava DuVernay-directed feature Selma instead turned out to be a full screening of the movie at the historic Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.
The movie received a standing ovation—but more significantly it sparked several in attendance to tweet their praise. It was if the ovation within the theater reverberated throughout the industry, in turn bringing an element of anticipation to the public at large. These tweets from a single screening—albeit it at a high-profile AFI event—were enough to immediately propel a film that won’t go wide until Christmas into the Oscar race. Clearly social media is changing the entertainment landscape, the nature of For-Your-Consideration Oscar campaigning, and empowering those on the receiving end with the opportunity for immediate feedback which can trigger a ripple effect that couldn’t have been imagined just a few years ago.
This power is also being felt throughout society, including our corner of the world—in the TV business, the online sector, in ad agency conference rooms, client/corporate boardrooms, movie studios and so on. Agencies have geared up with in-house social media studios and production capabilities to be responsive on a 24/7 basis to conversation that impacts the brands they handle—and the nature and immediacy of those responses can help to shape and define those brands in the minds of prospective consumers. At the same time, agencies have to partner with outside talent, vendors and resources for varied other forms of communication, including ambitious, sophisticated top-drawer productions.
As John Osborn, president and CEO of BBDO New York, observed in SHOOT’s Agency of the Year coverage (see separate story), “On one hand, we’re more self-sufficient than ever in that we make stories come to life through our digital studio, social studio and our video content studio. At the same time, we need to embrace collaboration, working closely with partners and talented outside vendors. We are in a world that requires us to be more self-sufficient and collaborative than ever.”
The digital dynamic has changed the nature of the content agencies and/or production companies are creating. In our Year In Perspective Survey of ad agency professionals, Kate Hildebrant, VP/director of video production at CP+B, noted, “The amount of consumer time spent viewing digital content has doubled over the past two years. At least that was the last stat I read, and from the sheer amount of video content that CP+B made this year, with the majority of it for digital use, I’d say that stat is indeed correct. Gone are the days of a “three spot TV campaign” along with “broadcast” producers. We’re video producers, and the industry shift now requires that we produce anything from a GIF to Superbowl spots to branded content films. We find ourselves in a perpetual state of reinvention when it comes to our approach to producing high quality content across all platforms.”
2014 also underscored that television is more relevant than ever despite the growing prominence of digital platforms. That’s in part due to the fact that the definition of TV has broadened to in some respects encompass other means of distribution. Television is broadcast, cable and satellite—but it’s so much more as people are accessing TV content over the air, through cable, via computer and by phone. A Nielsen report released last week concluded that Americans are increasingly watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services. And of course, these new media powers are bankrolling the development of original content, a prime case in point being Netflix with the game changing House of Cards and more recently with Marco Polo (see SHOOTonline Chat Room, 12/2 with John Fusco, creator/executive producer/co-showrunner of Marco Polo).
The Emmys underscore the expanding “TV” universe with nominations aplenty this year for such series as Netflix’s Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, and awards for best original interactive program (including crowd-sourced and/or user-generated narratives) and social TV experiences. There’s even an Emmy for programs less than 15 minutes in duration, including Web-based fare. Programs delivered over mobile (smartphone, tablet), computer, set-top box and smart Internet-connected TV are all fair game.
At the same time, there are battles within this growing TV landscape. Pay/cable TV providers could lose leverage with viewers as HBO, for example, announced it would offer an online streaming service next year, making its programs readily accessible to those with an Internet connection rather than a cable or satellite box. CBS followed HBO’s lead, announcing plans to stream programs online for viewers to watch at their convenience. Could ABC, NBC and Fox be far behind?
Vimeo meanwhile is testing the waters, investing in and looking to generate revenue from season five of the original web series High Maintenance, which centers on a marijuana dealer and his Brooklyn clientele. Last month Vimeo started charging viewers $2 an episode or $8 for the entire six-episode season. Reportedly next in Vimeo’s plans is to step up its involvement in original programs.
Also last month YouTube announced Music Key, a $9.99-a-month service which diversifies the ad-supported video outlet with a paid subscriber component. These kinds of developments driven by the growing prominence of digital outlets have opened up new options for content creators who in recent years find themselves with more potential partners and customers. They also find themselves with more competition as content creator start-ups emerge to tap into these opportunities. Ad agencies have gotten into the content creation mix as have commercial production houses that have extended beyond their work-for-hire roots in order to gain equity stakes in programs and films.
