How WPP Is Rethinking Advertising Through Production | James Brook Partridge, WPP Production

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Hi, and welcome to Technically Creative, where we talk to creative leaders about how technology and AI are changing their industries and their companies.
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Technically Creative is brought to you by Kubrick Labs, the AI consultant for creative companies.
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Today's guest is James Brooke Partridge, head of production in the UK at WPP Production.
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And before we get into this conversation, I wanna give a little bit of context.
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We recorded this interview before WPP released a memo that sent shockwaves through much of the advertising production community.
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The memo encouraged WPP agencies to direct more work towards their own production operations.
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The reaction was fierce.
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I subsequently had Steve Davies, the CEO of the Advertising Producers Association, and Matt Miller, the president and CEO of the AICP, or the Association of Independent Commercial Producers.
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They came on this podcast to discuss their objections, and I think they raised some very important points.
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I stand by the importance of those questions.
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But I also think there's another side to this story that deserves to be heard.
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At a time when much of the advertising industry is facing declining revenues and enormous pressure to adapt, WPP production actually grew by 1.5% in the first half of 2026.
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That's really significant.
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And it suggests there's a real demand for the production capabilities WPP has been building.
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And if you're responsible for thousands of employees, their careers, their livelihoods, and their ability to produce good work, you have a responsibility to keep that business healthy.
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I used to run multiple independent production companies.
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I know what it feels like to fight for work, develop talent, and worry about keeping the lights on.
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But those responsibilities don't suddenly disappear because you work for a holding company.
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A producer losing their job at WPP is every bit as serious as a producer losing their job at an independent production company.
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And I think sometimes we forget that when we turn these debates into battles between big companies and small ones.
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But there's another reality we have to acknowledge.
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Production is changing.
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There's more content being produced across more platforms for more audiences than at any point in history.
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And this should be an incredible moment of opportunity for producers.
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But the systems we've built around producing a handful of television commercials every year were never designed for this volume of work.
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And that's something I think the independent production community needs to be honest about.
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For years, a lot of production companies simply weren't interested in the smaller work.
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The $10,000 social package, the quick turnaround content, the endless variations and adaptations.
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And understandably, they weren't interested.
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Their businesses were built around carefully crafted commercials.
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The economics of making $10,000 or $20,000 for a package of content didn't make sense for them.
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So the agencies built that capability themselves.
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They hired people.
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They invested in that infrastructure.
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They learned how to make that work quickly, efficiently, and at scale.
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And now the market has moved around that capability.
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The work that production companies once considered peripheral has become central to the advertising business.
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The big television commercial is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the overall production requirements.
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Brands need hundreds, sometimes thousands of pieces of content across different channels.
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And the agencies that spent years learning how to produce that work are now expanding their capabilities to meet those needs.
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Isn't that what companies are supposed to do?
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To learn, to adapt, to invest in their people, and to get better at serving their customers?
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And if agencies have built successful production businesses in response to a market that independent production companies weren't particularly interested in, is it really unreasonable for them to continue developing those capabilities as the market grows?
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I'm not sure it is.
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And that doesn't mean they should be able to manipulate a competitive bidding process or steer clients away from better options.
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Those are legitimate objections and I think the industry is right to raise them.
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But building a better production capability and unfairly controlling who gets the work are two very different things.
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And I think we need to be careful not to confuse them.
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Because if we're gonna argue that independent production companies should be allowed to evolve, expand, and compete for all new kinds of creative work, surely we have to allow agency production companies to do the same thing.
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The challenge is making sure that everyone gets to compete fairly.
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And that's what James and I explore in this conversation.
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How do you build a production business that can operate at scale?
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What happens when technology allows us to make more work for the same money?
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And how do you lead a team through that kind of transformation while making sure the people doing the work are supported, trained, and given a future?
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What struck me most about James is how seriously he takes that last responsibility.
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He's managing a large team through an industry that's changing underneath their feet.
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And he's thinking about how to make them more capable, more adaptable, and more valuable.
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And I think that's worth listening to.
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We can disagree about how work should be awarded.
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We can defend genuine competition in the independent production ecosystem.
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And we can also recognize that the people building new production models are responding to real changes in what clients need.
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Those positions can coexist because ultimately, I think everyone in the industry wants the same broad outcome.
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More great work being made, more opportunities for talented people, and a production industry that can sustain the people working in it.
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The difficult part is figuring out how we get there.
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And that's why I'm glad we've had this conversation.
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This is James Brooke Partridge.
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I am so excited to have you on the podcast.
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We've been trying to do this for a while, and we've known of each other, you know, over the years, so many different guises.
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But I'm fascinated by what you're up to now, and so I wanted to just say thank you for coming on the podcast.
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It's a pleasure, Orlando.
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And I kind of, it's funny, we've circled around each other for years and never really met until about a few months ago when we kind of started connecting over LinkedIn and had a chat.
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Because your career has been fascinating to me as well.
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And yours to me.
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It's a pleasure.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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Well, it's a total treat.
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So you are the head of production for WPP Production in UK.
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This podcast is all about people who are at the intersection of creativity and industry.
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There's been so much change happening in advertising and production, in production at scale, and also at the holding company level in advertising.
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For people who are maybe in other industries, what do they need to understand about your role and what WPP Production does?
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It's quite a big question to start with.
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So WPP Production is a relatively net new entity, which was put together or came to being at the beginning of this year.
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And it's a consolidation of all the production operations within WPP under one banner.
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I guess my history might be quite interesting before we get into the reason why WB production might have been the way we've gone.
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But my job, I mean, I'm an agency producer by trade, as you were, I think, when you started out.
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We were the guys who worked with the creative departments and agencies, and we got the scripts from our creative department.
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When I started working in advertising in the last millennia in 1999, there was only three real forms of advertising.
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places that advertising went it was tv it was radio and it was print and of course there was cinema as an extension of it but there really was only a very limited uh a number of channels you go to which which which is not the case now um so um my job has been getting work commissioned across the years and making great work for creative departments and it still is right but i think the way we go about making work is changing which kind of
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and the demands of our clients are changing, which leads us to the WPP production entity.
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WPP production for me has been, or as I look at it, it's been put together due to demands being put onto our business by our clients mainly.
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I was reading some stuff the other day, and the clients at the moment are having to generate, at this point now, a generation of three times more content than they did three years ago.
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It is predicted that in the next two years, clients are going to need to generate between five to 20 times more content to be able to set the needs of social media and the algorithms, right?
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That is a huge amount of deliverables.
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And we know, you know, I've been standing on sets many, many times where we've been trying to chase our tails to capture the work that turned up the morning of the shoot to fill the social channels.
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We are unable in the current structures, in my opinion, to be able to meet that rising demand.
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Therefore, there needs to be a radical reshift in how we strategize around production.
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And I think what WPB production will enable us to do is put all the people who produce into the same entity.
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And in my opinion, it's going to elevate the role of the producer in the process because the conversations about what and how we make work, what we make and how we make it, are going to become fundamental to the process in a way which I don't think they really ever have before.
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Everybody thinks about an advertising agency doing a specific execution for a brand.
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What they don't realize is that actually prior to the social media age, that was siloed all the time.
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You might have an agency that would do a Heineken piece for their sponsorship, and you would have another one that would do their big brand work and another one that would do their retail work.
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And as we're seeing this always-on mentality of the amount of content that's required, a centralization of that production ecosystem is sort of required to be able to meet clients where they are.
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I think that's exactly right.
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And I think also it's married up with the fact that clients do not have as many clients, I don't think.
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You look at clients restructuring and downsizing.
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So you have less people trying to deliver more work with less money and faster timelines, right?
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So it's kind of almost perfect storm in my opinion.
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And I think that the...
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I've always said, and I do say this, I think advertising as a business has historically been quite reactionary in the way it goes about stuff.
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It doesn't necessarily... We live on the edge of culture, we want to represent the edge of culture through the way we communicate and what we talk about.
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But the way we operate I think has been...
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really hasn't changed that much.
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And I think we've been able to kind of sort of fudge that, to use a term.
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I don't think we can anymore.
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And I think the problem we have in all big holding companies is we need to be able to answer the questions our clients are asking us to deliver the communications that they need, which needs to turn up the place they knew it to be.
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There's no point in us sitting here wishing that we were being asked a different question.
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And I think over the years, I think perhaps we've always wished that question was different.
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And I think we're now in a situation where we absolutely have to service our clients in the right way.
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So for me, you know, the clients haven't got time to go around managing loads of different entities doing different work for different channels.
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They just don't have it.
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And I think one of the observations that is made, and I've heard spoken by leadership in WPP Production is...