John Maxham, chief creative officer of DDB Chicago, shared in his Year In Perspective survey response that “agencies are dabbling more in the entertainment world and entertainment companies are adding creative functions so they can compete with agencies for business.” He added that “the changing landscape has enabled us to unlock some very cool partnerships with content and entertainment companies—Funny or Die for example. These partnerships let us to tap into talent pools of comedy writers, celebrity talent and cultural phenoms that would have been previously unavailable to us.”
DDB’s Maxham and CP+B’s Hildebrant are just two of the SHOOT Year In Perspective survey respondents. What follows are excerpts from not only their observations but also those expressed by a number of their colleagues in the ad agency arena. In coming issues, SHOOT will turn its attention to what’s in store for 2015, delving into trends, developments and concerns in the creative community spanning entertainment and commercial production and postproduction.
For our Year In Perspective survey directed to ad agency professionals, the following four questions were posed:
1) What industry trends or developments were most significant in 2014?
2) What was the most important lesson learned by your company in 2014?
3) What work in 2014 are you most proud of (please cite any unique challenges encountered)?
4) What do you think the “next big thing” in production/post will be in 2015?
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we received:
Paul Hicks, partner/executive creative director, Godfrey Q
1) The pace of our business has been accelerating for years, but I think we have come to a point where pressures on agencies to compress development and production cycles have never been more acute. It’s no surprise that social and real-time media are driving these new mandates, and it’s becoming obvious that a months-long timeline can be seen as archaic or even out-of-touch.
But unlike recent years, this new pressure isn’t coming from the client. What’s emerging is an organic desire from within the agency to stay ahead of the story, to develop it and, ideally, to drive it. And doing so requires building a much faster idea-to-execution engine.
While there will always be the need for epic storytelling and thoughtful, artful production, this new communication ecosystem —subject to the influences of cultural trends, competitive changes and unseen circumstances—requires us to also plan and create assets for future, unknown uses. The keys will be balancing long-term brand stories with the materials needed to support short-term conversations, all while finding another gear.
2) “Surprise yourself every day.”
Godfrey Q is in its eleventh year, and a lot of us have been in the industry decades before that. But this year, we’ve continually found ourselves doing things we’ve never done before. And loving the results.
I’m talking about surprising our people on an individual level. By trusting them more than they trust themselves. By asking them to take their work places they’ve never imagined. Even by getting out of the way and letting the creative teams define what constitutes a team.
Our best hires this year came in looking for one thing, and then found they were really good (and really happy) doing something completely different. And if we had an HR department, they’d be surprised to hear that this our new model moving forward.
And if you had told me that this year we would produce a pilot news program, a thirteen-minute interactive social experience, and multiple web videos with millions of global views, maybe I wouldn’t be so surprised how much I love this business, again.
3) We launched new global work for Symantec that repositioned them as the authority in enterprise security in a time when massive security breaches were front-page news, at least until a week later when a larger breach replaced it.
The Symantec “Do It All” campaign emphasizes the freedom and enablement that is only possible when information is easily accessible, authenticated, managed and protected. It communicates that Symantec doesn’t create the amazing and wonderful things that its customers do, but it does create a world in which its possible for them to thrive.
The primary components of the Do It All campaign are Power Verbs that reduce the campaign’s message to powerful, essential units that can be rapidly understood and consumed.
Each verb relays a piece of the overall conversation while simultaneously suggesting both the breadth of Symantec solutions and the freedom that those solutions provide.
The campaign launched in social media, print, digital, video units, OOH, event creative and even manifested itself in an internal campaign. Since it’s launch in April 2014, the campaign has extended into 22 countries and counting.
4) Live.
William Gelner, chief creative officer, 180LA
Kate Hildebrant, VP/director of video production, CP+B
1) The amount of consumer time spent viewing digital content has doubled over the past two years. At least that was the last stat I read, and from the sheer amount of video content that CP+B made this year, with the majority of it for digital use, I’d say that stat is indeed correct. Gone are the days of a “three spot TV campaign” along with “broadcast” producers. We’re video producers, and the industry shift now requires that we produce anything from a GIF to Superbowl spots to branded content films. We find ourselves in a perpetual state of reinvention when it comes to our approach to producing high quality content across all platforms.