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Clients probably need to be spending more of their money with one supplier.
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It doesn't have to be us, by the way.
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There's lots of other people they can choose from.
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But the end-to-end production process and the ability to be efficient across that process and scale across that process and strategize that process probably means they're going to have to consolidate their work and morph their work into one supplier.
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So I think we're in that state at the moment.
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What people don't understand is production is inherently not scalable.
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You are building up crews for specific executions of specific creative ideas.
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It's a very laborious.
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It's a very like you're calling up freelancers.
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You're trying to see who's available.
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You're calling up crew.
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You're seeing it.
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That makes that a very full of friction process.
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And so it's.
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If you're going to be doing that at scale, you need to hire people on a much on much longer contracts.
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You need to be able to make that scalable by reducing a lot of the friction across that process, I would imagine.
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completely true, but I also think that the production industry itself has...
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I mean, we've been through many years of intense cost controlling, of finding cheaper places to shoot, of how do we make this work harder?
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How do we sweat that a bit more?
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How do we get more out of this day?
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How do we shoot?
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I don't think there's a huge amount of scope within the actual shooting process itself to cut back.
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So we either need to
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to your point, commit maybe to operating in a slightly different way and putting volume through one entity so they can perhaps do deals in a different way or internalize crew, right, which is part of what's going on at the moment, so that you can control those costs a bit better.
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Or you need to employ technology to help you scale it.
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And I think it's probably a combination.
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It is a combination of both.
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I think that is where we're at at the moment.
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I'm so glad you lean towards AI because I'm always the one bringing it up first, and I'm just so glad that you've done it.
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Well, it's kind of, AI is such a fascinating area for me.
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I kind of, if you, I've been quite, I've been very open to AI since day one, simply because I think it's an incredible tool.
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And I think it enables people to do things differently, right?
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And enhance productions in a way.
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But I think the truth of AI, like a lot of the, you know, like a lot of the innovations that come along, I think...
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People tend to speak about all these things in quite a binary fashion when they first come out.
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It's an either or.
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You're either doing it in AI or you're not doing it in AI.
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The truth of the matter is that AI will become blended into our workflows.
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And we will use it as an instrument to help expand what we do.
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Because we need to expand what we do.
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And it's going to be great at doing it.
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Quite where we land with it completely in terms of that, I don't know.
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And that's kind of part of the fun at the moment.
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You know, I was judging the film craft category of can this year and they had the first time they had an AI section of their own.
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Some of the work that they're doing in that space looks pretty impressive, right?
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And, you know, there's no doubt in my mind that AI is here.
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it sounds stupid even saying it's definitely here to stay is how we embrace it is the question and finding the boundaries between what we're comfortable with and what we're not both from a client perspective and from a consumer perspective i think these these are the journeys we're going also leave the whole legal stuff that comes around it we're on a journey and i think for me that's that is super exciting but super challenging for people and pretty unnerving for some people
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A few minutes ago, you said, you know, costs are coming down.
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And like, you know, on some level, that's sort of not true.
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I mean, the overall budget for a brand is actually always ticking up.
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The reality is that the cost per execution is coming down because they require so many more assets.
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And what I like about your framing is that AI is often framed as an either or.
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It's either human production or machine production, creativity or efficiency, craft or automation.
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I think your view is much more useful, which is there's more need than ever before.
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There's budget happening.
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But on the larger level, it's always ticking up.
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We just need to figure out where this tool that helps us scale production fits in a real production pipeline.
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No, I think that's absolutely spot on.
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Yeah, I think it's...
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Your point is right.
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It's about the amount of stuff we need to do for the money we've got.
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That's the equation that is becoming more challenging for us.
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You know, I think we're...
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Big Op Co's got the conversation around AI a little bit wrong at the beginning was they talked about it as a cost saving device, right?
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And I actually think it should be framed as a value add.
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They are slightly different things when you think about it, right?
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I don't think that AI is necessarily going to make everything massively cheaper.
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I think what AI is going to enable us to do is to deliver more value.
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for the same and it's a slightly different conversation but I think that the I think that you know you have a lot of people thinking there's going to be a huge AI dividend on stuff and I think some of that may happen especially with the genetic workflows and what have you which everyone's you know heavily invested in and looking at but I think that I tend to look at AI more as a value add rather than simply a cost cutting at all.
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This is such a new tool to us.
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And so I guess to your point, do you see it potentially just creating new classes of advertising?
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I very much don't see it, you know, eliminating anything.
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I think it's going to create whole new sectors of advertising and production.
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In what sense, new sectors?
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Just seeing it on the film level.
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There are $5 million productions or $2 million productions that nobody would have touched.
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Independent films don't have the money and take forever.
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And the studios are trying to take big swings to make big money all at once.
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Hybrid production allows for smaller films that are written to be smaller by really good writers to potentially have an opportunity to get $2 million, which is comparatively a lot less,
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For a studio to be shot in a hybrid workflow on a volume stage with people populating the Unreal Engine backdrop, having actors respond.
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And, you know, the House of David movie that starred Sir Ben Kingsley, that was shot in two weeks on a hybrid stage at MGM.
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It's not like that's taking away from a shoot that would have happened.
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Nobody would have invested in a Moses film.
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No, I think, I think, so you're absolutely right.
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I kind of look at, there was a brief spot made maybe two, two or three years ago, which was done using the volume stages down Garden Studio, I think it was quite brilliantly did it.
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and it was you had four four scenarios in it there was the North Pole there was a jungle there was a desert there was another another quite what sort of kind of sort of remote and hard to get to location right they shot it all that ad would not have been made that way it would not have been made without any without any of these screens right and I think we're seeing things we'd recently did a campaign for a Spanish beer and
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where we were able to, you know, the whole strategic positioning is having a beer at Magic Hour.
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Magic Hour is an hour.
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If you want to do loads of iterations within that hour, for real, you've got some very limiting factors on your production, which are going to cost you a huge amount of money.
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Again, could not have been done without using LED screens to maintain Magic Hour all day.
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And I think we deliver something like 150 executions over
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over three or four days.
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So I think the point you're making is, are we now, what, the way I would frame it is we are now able to do things we could previously not do.
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We couldn't do previously, right?
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So it's a creative enabler when people understand the tool properly.
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And this is, I think, where the excitement comes from.
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I mean, I was in a meeting with a creative director the other day, and we were talking about where on volume stages, I think, really help clients immediately is in the retail space.
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Yeah.
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we can build you a store in Unreal.
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You don't have to shut your stores down anymore.
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You haven't got to shoot at night shutting your store down.
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You haven't got to shut the door.
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All the problems have come with that, which we don't see, but clients do, by the way.
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We can work around that.
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And then the creator goes, oh, but we can put an elephant in the store now.
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And yeah, you can do that because it's not...
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You know, I mean, it's not we haven't got the health and safety issue.
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So it's kind of you can think somewhat differently about how you go about solving problems.
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Yeah.
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And I think I think like all these technologies, the more people who sit there and work with it, who really know what they're doing, the better these things are going to get.
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there was an Uber Eats campaign with Robert De Niro that was done in the UK.
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David Shane, I think, directed it.
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Yeah.
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And it was all done with, all the driving shots of Robert De Niro were done on a volume stage, right?
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So he could be directed through the window,
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It looks like they're driving, you're maximizing his time, you don't have any PR issues with people looking in from the outside and all that kind of stuff.
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It just gives you a much more controlled environment and no one's going to sit there going, well, that's definitely done on an LED screen.
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And by the way, even if they thought it was, it doesn't detract from the quality of the work.
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So I think it's, I think it's, it is a, the technologies we are looking around now are, are, are super scary in terms of what we can achieve with them.
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But I think people need to be really switched on and tuned to that line of thinking rather than going, oh, this worries me because of X, Y, and Z.
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What you said earlier, thinking of in terms of creative opportunity and value add, I've noticed a lot of creative professionals shy away from making that shift because they like the way it's been, you know, like, I mean, especially in the UK.
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A producer in the UK of commercials versus a producer of films, the producer of commercials is always going to have shot more days than that producer of films.
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It's an environment where if you like the craft of production, advertising is the place to be.
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A standard commercial producer is going to have shot more different types of production and probably have shot more days than most film producers.
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And so people who love the craft, I think naturally gravitate towards that.
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But I do think that it makes them reticent to buy into AI if they've already got a successful career doing it, you know, the old way.
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Look, it's change.
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I mean, and change is hard to deal with sometimes.
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And I think someone said something to the other day, which I thought was great.
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Everyone's progress, but no one wants change.
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Right.