2) Treat every pitch like it is going to triple your billings, even if it won’t. Winning new business that will foster great creative work brings more new business into the agency and invigorates everyone.
3) I’m really proud of our A.1. “New Friend Request” video, which was produced and executed 100% within the walls of CP+B. Every person who touched the project wore multiple hats, which made for an efficient, creative driven process. After A.1. dropped the word “steak” from its name and bottle, we launched a video depicting the brand’s breakup from steak as it would have played out on Facebook, just like any modern relationship. The online video was the lowest production spend element of a campaign with multiple spots, and it achieved the highest views and shares.
I’m also proud of the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese “What I Did For Love” spot. We partnered with Hank Perlman at Hungry Man to show the lengths people will go to get their hands on Mac & Cheese. It is one of my favorites because it’s entertaining, funny, and well, really makes me want to eat Mac & Cheese. Bad.
4) I think that new internal agency executional production models using more hybrid roles will form. These new models will allow agencies the flexibility to create quick, efficient, cost-effective video content with record turnaround times, in order to fulfill the need for continuous content creation, without a lot of overhead.
Kerry Keenan, partner/chief creative officer, Deutsch NY
1) I’m not sure it can be called a trend yet, but I sure hope it becomes one. As a big talk radio fan I couldn’t be happier about This American Life’s podcast series “Serial.” Storytelling at it’s best and I love the idea that radio is the new, coolest thing out there. It makes me think that the classic branded content of the soap opera days could be making a big comeback with brands as sponsors and producers of amazing programming.
2 & 3) The work I am most proud of, and the biggest lesson learned, both go to this year’s PNC’s Christmas Price Index, “The great Carol Comeback”. Twelve unique pieces of content living in an interactive website all produced with a very restrictive budget. As always, it would have been impossible to pull off without the talent of many amazing production and post production partners (Acne, Human, The Mill, Acme Filmworks to name a few.) It also would not have happened without the agency’s internal talent to help take on the role of production support from digital and graphic design to editorial to book binding…. Truly an example of internal and external production collaboration. Maybe more of a reminder than a lesson that we have many friends out there and a deep bench in here.
4) My teams joke that if they present an idea that has any kind of hologram reference I will love it. (Star Wars. Second grade. Twelve times.) So I hope more holograms are the next big thing. A girl can dream.
Chris Kelly, VP, executive creative director, Organic
1) We keep hearing about wearables, branded content and social, but we have certainly noticed the increased interest in data specifically as it relates to programmatic media. However, I’m continually surprised by the lack of understanding around data and programmatic and what it can really do. Data can solve many problems and lead to incredible insights, but it’s not a panacea. If misused it can cause more harm than good.
2) Same lesson learned as in year’s past – be cautious of trends.
3) The work we did for a large auto manufacturer this year was a huge undertaking that had to solve many problems for many users. The amount and complexity of the content was a challenge given the need to deliver a responsive experience. Delivering a beautiful, clean and focused utility for every screen size is something our team is very proud of.
I’m also fond of the Brand Experience Pages we created for Kohler and Olay over the past year.
Sometimes beautiful design can move the needle all on its own.
4) Holograms. I’m still holding out for holograms…data-driven ones.
Patrick Marzullo, director of interactive production, Wieden+Kennedy Portland
1) For Interactive, 2014 felt like the year Listen and Respond campaigns peaked. We also saw the rise in experiential installations, notably those controlled with mobile web and virtual reality (e.g. Oculus Rift).
2) No matter what anybody says, the expectations are always extremely high.
3) I’m really proud of the integrated work we did for Nike during the World Cup. It was a massive global endeavor. For the main digital component, we had to extend the story of our 5-minute animated film into a conversation and keep it relevant for more than a month. We did it thanks to some custom technology that helped us create more than three hours of stunning animated videos, stills and live events that were featured in the right places at the right time throughout the tournament.
4) Nearly every agency is trying to develop products (digital and physical) and entertainment properties for clients. Most of us have failed at it for years, but in 2015 I think we’ll start to see those who have really committed begin to nail it. There’s also still a lot of ground to cover with VR, Mobile Web and Experiential Installations.