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I think you have the, you have these kinds of situations where, you know, people, and, and, and I think, um, yeah,
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there's no doubt that the changes that the technology are bringing are going to require people to skill up in different ways.
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So as we're in this journey, for people who've done things a certain way all their life, it can be quite a scary thought, right?
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We've been really focused with my production teams in London to get our teams
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whatever discipline they sit in to be comfortable with using generative AI.
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Yeah.
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Be it post-production, be it, some people really keen to get into it, some people struggle a bit, but we've really worked on skilling those people up, you know, and giving them opportunities to learn and all this kind of stuff for a couple of reasons, really.
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One is I think it protects their careers long term, whether they acknowledge that or not.
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I think having an understanding of the tools and realizing what they can and can't do is really important.
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But I think also, you can't go out and hire that talent easily.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So if you were to go, well, I need to bring in, you know, five experts on VO3, well, you're going to have to go and find that talent.
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It's going to be expensive.
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So better train your guys internally.
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But also the people we're training up, be they flame operators or editors or motion designers, that kind of stuff, they know what good looks like.
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They understand the craft of the work, and therefore they can prompt the tools in a way that I certainly can't.
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I mean, as a producer, I don't know exactly what was a DOP, for example, prompting with lens information, lighting cues, and all this kind of stuff.
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There's so much value in the knowledge these people have to get the best out of these tools.
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So I think it's...
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So from that standpoint, I think it's a time where...
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It's a time of great change, it's a time of great transformation.
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It is happening very quickly, which people always find, you know, change is bad enough, but the speed of it is unsettling.
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But I think it's just important to kind of, for everyone to take a breath and go, these are challenges we faced in our lives before.
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It probably didn't feel quite as existential at the time because it was happening slower.
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But we actually deal with change quite well, I think, as an industry.
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And I genuinely believe that everyone needs to lean into it to understand what these tools can do and where they're not quite so strong so we can have proper conversations around it with clients and ourselves.
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I mean, that's so spot on.
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Anybody who takes the evangelical position of this is going to solve and change everything or the defeatist position of that we're doomed.
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All of the good conversation that actually matters is in the middle.
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It's very attractive on LinkedIn to be like, and this is the end of production as we know it.
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And that I'm sure gets impressions and clicks.
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But it's just not the way serious people talk about these sorts of problems.
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The production industry is an emotional beast, I always say, right?
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And it's that way for a reason.
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I think there's passion.
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There's passion in it.
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There's a love for what we do.
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There's a love for the craft.
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And it's what makes the industry amazing.
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I think sometimes that passion can get directed in ways which are unhelpful.
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You know, and I think part of this comes with Asian experience as well, Orlando, and I think that for me, I can be quite reactive at times, but I know that I'm a much better version of myself when I actually absorb stuff and think about it a bit more.
295
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Well, maybe let's have a look at that.
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Let's try this out and see what happens.
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I think someone was saying the other day, like in production.
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you deal with problems on set all the time.
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There's either the guttural panic, everyone panic kind of response, or I don't want to do that or get upset about it, or there's the considered breath in, all right, well, we're going to have to deal with this one.
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How are we going to get through it sort of thing?
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And I think experience teaches you that you can deal with all these things as they get thrown at you.
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But I think I wouldn't want to remove the emotion and passion for the business because it's very important, but I think sometimes it gets, it can be detrimental to constructive conversation.
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Yeah.
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I 100% agree with that.
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You run a production organization of more than 150 people.
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How does that scale change the way you think about production problems?
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The scale of my team, well, I have the advantage that I have a lot of people to call in and we've got problems going through, right?
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And they're on payroll.
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So in theory, we should be able to find someone to pick up a problem or advise on stuff.
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So that is very comforting in some regard.
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I mean, although...
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you know, you would appreciate the sitting in our job, because we don't have a, we don't have a load of people sitting around not doing stuff.
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Right.
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But there's a lot of expertise within the team I've got and lots of years of experience in a team I've got, which is invaluable to me.
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I mean, I couldn't, I don't have a senior leadership of people who are absolutely fantastic and who I lean into and rely on really to help me get stuff done.
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I don't think the problems of production, I think,
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So I have that benefit.
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I think the size of the team comes with all the issues of a larger team in terms of HR, management, all this kind of stuff, being emotionally switched on to the pressures that are going on around us, having time to speak to people when they need it, all that kind of stuff.
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But I think in terms of solving production problems themselves, I don't think the way we look at that massively changes, except we have end-to-end capabilities, right?
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Which, of course, we didn't back in the days.
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We can go from an agency producing role all the way back into a business affairs and delivery aspect within our organization or any part of that that you want.
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And I think that's interesting to me.
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And I also think, if I think bigger than just London, we have somewhere around 9,500 people in the business globally now.
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We're the biggest production company globally by some margin.
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And every time you scratch the surface a bit, you find amazing people sitting in places you didn't think.
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And I find that really exciting.
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I mean, given the fact that I travelled with work for some time,
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So I'm very open to and really enjoy engaging with other markets and working in that way.
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And I think it gives us a point, a real point of difference to other, some other operations.
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I think we have the biggest footprint globally by some way.
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So I think the ability to scale within my own team, but then also to scale out horizontally to the networks really, really interesting to me.
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Are there problems, specific problems, that only become visible when you're leading that many people?
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Things that you wouldn't have seen when you were just an agency producer on the ground?
334
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Oh, God.
335
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Yeah, loads.
336
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I mean, I kind of, you know, as a single agency producer...
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agency producing is a really interesting job I think.
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I always likened it to being in an hourglass and you're sitting in the middle where the sand goes through.
339
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You are that point of contact between the agency and the production company and you carry a lot of pressure.
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You really do.
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And I'm just thinking back at my producing days.
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You carry a lot of pressure and expectation and people's hopes and dreams and all that kind of...
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I mean it sounds a bit lofty saying that but it kind of is the world we live in when you're dealing with high level creative work and
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and emotional people and what have you and tight budgets and shooting deadlines and client needs and all that kind of stuff.
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You're right in the middle of all that stuff.
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And as a people pleaser, I found that quite challenging at times, although you always wanted to deliver the best work you can and kind of...
347
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But it led to a lot of sleepless nights for me.
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I think within...
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I think the challenges of running a team are much, I don't feel as isolated, really.
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I've got a management team whom I work with in London, who I can speak to, who are great.
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I have people in finance I can speak to, people in talent management I can speak to.
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I've got my MB, Nick, it's great.
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You know, there's a great team around me.
354
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And what you're tending to do is try to figure out how you move the work through the system in the best way with the people and make sure everyone is working hard enough, but not working so hard that they're driving themselves into difficult places and that kind of stuff, which can happen.
355
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I find the challenges to be much more varied and much more different in that sense.
356
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I mean, it's interesting.
357
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Productions are pretty varied, right?
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But I find the role of managing teams and teams this size to be...
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It's a completely different set of challenges, I think, in a way, Orlando.
360
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And I kind of felt having produced...
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I got to the point with producing where I felt I've kind of done this a bit, you know, I've done some amazing work.
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I'm really proud of, but I kind of wanted a different challenge.
363
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And I think that this definitely gives it to me.
364
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There's just so many other things to think about that are new to me, I guess.
365
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Maybe, maybe the challenges aren't greater.
366
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They're just different.
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In Hollywood, there's always been this understanding that there's a studio system, this industry.
368
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And I think that like advertising production has always felt like these little sort of one off little executions of perfectly crafted little things.
369
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And I think that like we accept it from Hollywood.
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And I think that like what's interesting to me is that like Omnicom centralizing production, they sort of did it in this like bold, brash way that kind of upset a whole bunch of people.
371
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And it seems like everybody's kind of having to do that to make sure that the production systems are fit for purpose in the world that we've talked about, which is a world where a brand is always on, always communicating, always needing assets.
372
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It feels like advertising is systematizing for the first time in a way that Hollywood had done 100 years ago.
373
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Yeah, I think there is some truth in that.
374
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I mean, I was having a conversation with someone today about, I feel like, there was actually a really interesting article in Campaign recently, and it was about whether agencies need to make their own work, and it was based on a couple of creators who set up a new agency where they wrote work, they strategized and made work, but didn't necessarily make it themselves.
375
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And actually the commentary around that was I think far more interesting and open than I thought it was going to be.
376
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There was those who said that agencies should always make their work and there were quite a lot of very senior people in the industry going, it depends or it's a choice or this kind of stuff.
377
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I kind of feel like, and again it's my personal point of view on it, but I think we are, the agency business is becoming more like a studio, right?
378
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where the work comes in and you have an idea and you have a creative and you have directors, but they might not be the most important or loudest voice in the room, right?