John Maxham, chief creative officer, DDB Chicago
1) The push for agencies to rapidly develop content for clients has hit full throttle. As a result, the lines between entertainment and advertising are blurring more than ever. We see this happening in the news industry as well, with some fairly controversial results. One of the impacts of this trend is that agencies are dabbling more in the entertainment world and entertainment companies are adding creative functions so they can compete with agencies for business. Production, media, and PR companies have also gotten into the game. They’ve been hiring creative directors left and right to attempt to build out their creative capabilities.
2) That ad agencies needn’t take the added competition lying down. Not by a long shot. The changing landscape has enabled us to unlock some very cool partnerships with content and entertainment companies– Funny or Die for example. These partnerships let us to tap into talent pools of comedy writers, celebrity talent and cultural phenoms that would have been previously unavailable to us. But I’d also like to add that not all content is good content. Just getting something out fast because it’s trending doesn’t mean it makes sense for your clients, or has any kind of creative merit.
3) I’m very proud of the McDonald’s Gol! App we developed for the World Cup this year and the supporting film for it that was called “The best World Cup spot ever” in the press. Also on McDonald’s, we tapped into Vine video phenom Zach King and did some great videos for The Value Menu. Zach was the perfect choice because his style is high quality but affordable and fast– just like The Value Menu. On State Farm I’m excited about the content partnership we’ve forged with Saturday Night Live. We’ve worked very collaboratively with their team to bring some of the classic SNL characters (Hans and Franz, The Superfans) to a whole new generation. Finally, I think the work we’re doing for Skittles continues to push that wonderfully weird brand in great new directions. Our Halloween spot– particularly the extended version– was one of the most well received that the campaign has ever seen.
4) The continuing evolution of how we produce content as it is squeezed from two sides– the insatiable demand for video across multiple platforms, and the continual pressure to produce that video more quickly, in greater volume and at lower cost. It’s fashionable to say TV is dying, but video consumption on screens of all sizes is skyrocketing.
Kate Morrison, head of content production, BBH New York
1) People are really starting to lean into the hybridization of film and digital. There’s been progress for a long time, but it’s really starting to take off. If you look at something like the W+K London Honda R film, The Other Side, you see a perfect example of great filmmaking coupled with a truly interactive experience. We are continuing to do work along those lines with our clients, including PlayStation, and I think it’s really exciting. Think about all of the different ways we can tell our stories and engage consumers if we make them part of the journey as well. As we can lean more into the interactive experiences, making great content can become more about making something people WANT to engage with, not something that people are forcibly disrupted by. But, getting people to opt in requires the creative and execution to be really strong, which is great for us as a creative agency. So, I think that’s a really exciting – and at times daunting – challenge that we’ve been leaning into this year.
2) More and more of our clients are leaning into testing as a way to measure scripts, get comfortable with ideas and move things forward into production. Traditionally, I think that a lot of creative shops have resisted testing because, on some level, it seems totally antithetical to creativity. That said, we’ve started leaning into testing and figuring out how to try and make it work for us as well as for our clients. Yes, execution is a HUGE part of any campaign, and that gets lost in the testing, but a really good idea should cut through as nothing more than words on a page. So, I think embracing that and occasionally even using it to our advantage has been a shift in focus for us this year.
3) We’ve done a couple of fully integrated campaigns for PlayStation this year that have been really exciting. One was our Gamer Masterpiece campaign that launched at E3 back in June. We made a 7’ oil painting with fine artist Andreas Englund that we used as the basis for a film, a mural at E3 and a fully interactive digital experience that we worked with RESN to create. It ran the gamut from the entirely analog process of creating a traditional oil painting to an entirely digital and interactive online experience (http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/07/31/today-create-your-gamer-masterpiece/).
We’ve also just shipped another project for them that we partnered with the New York City Ballet for. It’s called PlayStation Victory Dance: http://greatnessawaits.playstation.com/en-us/ps4dancecontest/#/ It’s a really fun integration of ballet and gaming, which I think seem pretty antithetical to each other until you get into it…
4) I think VR is going to be “the next big thing,” and it’s got huge potential if it really takes off. I’m scared of heights, and the Game of Thrones OR demo that Framestore did had me holding on to the operators arm for dear life!
Tor Myhren, worldwide chief creative officer, and president of Grey New York
1) Our industry’s obsession with celebrities is the story of the year in my opinion. Leader brands are using them to prove their dominance, challenger brands are using them as a shortcut to quick buzz, and everyone is using their social media tentacles as a media channel. I have never seen our industry lean more on celebrity as “the idea” than we did in 2014. Of course this simply mimics what’s happening in society.