379
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I think producing, and why I said earlier, I think the producing world has been elevated through this is because production strategy and how we get these made and how we make sure we get the money that isn't getting any bigger to deliver all the assets, that requires a production strategy which is going to be driven by producers.
380
00:31:21.721 --> 00:31:23.362
And that, I think, is a slightly different way
381
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world than the one you and I grew up in where, you know, I remember having a creative director shouting at me one day saying, you know, remember who you work for, you work for me.
382
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I mean, I had that a couple of times back in the sort of the early 2000s.
383
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I would argue there was a dilution of power going on.
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where it used to historically reside 100% within creative leadership.
385
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And I think it's not like that anymore.
386
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And I don't think that's to the detriment of anybody, really.
387
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I think it's just to the need of the client.
388
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And I think there's projects that will require...
389
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one part of that to be more dominant than others, but I think there has to be, it has to be a partnership.
390
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And I think actually the way, the way we're now set up as an organization, we have WPB Media, WPB Creative, WPB Production, and Enterprise Solutions.
391
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We're pillars, which means we're kind of in the same place rather than it being a horizontality where work would come down.
392
00:32:17.690 --> 00:32:20.132
So I think that for me as a producer,
393
00:32:21.152 --> 00:32:23.034
Yes, there were loads of challenges around what we do.
394
00:32:23.334 --> 00:32:25.596
Yes, it is different from the way it used to work.
395
00:32:25.656 --> 00:32:30.460
But I actually think the producers are being empowered in a way they never were previously, I think.
396
00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:36.324
What's the kind of single biggest change that you think is required out of a production system?
397
00:32:36.565 --> 00:32:40.067
Well, like we said before, you're 150 people that you run.
398
00:32:40.308 --> 00:32:44.371
What's going to future-proof a team like that over the course of the next five to ten years?
399
00:32:44.695 --> 00:32:47.857
I think ability to embracing the change, right?
400
00:32:47.877 --> 00:32:51.740
Embracing technology, really being open to doing things differently.
401
00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:52.760
I mean, I kind of...
402
00:32:53.241 --> 00:33:01.546
Going back to the conversation we had about LED stages and LED technology, when you actually see that stuff working on set, it's pretty mind-blowing, right?
403
00:33:01.746 --> 00:33:02.307
Yeah.
404
00:33:02.587 --> 00:33:03.288
You kind of go...
405
00:33:04.208 --> 00:33:05.748
What can we do with this which is different?
406
00:33:05.788 --> 00:33:12.630
But then actually we spent a long time trying to get people, mainly creative departments, to kind of engage with that technology.
407
00:33:12.970 --> 00:33:13.810
It's really difficult.
408
00:33:13.830 --> 00:33:23.853
I think when you get challenges around production or you have ideas on a table, would people want to go and do things how they've done them correctly?
409
00:33:24.153 --> 00:33:26.655
consistently done because they know they can get the results that way.
410
00:33:26.915 --> 00:33:30.198
But actually what we've needed to do is look at things differently.
411
00:33:30.598 --> 00:33:46.150
I think therefore I would say to how you future-proof yourself in the world right now is to be constantly curious, to be looking at stuff differently, to be opening up the new tools to play with, seeing what it can do, where can it help us, where can it not.
412
00:33:46.651 --> 00:33:51.434
And I think the other part around that which we've got to be careful to be protected is giving people time to explore.
413
00:33:52.335 --> 00:33:55.896
And also giving people time to play with tools which might not work properly, right?
414
00:33:56.116 --> 00:33:57.437
And have that kind of conversation.
415
00:33:57.457 --> 00:33:58.877
But for me, it's about that.
416
00:33:58.897 --> 00:34:01.938
It's about completely being open to change.
417
00:34:02.198 --> 00:34:13.882
That's the thing I think people don't think of a lot is one of the biggest things I saw change in my time in advertising and now is budget sure, but time.
418
00:34:14.483 --> 00:34:16.363
I mean, you must remember this.
419
00:34:16.383 --> 00:34:20.625
There was a time where you had about two weeks to search for a director.
420
00:34:21.565 --> 00:34:24.147
Like you, you could look at the DVD wall.
421
00:34:24.167 --> 00:34:26.910
You called the production company and go, Oh, I want this reel and whatever else.
422
00:34:26.990 --> 00:34:31.013
And you as a PA would search through all of the directors, see who was good.
423
00:34:31.033 --> 00:34:32.294
You would give that to your boss.
424
00:34:32.314 --> 00:34:33.956
The boss would give it to the creative directors.
425
00:34:33.976 --> 00:34:36.898
They would sit and watch DVDs over and over and over again.
426
00:34:37.419 --> 00:34:39.460
And that was about two weeks of time.
427
00:34:39.620 --> 00:34:47.047
I mean, now, you know, everybody sort of decides from the top of their head, scripts start going out the day after the producer got the brief.
428
00:34:47.067 --> 00:34:47.547
Yeah.
429
00:34:47.667 --> 00:34:53.212
That that's the shocking thing, I think, to most people is everybody assumes that the system is working now.
430
00:34:53.252 --> 00:34:56.334
And I assume that in your position, you're realizing, no, it's not.
431
00:34:56.414 --> 00:35:00.598
We need to still get faster to be as responsive as we need to be for our clients.
432
00:35:00.924 --> 00:35:04.865
Yeah, I guess when we, you probably did the IPA course back in the days, right?
433
00:35:04.945 --> 00:35:05.685
Oh, yeah.
434
00:35:05.705 --> 00:35:09.926
With that green and brown book we all got given, which told us how long production should take.
435
00:35:09.966 --> 00:35:18.647
And I think for a standard kind of two-location or three-location shoot, it was recommended that you had a 12-week production period.
436
00:35:18.747 --> 00:35:21.187
I don't think 12-week production periods exist anymore.
437
00:35:21.547 --> 00:35:21.688
No.
438
00:35:22.128 --> 00:35:25.828
And if you've spoken to people in those days, they'll go, I can't be done any faster.
439
00:35:26.848 --> 00:35:28.749
The truth is technology's changed that, right?
440
00:35:28.769 --> 00:35:29.929
You have things like,
441
00:35:30.629 --> 00:35:52.782
shooting on video on on digit digitally which enables you to move to shoot more and then to get stuff digitized in a way faster you have editing on set uh you have um you know there's there's been levers that have been pulled to enable us to go fast also people just saying we're going to have to do this faster right yeah but the time factor is is it is why clients said so
442
00:35:53.202 --> 00:35:59.364
You know, but again, it's always kind of, and I always find there's, it's always interesting to me.
443
00:35:59.464 --> 00:36:09.246
I, you know, a lot of the, a lot of conversations I have with people are people getting challenged with stuff and then sort of sitting there going, I wish I hadn't been asked that question.
444
00:36:09.266 --> 00:36:10.447
Or I wish that question was different.
445
00:36:10.467 --> 00:36:13.207
Or I wish the facts I was facing with weren't the facts I'm faced with.
446
00:36:13.427 --> 00:36:13.628
Yeah.
447
00:36:13.928 --> 00:36:17.489
And I always, and I always go to the point, it's fine to feel that way.
448
00:36:18.209 --> 00:36:18.489
But.
449
00:36:19.129 --> 00:36:20.329
The question isn't going to change.
450
00:36:20.809 --> 00:36:24.150
This is the, this is the, this is the, we need to, we need to address this point.
451
00:36:24.490 --> 00:36:31.632
And by the way, sitting around saying how unfair it all is, you're just wasting time, which could be better, better serve actually finding a solution on it.
452
00:36:31.652 --> 00:36:38.314
It might not be, the solution you come up with might not be, what everyone wanted to hear, but it will probably be a good solution.
453
00:36:39.034 --> 00:36:40.934
And, you know, you kind of walk down these roads.
454
00:36:40.974 --> 00:36:42.495
And I think it's actually quite empowering in a way.
455
00:36:42.775 --> 00:36:45.375
The time thing, I mean, we do a lot of social content for clients now.
456
00:36:45.495 --> 00:36:47.776
And literally it's like, yeah, brief in the morning, deliver in the evening.
457
00:36:49.257 --> 00:36:59.643
and I think that where these big operations need to be really wearing is there's people out there who do that, one man bands, two man bands, small companies, they'll do it and they'll do it happily.
458
00:37:00.103 --> 00:37:05.346
Therefore, if that's what clients can receive from other people, we should be able to do the same.
459
00:37:05.586 --> 00:37:10.831
There's no point building a whole system and it being less efficient or working more slowly.
460
00:37:10.851 --> 00:37:11.131
100%.
461
00:37:11.211 --> 00:37:17.137
And I think that, you know, one thing that, you know, the one big advantage we have, which is scale can sometimes be a hindrance, right?
462
00:37:17.177 --> 00:37:19.178
I think with systems and processes and all this kind of stuff.
463
00:37:19.198 --> 00:37:21.120
And I think we've got to be super smart about how we deal with that.
464
00:37:21.220 --> 00:37:22.782
And then there's the cost side of it as well.
465
00:37:22.802 --> 00:37:25.384
We, you know, we can't be more expensive than our competitors, right?
466
00:37:25.404 --> 00:37:26.105
Absolutely no way.
467
00:37:26.125 --> 00:37:26.285
So,
468
00:37:26.685 --> 00:37:33.592
You know, but there's no reason why we should be if we're smart and clever about things and we work together to fix these problems.
469
00:37:34.133 --> 00:37:38.578
But I think, yeah, it's kind of, it would be odd, put it not, to have built a system which kind of was slower and more expensive.
470
00:37:38.878 --> 00:37:40.660
Although, you know, give it a go, see what happens.
471
00:37:41.158 --> 00:37:48.141
Obviously, it kind of used to be the big value of agencies is that they would go, we're going to craft this amazingly beautiful little film.
472
00:37:48.661 --> 00:37:55.505
Now we're working in a time where brands want brand consistency across all of their markets.
473
00:37:55.625 --> 00:37:57.385
They want a similar look and feel.
474
00:37:57.826 --> 00:38:04.849
They don't really want some agency going off and crafting something that looks substantially different to anything else.
475
00:38:05.549 --> 00:38:11.277
Do you think that that's also eroding the unique offering that the boutique agencies used to have?
476
00:38:11.578 --> 00:38:12.399
It's an interesting one.
477
00:38:12.439 --> 00:38:12.800
I think...
478
00:38:13.943 --> 00:38:17.907
Weirdly, I think that boutique agencies are going to do pretty well at the moment.
479
00:38:17.927 --> 00:38:20.790
I think they're going to do pretty well because they will service specific briefs.
480
00:38:21.070 --> 00:38:35.084
And also certain clients who don't need the scale in, you know, globally, they might need, they might have a particular, you know, for example, and just a UK based client who just does UK based work might not have the same challenges that a big multinational corporation has, right?
481
00:38:35.164 --> 00:38:37.727
In terms of their budgets and how they price and all this kind of stuff.
482
00:38:38.147 --> 00:38:45.689
So I think there's a work that I, you know, and you're seeing quite a lot of boutique agencies starting up, and I think that's where some people go because they prefer to work in that space.
483
00:38:46.329 --> 00:38:54.311
I think we are still seeing big bits of work come out of, or big ideas for sure coming out of agency groups.
484
00:38:54.911 --> 00:39:04.854
I mean, just off the top of my head, Vaseline Verify was a huge winner in the new award shows, which was a social idea really based around verifying
485
00:39:05.675 --> 00:39:11.123
online people who were talking about, influencers who were talking about what they did with Vaseline and how it worked for them.
486
00:39:11.143 --> 00:39:11.804
Was it true, was it not?
487
00:39:11.824 --> 00:39:15.950
And there's a whole kind of, you know, a big idea, but executed in a different space.
488
00:39:16.030 --> 00:39:18.393
And I actually think that's an interesting area for us as agencies.
489
00:39:18.413 --> 00:39:18.994
I think we're seeing
490
00:39:20.376 --> 00:39:20.997
KitKat heist.
491
00:39:21.217 --> 00:39:36.973
I mean, a great example of how you take the theft of a truckload of KitKats and turn it into a massive online PR exercise, which is not something necessarily that the big agencies would have done in days gone by because we were focusing on the bit you just talked about.
492
00:39:37.293 --> 00:39:42.218
But actually where we're seeing our audience is changing and how we're engaging with our audiences is changing.
493
00:39:42.238 --> 00:39:43.780
And therefore, I think what we're seeing is...
494
00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:47.663
the ability to play in different spaces in really interesting ways.
495
00:39:48.123 --> 00:39:56.970
So I don't think, I don't think, I guess the answer to the question you're asking is, I don't think the need for those kind of executions is as big as it used to be.
496
00:39:57.791 --> 00:39:59.452
It doesn't mean we're not going to do them.
497
00:39:59.472 --> 00:40:00.653
It doesn't mean they're not going to happen.
498
00:40:00.993 --> 00:40:02.815
But I think that they're going to happen less and less.
499
00:40:02.855 --> 00:40:09.320
And you're going to see much more of the social kind of PR experiential kind of stuff going on, which I think, again, is interesting and exciting, actually.
500
00:40:09.340 --> 00:40:09.460
Right.
501
00:40:09.580 --> 00:40:13.541
You mentioned in there kind of, you know, how brands are engaging with audiences.
502
00:40:14.021 --> 00:40:18.742
Gary Vee was interviewed about Cannes, and he said something very interesting.
503
00:40:18.842 --> 00:40:34.206
He feels like Cannes is putting the cart before the horse, that basically people are going, look, creativity works, because they're cherry-picking the best of creativity and pointing at the examples where it did work and awarding that and saying that that's all creativity.
504
00:40:34.606 --> 00:40:35.586
His point is...
505
00:40:36.186 --> 00:40:37.668
You need to be A-B testing.
506
00:40:37.708 --> 00:40:49.359
He believes that it's actually wildly irresponsible for a brand to put media dollars behind an idea that hasn't been validated in organic social.
507
00:40:49.859 --> 00:40:55.765
And I think as that speaks to we've talked about how technology is affecting production and systems now.
508
00:40:56.382 --> 00:41:06.488
How is it potentially being used in terms of the data analytics to figure out where an idea might be more successful?
509
00:41:06.768 --> 00:41:14.532
The open platform that we've got has the capabilities to test work against audiences, be they synthetic audiences or not.
510
00:41:16.253 --> 00:41:24.861
We are definitely seeing always on kind of loops where work is going out there and it's being testable and coming back and changing and being changed at pace.
511
00:41:25.021 --> 00:41:26.663
The testing piece is interesting to me.
512
00:41:27.123 --> 00:41:34.269
I mean, again, I always sit there going, if testing was so great, every piece of work would always be brilliant, right?
513
00:41:34.530 --> 00:41:36.191
And we don't necessarily live in that world.
514
00:41:36.211 --> 00:41:40.115
So I think testing itself must to some degree be flawed, right?
515
00:41:40.275 --> 00:41:42.337
It's not going to give you all the answers to everything.
516
00:41:42.757 --> 00:41:49.803
But I think creativity without measurement risks just high-level wasting of art, you know, art for art's sake.
517
00:41:49.984 --> 00:41:54.127
I think there's always that, and there's always been elements of that in the world we live in.
518
00:41:54.167 --> 00:42:00.513
But data without creativity, you can create just irrelevant stuff as well.
519
00:42:00.533 --> 00:42:02.735
I mean, you know, stuff that doesn't work as well, right?
520
00:42:03.135 --> 00:42:05.718
And I actually think, you know, the testing points...
521
00:42:06.338 --> 00:42:10.421
It's important to understand what your audience is like and understand that.
522
00:42:10.761 --> 00:42:20.267
But I still think there has to be room for the unexpected execution or an idea which elevates something which no one saw coming.
523
00:42:21.628 --> 00:42:33.897
How we protect that in a world of increased analytics is something that doesn't keep me awake at night, but I think it's something we need to keep our eye on because otherwise we end up becoming a sea of sameness because data kind of...
524
00:42:34.497 --> 00:42:37.598
will tend to come back with insights that might be similar.
525
00:42:37.618 --> 00:42:46.900
I mean, you kind of look at the example I would give about around that, and I've worked on beauty brands for quite a long time, is when you look at beauty brands in certain spaces, a lot of the work they do is the same.
526
00:42:47.220 --> 00:42:49.541
It looks and feels the same, right?
527
00:42:49.601 --> 00:42:50.381
And that's all tested.
528
00:42:50.541 --> 00:42:52.362
That's all very heavily tested, right?
529
00:42:53.062 --> 00:42:58.563
So what we're not seeing there is the testing give us points of difference or differentiation which makes stuff stand out.
530
00:42:59.003 --> 00:43:07.185
When you look at work that stood out across the time we've been in the business, it's the stuff which didn't feel like it was right.
531
00:43:07.205 --> 00:43:08.925
It's the stuff that you think would never pass the testing.
532
00:43:08.945 --> 00:43:10.745
I mean, Honda Cog's probably a good example.