2) Speed kills. We learn this year after year, and it’s only getting more intense. Brands that are nimble enough to react are winning. And not only in the digital space. Even with film and video, you must be able to ideate and execute faster and cheaper than ever in order to keep up with culture. This is a trend that will never reverse, so we better get used to it.
3) From our New York office, I am most proud of the work on DIRECTV. Most of which is good, old-fashioned TV. This is an incredibly smart and brave client, and we did four campaigns with them this year that I love: The ongoing Cable Effects spots, the family of Marionettes who talk about ugly wires, the Manning brothers’ “Fantasy Football Fantasy” music video, and the ongoing Rob Lowe series. “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe” is my fave.
4) Producing work at the speed of pop culture so that your brand is fast enough to draft off the fleeting conversations and fascinations driven by our obsession with celebrity gossip, tech trends and memes.
Brian O’Rourke, director of integrated production, TBWAChiatDay, LA
1) It seemed there was a real focus on brand strategy this year. Companies are competing for eyeballs and delivering just a bright shinny object is not quite enough. Understanding a brand’s consumer and looking at the big picture is critical. This allowed some smart creative to rise again.
Instead of one singular “integrated marketing” campaign for the year, Brands created a unified message that had significance and could be deployed in multiple media streams through different partners.
In the process, agencies provided a brand overview and utilized a broad spectrum of specialists, creating new opportunities for a number of unique production resources.
2) Look to the future but keep your feet on the ground. As a company, we had some bumps in the road throughout the year but we banded together as an agency and won three new Clients in Q4. This tested our DNA. As far as a department, we’ve managed to leverage our roots in traditional production excellence and apply that to all kinds of new craziness. Fun times. Seriously.
3) TBWAChiatDay has been very fortunate to have produced a large span of different projects with variable budgets. We’re also fortunate to have a production team that puts their heart and soul into everything we do, whether an animatic, website, event or full a blown 360 degree media environment.
Therefore, we have a lot to be proud of.
Some highlights include our iconic Derek Jeter retirement work for Gatorade that was ripe with many obstacles but proved the power of an emotionally driven project.
In addition, we created multiple TV shows for a number of brands that aired on various networks including ESPN, Spike, H2 and Hulu. Delivering successful branded entertainment meant a good deal of time “selling” as well as creating.
Ultimately, these projects forced us to think like a network programmer versus just an ad agency when it comes to content creation.
4) Imminent access to virtual reality via low cost cameras/viewing devices means a new experience. Imagine journalists reporting directly in the action or a father who can film his daughter’s 5th birthday party and relive it from multiple POV’s ten years later. It will be interesting how Brands use this immersive technology to connect their stories with a burgeoning audience.
Charley Wickman, executive VP/executive creative director, Leo Burnett, Chicago
1) By now we’ve all learned the content lesson that we don’t just compete with other advertisers anymore. We compete with everything from bloggers to kids with computer cams to apps to tourists with iPhones on Safari.
The natural corollary of this is participation. Social media for example, is just that; media. We can buy views the same way we buy viewership. But what we can’t buy, and therefore have to earn, is participation. Post it, postagram it, pin it, play it, whatever…just participate with it in some way, shape or form.
In the end, we’re not just competing for your attention. We’re competing for your action. That can’t be done with ephemeral sales messages…that can only be achieved by striking un-ignorable human truths.
3) Our esurance post-Super Bowl work seamlessly pulled together TV and Twitter by using a “cheaper” version of a Super Bowl spot, (first slot right after the Super Bowl) to make a powerful point about esurance: that we are so efficient we pass the savings, in this case the difference in price between a regular Super Bowl spot and a post-Super Bowl spot, on to our customers, which we did in the form of a tweet-based sweepstakes.
We were also proud of the Firestone TV spot entitled “Pick-up”, which was so beautiful as a 90 second cut that our clients decided to conform the media to the work, as opposed to the work to the media.
Customer response was as beautiful as the story.
4) Video/film is more important than ever.
And because we need more of it than ever, it needs to be more cost-efficient than ever.
But it still needs to be as well crafted as ever.
An ever-evolving challenge.