533
00:43:10.785 --> 00:43:11.966
Guinness Surf is another example.
534
00:43:11.986 --> 00:43:17.547
I mean, these ads which were kind of counterintuitive to the world they lived in, so they stood out more.
535
00:43:17.727 --> 00:43:18.727
I mean, Cambria and Gorilla.
536
00:43:18.747 --> 00:43:19.588
There's a great example.
537
00:43:19.628 --> 00:43:23.830
People still didn't know what the hell its purpose was after they watched it.
538
00:43:24.030 --> 00:43:26.632
No, and if you tested that, I wouldn't have seen the light of day, right?
539
00:43:26.772 --> 00:43:27.813
So I think we've got to...
540
00:43:28.053 --> 00:43:31.575
The world of testing and the ability to test has never been greater.
541
00:43:31.995 --> 00:43:34.457
The speed at which we can do it's never been faster.
542
00:43:35.097 --> 00:43:37.759
The results that we get obviously inform what we do.
543
00:43:38.339 --> 00:43:41.942
And I think that that is to be lent into, right?
544
00:43:41.982 --> 00:43:42.902
We shouldn't ignore it.
545
00:43:43.322 --> 00:43:45.104
But I think there is something to be said for...
546
00:43:45.904 --> 00:44:09.076
instinctive instinct around work there is something to be said for the ability to go i believe in what that's going to do and to back it and to give it a go and i'd say also with that you know given we talked about you know the speed of production how we can turn things around quite quickly and different production methodologies the ability to test sort of out their ideas or get stuff out in the market is is also there right so i think i think
547
00:44:09.956 --> 00:44:24.257
The analytic pipeline, the way we respond, I mean, this 5 to 20 times content challenge the clients have got, that's going to have to be fed by algorithms that are telling us what's going on and changing the data and changing the work because we're not going to do that manually.
548
00:44:24.718 --> 00:44:32.386
But I would always say be careful not to just walk into, you know, let's try and elevate a buck beyond a sea of sameness where we can, right?
549
00:44:32.606 --> 00:44:35.029
Let's try to make sure we're entertaining our audiences.
550
00:44:35.049 --> 00:44:42.597
Let's try to make sure that we are keeping them there for reasons which are the right reasons and which are considered.
551
00:44:42.697 --> 00:44:44.419
Because I think actually when you think about…
552
00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:49.686
data driving everything, what then becomes the point of difference is your creativity, right?
553
00:44:49.766 --> 00:44:51.609
And the sharp end of the creative sphere, right?
554
00:44:51.629 --> 00:44:52.490
What's that doing?
555
00:44:52.510 --> 00:45:01.062
And that will become the point which really makes us differentiate between the day-to-day, the business is usually average and the really standout bits of work.
556
00:45:01.377 --> 00:45:18.741
Is there a feedback loop at all yet, or is there one coming where you produce a piece of work, and then from a production standpoint, you do the analytics around that work, and you go, actually, we need to produce more differently next time, maybe for this brand, or we need to do something differently ourselves?
557
00:45:19.021 --> 00:45:25.583
We have tools which we've deployed for clients, which enable them to make short-form films based on feedback constantly, right?
558
00:45:25.623 --> 00:45:25.983
Interesting.
559
00:45:26.203 --> 00:45:27.143
And what does that look like?
560
00:45:27.444 --> 00:45:29.124
It's a tool we developed for one of our clients.
561
00:45:29.384 --> 00:45:30.985
It has, you load up all the rushes.
562
00:45:32.006 --> 00:45:38.749
You go out with a piece of work, the piece of work you get feedback in with data points around it.
563
00:45:38.809 --> 00:45:45.051
The AI can then look at the rushes and go, this answers that data point and changes the edits and puts them back out again, right?
564
00:45:45.391 --> 00:45:46.052
Interesting.
565
00:45:46.652 --> 00:45:50.254
And so it might say, okay, you're losing people's attention around here.
566
00:45:50.694 --> 00:45:55.317
Maybe we cut to that, you know, that more interesting shot slightly earlier, etc.
567
00:45:55.337 --> 00:45:57.658
Yeah, or this part of the section didn't perform well enough.
568
00:45:57.678 --> 00:46:00.779
We need to get some messaging out around that or that kind of stuff.
569
00:46:00.799 --> 00:46:02.600
And that's one of the tools we're using.
570
00:46:03.020 --> 00:46:05.342
I think all opcodes are looking at tools like this.
571
00:46:06.682 --> 00:46:14.905
Again, I think it's how they're set up and where the data is coming from to feed it, which is the hardest part to kind of navigate around some of this.
572
00:46:15.225 --> 00:46:18.987
I think the point you asked about, does it change the whole production pipeline?
573
00:46:19.947 --> 00:46:20.867
Not yet, I would say.
574
00:46:20.967 --> 00:46:22.168
Not from right at the beginning end.
575
00:46:22.868 --> 00:46:34.632
Where I find the open platform fascinating is, and I kind of often, when someone goes to me, well, how's AI really going to transform what you do from the start?
576
00:46:34.912 --> 00:46:35.932
And what's the open platform?
577
00:46:35.952 --> 00:46:37.013
That's your internal?
578
00:46:37.113 --> 00:46:40.274
It's our operating system, which powers WPP.
579
00:46:40.294 --> 00:46:46.736
So we've got four pillars, four regions, and one operating platform, which is open.
580
00:46:47.196 --> 00:46:49.017
I talk about making as you ideate.
581
00:46:51.018 --> 00:46:57.262
I think when you're looking at work these days, you know, you would have had times where you were writing a script.
582
00:46:57.403 --> 00:46:59.724
Now you actually go, I'm not going to write a script.
583
00:47:00.045 --> 00:47:02.326
Why would we show clients scripts anymore?
584
00:47:02.547 --> 00:47:04.008
Let's show them the work, right?
585
00:47:04.348 --> 00:47:06.470
Because there's so much subjectivity in a script.
586
00:47:06.970 --> 00:47:32.156
right and they go what's this gonna look like how's that gonna be what's that gonna be how long is that gonna how's that gonna fit in 30 seconds we have the ability to do that now yeah and you also have the ability to um have media plans coming at you very early on so you know what you have to fill and you're you've got your idea and you go well here's my base idea and this is what it looks like as a 30 second tvc but we've also taken this idea and we filled all the social channels here and you can go to the client and you can test that at you know
587
00:47:32.416 --> 00:47:44.440
beginning with your synthetic audiences, you can go back to a client with an answer to a brief where you're going to them, here are two routes in, this is what it looks like as a piece of film, this is what it looks like in all the platforms.
588
00:47:44.940 --> 00:47:46.181
By the way, we've tested both of them.
589
00:47:46.201 --> 00:47:47.321
This one works slightly better.
590
00:47:47.961 --> 00:47:51.963
And by the way, a lot of the stuff we're showing you, we think we can take straight to market.
591
00:47:54.103 --> 00:47:59.025
Of the assets we've shown you, the 100 bits of work we've shown you, we think 50 of these can go straight out the door, right?
592
00:47:59.085 --> 00:48:00.285
Because they are of that quality.
593
00:48:00.545 --> 00:48:04.087
We need to say, and the film, here's the TVC, right?
594
00:48:04.267 --> 00:48:06.648
We haven't got budget to shoot this all the way we would have usually done it.
595
00:48:06.668 --> 00:48:07.528
Let's break it down.
596
00:48:07.588 --> 00:48:10.029
We think we can do this bit with an LED volume or this bit.
597
00:48:10.449 --> 00:48:14.550
How we strategize production, I think, can be changed by the tooling.
598
00:48:14.570 --> 00:48:19.152
But it's not a completely iterative process in terms of sending it out to market.
599
00:48:19.592 --> 00:48:22.473
It's being done within the open platform with synthetic audiences.
600
00:48:23.093 --> 00:48:28.076
There's no reason why you couldn't test work with markets, you know, out of that platform earlier on.
601
00:48:28.256 --> 00:48:30.237
And that technology is kind of being developed.
602
00:48:30.278 --> 00:48:33.760
So I think that it's a really interesting time from that standpoint.
603
00:48:33.780 --> 00:48:38.963
And I think this is where, going back to the point I was saying about being open to change and curious about this kind of stuff.
604
00:48:39.503 --> 00:48:44.188
I think maybe the production, you know, we know the production is getting tighter to media.
605
00:48:44.668 --> 00:48:47.331
So we're getting a better understanding about where clients are going to need to be.
606
00:48:47.671 --> 00:48:50.714
And being closer to media is really important because we need to know what we're going to make.
607
00:48:51.114 --> 00:48:54.337
Getting deliverables list out of clients has always been very difficult, in my opinion.
608
00:48:54.357 --> 00:48:56.079
But now that should be easier.
609
00:48:57.300 --> 00:49:07.949
So you can, you therefore have the ability to work closely with media, but I think you also, with the creative technologists which are coming along now, you have the ability to ideate work in a different way and actually make work as you're going.
610
00:49:08.510 --> 00:49:13.935
Now again, a lot of people find that quite challenging as a thought, because it's very different from how we've done things in the past.
611
00:49:14.535 --> 00:49:22.281
But I think actually, again, it's quite liberating in one sense because you're able to work out whether you can actually make stuff or not, or whether you're going to get stuff out or not, or whether it's going to work or not.
612
00:49:22.642 --> 00:49:31.789
And from a client's point of view, it does start to give them some certainty and a bit more confidence in what you might end up working, or what you might end up making.
613
00:49:31.829 --> 00:49:40.877
And it might actually save a lot of ideas for getting canned, which might not have got to the shooting stage previously because of fears or concerns or this kind of stuff.
614
00:49:40.897 --> 00:49:41.017
Yeah.
615
00:49:41.077 --> 00:49:50.733
But it also de-risks, I think, especially when you know, oh, if I put out 100 pieces of content across TikTok and Instagram and whatever else, fine, I have the big TVC.
616
00:49:50.973 --> 00:49:55.300
But if one of those hits 5 million views, that's paid for the TVC.
617
00:49:56.008 --> 00:50:04.075
Yeah, and again, it's kind of a very... None of our clients' media spend is anything less than 50% of the social channels now, right?
618
00:50:04.195 --> 00:50:04.395
Yeah.
619
00:50:04.415 --> 00:50:07.537
You know, TV isn't the big dog anymore.
620
00:50:07.658 --> 00:50:12.201
It isn't the piece of work, which is the one that was fundamental to clients to get out the door.
621
00:50:12.261 --> 00:50:25.272
I mean, arguably, the importance of the big films, and I'm not saying not the big films, because big films exist on different channels, but the TV spend is definitely decreasing, and therefore, fixing the problem of expansion is incredibly important.
622
00:50:25.772 --> 00:50:39.577
You know, again, why I think it is incredibly important is if we don't do it ourselves, clients will find other people who will do the expansion piece and then they will give them the creative piece as well, right?
623
00:50:39.617 --> 00:50:46.200
Because it's the bit at the end which is not unimportant, but it's kind of, it is not the bit of the way, it's not the dog anymore.
624
00:50:46.300 --> 00:50:48.061
It's kind of, it's only part of the makeup.
625
00:50:48.141 --> 00:50:51.602
And we have not, I think where we came unstuck, I think, in...
626
00:50:52.182 --> 00:50:57.745
in times gone by is dismissing the social stuff as an afterthought where it's actually is far more important than that now.
627
00:50:58.005 --> 00:51:02.347
I think that's the way in which this is all kind of changed under everybody's feet.
628
00:51:02.487 --> 00:51:08.610
I saw a statistic the other day that said the UK creative economy is growing at 2.5% of the rest of the economy.
629
00:51:09.090 --> 00:51:12.532
But most of the people I spoke to at production companies were not feeling that.
630
00:51:13.072 --> 00:51:28.721
I have sat down with agency producers like yourself or Charlie Gatsky and then production company heads, the deliverables list that you guys are looking at are matrices that are so deep and producers at production companies are still only looking at the TV commercial.
631
00:51:29.261 --> 00:51:34.404
And, you know, and then they're, we're wondering why they're not getting quite the amount of work as before.
632
00:51:34.804 --> 00:51:38.146
Just speaking on behalf of somebody who's run a production company before, you know,
633
00:51:38.266 --> 00:51:44.008
Is there an appetite for an agency, for a production company to offer that up as an offering?
634
00:51:44.448 --> 00:51:46.328
Okay, we'll shoot your social content for you.
635
00:51:46.448 --> 00:51:49.189
Or are you guys kind of like, listen, it's cheap.
636
00:51:49.209 --> 00:51:51.130
We're making a tiny margin on it anyway.
637
00:51:51.230 --> 00:51:53.290
It's not worth it to us to put it out the door.
638
00:51:53.490 --> 00:51:54.971
We're going to hire our own people for it.
639
00:51:55.621 --> 00:52:03.692
I think there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't necessarily speak to a production company about moving into that space, right?
640
00:52:03.932 --> 00:52:10.321
I think going back to the conversation from earlier about being able to have less handoffs and less touch points.
641
00:52:11.162 --> 00:52:13.144
I think that's a big part of this, right?
642
00:52:13.204 --> 00:52:15.407
Agency producers are also very limited in time.
643
00:52:16.888 --> 00:52:24.796
So being able to have it within your own organization so you can just send it through the pipeline, and by the way, clients change stuff a lot.
644
00:52:24.816 --> 00:52:25.597
They iterate a lot.
645
00:52:25.857 --> 00:52:31.884
If you've gone to a third party and you keep tracking changes and you keep getting overages and this kind of stuff, we tend to manage that in a slightly different way because we can.
646
00:52:32.604 --> 00:52:33.785
So that scale helps us.
647
00:52:33.925 --> 00:52:35.226
Our scale helps us in that point.
648
00:52:35.266 --> 00:52:35.567
Right.
649
00:52:35.707 --> 00:52:36.447
So I think there's that.
650
00:52:36.808 --> 00:52:40.131
There's no, you know, there's no reason why production companies can't do that.
651
00:52:40.151 --> 00:52:45.235
I just don't think it's necessarily the thing that makes them a lot of them tick in that sense.
652
00:52:45.715 --> 00:52:47.797
You see some production companies.
653
00:52:49.098 --> 00:52:51.460
They'd be very grateful for the revenue, I think, at the moment.
654
00:52:52.151 --> 00:52:53.992
100% and I do understand that.
655
00:52:54.012 --> 00:53:01.554
Look, I think one of the things I do say is that the way the production industry is shaped has always been dependent on what clients need.
656
00:53:02.154 --> 00:53:02.334
Yeah.
657
00:53:02.434 --> 00:53:02.654
Right?
658
00:53:02.954 --> 00:53:07.636
I think that it's not the other way around and that's true of the way agencies are shaped as well, by the way.
659
00:53:07.676 --> 00:53:20.340
I think that in these conversations around how work gets made and what it gets done, I think sometimes it's being portrayed that agency, help codes are driving this whole conversation, which is true to some degree, but they're driving it because of what clients are asking them to do.
660
00:53:21.140 --> 00:53:22.582
How we get through it all.
661
00:53:22.602 --> 00:53:25.344
So I kind of, I totally get the question you're asking.
662
00:53:25.464 --> 00:53:30.389
And I don't think, you know, I grew up with production companies, as you well know, and work with all of those guys.
663
00:53:30.649 --> 00:53:32.070
And it's really hard out there right now.
664
00:53:32.090 --> 00:53:32.551
I know that.
665
00:53:32.611 --> 00:53:36.574
And part of that is because of some of the way we are operating and doing it.
666
00:53:36.594 --> 00:53:40.718
But I don't know whether passing it all straight through is the solution either, right?
667
00:53:41.179 --> 00:53:41.799
Being candid.
668
00:53:42.039 --> 00:53:42.360
I think...
669
00:53:42.840 --> 00:53:56.532
I'm just trying to think of like they seem to be really struggling with how do we make a better offering or make a broader offering that takes our unique skill set and gives us a chance at some additional revenue and additional capabilities.
670
00:53:57.498 --> 00:54:05.266
So I don't think, but I think that the, and again, I haven't drilled down into the stats around what's going on with all the APA numbers exactly, right?
671
00:54:05.306 --> 00:54:13.373
But I think what you're seeing is the big dogs in the space with all the huge creative talent are still kind of ticking along pretty well.
672
00:54:13.413 --> 00:54:15.916
I think it's the middle ground, which is suffering quite a lot.
673
00:54:16.316 --> 00:54:23.919
And that is an area where, you know, there is a demonstrable, evidential battle going on for workflows and this kind of stuff.
674
00:54:23.939 --> 00:54:30.361
But I go back to the bit I said in the beginning, the clients need to deliver more work with less money.
675
00:54:31.002 --> 00:54:32.902
Well, more work with the same money, right?
676
00:54:32.922 --> 00:54:34.283
It's that equation thing.
677
00:54:34.723 --> 00:54:45.410
And with less people being able to manage suppliers, the end-to-end production ecosystem within Occos is a good way of getting that done.
678
00:54:45.851 --> 00:54:46.791
It's not the only way.
679
00:54:46.851 --> 00:54:49.853
And I think Richard, my CEO, is quite clear on this.
680
00:54:50.093 --> 00:54:52.735
And Dave Rolfe and myself and people have spoken about this.
681
00:54:53.035 --> 00:54:57.638
There is no world which exists where we don't want third-party or are not going to engage with third-party production companies.
682
00:54:57.658 --> 00:54:59.680
They're part of the solution for us.
683
00:55:00.700 --> 00:55:04.283
but I think it is, I think it is a part of the solution.
684
00:55:05.483 --> 00:55:18.991
You know, we need those guys and we understand the skills they bring and, you know, we are, we're not the, we are, I've spent a lot of my career feeling like I'm the enemy in this conversation.
685
00:55:19.011 --> 00:55:20.912
This is not, this is not the intent.
686
00:55:21.873 --> 00:55:28.177
We are trying to kind of work with everyone as best we can, but I think the, the world is changing around us a bit.
687
00:55:28.197 --> 00:55:28.757
You know, again,
688
00:55:28.777 --> 00:55:33.760
And even with AI, a lot of production companies have been slow to that race, but a lot of them are getting there now.
689
00:55:33.840 --> 00:55:36.182
And you're seeing how they're coming into the party.
690
00:55:36.202 --> 00:55:44.888
But AI itself is a challenge to the directors, I guess, in some senses, because you're not necessarily going to, not all directors will want to go and work in AI.
691
00:55:45.448 --> 00:55:48.789
And not all directors will want to lean into it.
692
00:55:49.110 --> 00:55:53.631
And if you're doing more shots through AI and less shooting, well, how do you charge for that?
693
00:55:53.651 --> 00:55:56.433
And all these conversations come to bear.
694
00:55:56.453 --> 00:55:59.354
I think you look at what Knucklehead have done with Airhead.
695
00:55:59.374 --> 00:56:00.634
I think it's great.
696
00:56:00.714 --> 00:56:04.736
And I think there's companies leaning in in a way which is really, really beneficial.
697
00:56:04.756 --> 00:56:06.477
And there are ones who haven't yet.
698
00:56:06.517 --> 00:56:11.519
But again, yeah, look, I think it's a tough landscape out there for production companies.
699
00:56:11.659 --> 00:56:12.599
I am cognizant of that.
700
00:56:12.819 --> 00:56:14.963
No, thank you for all the time you've given.
701
00:56:15.363 --> 00:56:17.787
I recognize we're over time and I've kept you too long.
702
00:56:18.048 --> 00:56:26.942
But I would love to just ask for producers and production leaders listening who are trying to guide teams through this moment, what should they be saying to their people right now?
703
00:56:27.244 --> 00:56:30.667
I think the first thing I say to everyone is it's all going to be okay.
704
00:56:30.687 --> 00:56:31.188
Right?
705
00:56:31.548 --> 00:56:36.653
Like we work in a creative industry and I think we need to focus on craft.
706
00:56:36.673 --> 00:56:38.254
And people are producing more than ever before.
707
00:56:38.274 --> 00:56:40.376
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
708
00:56:40.676 --> 00:56:44.300
I think there's a lot of uncertainty, but I think actually there's a lot of opportunity.
709
00:56:44.560 --> 00:56:44.740
Right?
710
00:56:45.301 --> 00:56:46.322
It's all going to be okay.
711
00:56:47.062 --> 00:56:49.464
What we are great at as an industry is fixing problems.
712
00:56:49.484 --> 00:56:51.166
We're problem solvers effectively, right?
713
00:56:52.707 --> 00:56:57.031
The challenges we're getting are somewhat different than we've had in the past, but that's to be expected.
714
00:56:57.451 --> 00:57:07.198
I mean, you know, you read about, I did a piece for Campaign where we looked at advertising across generations moving forward.
715
00:57:07.218 --> 00:57:09.040
I think it was 50th anniversary or something.
716
00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:14.684
And I got to look at the first TV commercials that were made in the UK and you read stuff around it.
717
00:57:15.144 --> 00:57:19.267
When TV first turned up, creative agencies didn't think it was going to work.
718
00:57:19.588 --> 00:57:19.788
Yeah.
719
00:57:20.508 --> 00:57:25.772
You know, so you've got people who've been doing long form copy ads and photography stuff, and that was where advertising was.
720
00:57:25.832 --> 00:57:26.273
And then C.L.E.
721
00:57:26.293 --> 00:57:27.994
turns up, that's not going to work.
722
00:57:28.094 --> 00:57:30.976
So these aren't challenges we haven't had in the past and dealt with, right?
723
00:57:31.837 --> 00:57:33.218
I just think it's kind of...
724
00:57:33.818 --> 00:57:37.501
So I think it's important to keep everyone calm, to keep everyone...
725
00:57:37.541 --> 00:57:41.944
I think also to remind everyone, we are very lucky to work in the industry you work in.
726
00:57:42.525 --> 00:57:46.988
I know it doesn't always feel that way, and it can feel quite oppressive and quite difficult, and it feels quite combative.
727
00:57:47.008 --> 00:57:49.150
It has felt quite combative over the last few years for me.
728
00:57:49.750 --> 00:57:52.731
But ultimately, you get to work with great people.
729
00:57:52.851 --> 00:57:56.472
You get to work on creatively challenging projects.
730
00:57:56.852 --> 00:58:02.793
You get to do some gnarly problem solving, which I think is where a lot of producers do find happiness sometimes, right?
731
00:58:03.113 --> 00:58:04.414
And how do you fix these problems?
732
00:58:04.894 --> 00:58:09.215
I think what I say to everyone is- It's where most of my self-esteem came from and probably still does.
733
00:58:10.445 --> 00:58:13.347
Well, stay calm and carry on is what I always say about this stuff.
734
00:58:13.367 --> 00:58:17.989
You know, the other thing I'd say to everybody, and it's like my mantra at the moment, is to turn up and be useful, right?
735
00:58:18.409 --> 00:58:25.994
And, you know, be present, be able to bring your best self to the meetings you can and be focused on fixing the problem, right?
736
00:58:26.414 --> 00:58:31.877
Yes, there's going to be times when you have to go and sit in a room and shout at the wall on your own just because it's all a bit frustrating around you.
737
00:58:32.297 --> 00:58:35.718
but help people get through the day in the best way possible and look after each other.
738
00:58:35.738 --> 00:58:50.762
I mean, the world is a tough place right now, but I am still convinced that, you know, there's far more good going on than bad, but there is a lot of change going on, and I am very aware that it is very challenging for people.
739
00:58:50.782 --> 00:58:55.523
So, you know, I check in with my guys regularly, make sure they're all going all okay, and we look after each other.
740
00:58:55.543 --> 00:58:58.224
So I think ultimately, you know, going back to,
741
00:58:59.044 --> 00:59:09.433
my transition from being a producer into a leader, I think it's trying to create an environment in which people feel able to operate and function and have the careers they wanted.
742
00:59:09.613 --> 00:59:10.814
Well, that's fantastic.
743
00:59:10.834 --> 00:59:12.996
I mean, James, I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.
744
00:59:13.376 --> 00:59:14.477
That totally delivered.
745
00:59:14.597 --> 00:59:15.117
Thank you.
746
00:59:15.518 --> 00:59:18.060
Thank you for taking the time and chatting with me about this.
747
00:59:18.640 --> 00:59:19.221
It was great.
748
00:59:19.261 --> 00:59:21.483
And I just so appreciate you giving me this time.
749
00:59:21.903 --> 00:59:22.584
You're more than welcome.
750
00:59:22.604 --> 00:59:26.047
I'm just very jealous I didn't get a background which is anywhere near as impressive as yours.
751
00:59:26.707 --> 00:59:27.428
But that's on me.
752
00:59:29.330 --> 00:59:29.731
That's all right.
753
00:59:30.031 --> 00:59:36.703
Next time, we'll have you back next time and we'll put you on like, you know, some WPP rooftop somewhere.
754
00:59:36.723 --> 00:59:38.527
It'll look incredibly epic.
755
00:59:41.051 --> 00:59:41.672
Tremendous, man.
756
00:59:41.692 --> 00:59:42.694
Well, thank you so much.
757
00:59:42.754 --> 00:59:43.556
I so appreciate it.
758
00:59:44.157 --> 00:59:44.558
No problem.
759
00:59:44.578 --> 00:59:44.958
Thank you.
760
00:59:46.882 --> 00:59:47.563
So that was great.
761
00:59:47.643 --> 00:59:50.088
James is a wonderfully thoughtful producer