AICP Conference Goes from Big Picture to Nitty Gritty
The annual seminar looked at everything from legal issues to integrated production, which was examined by BBH's Justin Booth-Clibborn, W+K's Lora Schulson and BBDO's David Rolfe (seen here).
AICP Conference Mixes Big Picture Talks
with Info-laden 'How-to' Panels
The association's annual seminar looked at everything from thorny
legal issues to integrated agency production to digital in a one-
day format that mixed seminars with workshop-like panels.
By Anthony Vagnoni
Is the ad industry about to see a new wave of in-house production taking place at agencies? That question was asked at one of the key sessions at this year's AICP Conference, held at the historic Sunshine Landmark Cinema on East Houston Street on New York's Lower East Side on Wednesday, Oct. 24.
The 2012 edition of the Conference, according to AICP CEO Matt Miller, was designed to both address big-picture topics like integrated production, ad engagement via social media and content creation beyond advertising while also featuring a mid-day track of breakout sessions aimed to give attendees practical, hands-on tips that would help them run their businesses.
Miller says the association responded to requests to both increase the amount of practicable, actionable information that attendees could get at the conference and also to lower the overall cost of taking part, hence the breakouts and the shift downtown from the previous conference venue, the Times Center, to the decidedly more funky Landmark Cinema. (For a full rundown on the sessions and the speakers, click here.)
Miller kicked off the morning moderating a presentation from the TED Conference revolving around its "Ads Worth Spreading" program. The initiative, launched two years ago, brings together key ad advertising creatives with some of TED's think tank stars to select ads that are deemed worthy of being shared voluntarily by consumers and audiences. (For more on this, and to see the full list of 2012 Ads Worth Sharing, click here.)
The panel talked about the value of social engagement in an era where traditional effectiveness metrics are being challenged, then discussed several brand videos that were chosen for the 2012 Ads Worth Sharing program. These included a spot for Sharpie titled "Start with Sharpie," the much-hyped Chipotle "Back to the Start" spot that swept the awards shows earlier this year and a documentary-style spot for Mazda titled "Challengers" that talked about the spirit of perseverance and growth in Hiroshima, where the company is based.
Taking part were in the session were Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships, TED; Peter Daboll, CEO of audience measurement firm Ace Metrix; and Grey New York Chief Creative Officer Tor Myhren. Carnegie used the seminar as an opportunity to announce that TED has just launched the third year of the Ads Worth Spreading initiative.
Myhren said he feels that the concept that consumers can have conversations with brands - a much-discussed goal of 'viral' advertising - isn't all that feasible, "but engagement is different, and it's critical." He described this as being as simple as consumers being willing to watch videos about a brand, or spend time on its web site.
He added that while more traditional TV commercials are still a big part of how a brand tries to engage consumers, the key now is to surround them with as much additional content as possible. "The thinking is, let's try and make the most out of the production process," he commented. "It's expensive to shoot, so we always try and get as much as we can."
The TED panel was immediately followed by the only session to be entirely devoted to how ad agencies work today. Titled "Meet the Integrators," it focused on the way agency production departments have transitioned into integrated production departments that are frequently led by executives whose titles include that descriptor, as opposed to them being referred to as heads of just 'broadcast' production.
This panel, also moderated by Miller, included Justin Booth-Clibborn, Head of Integrated Production at BBH in New York and a former senior EP at PSYOP who started his career on the agency side in the UK; David Rolfe, Director of Integrated Production at BBDO, who was an early adopter of the integrated production model while at Crispin Porter + Bogusky; and Lora Schulson, Head of Integrated Production at the New York office of Wieden+Kennedy. (For a more detailed report on this panel, please scroll down or click here.)
The trend of production companies branching out into new areas of content creation and distribution was discussed in a panel titled "The Content Question: Producing Outside The Box," moderated by Fast Company editor Teressa Iezzi. With a focus on how commercial production houses can successfully branch out into broader areas of media and entertainment, it included Brian Carmody, Co-Founder of Smuggler, which won a Tony Award this year for its work producing the Broadway musical "Once"; Robert Fernandez of Moxie Pictures, whose directors have extensive credits in feature films and feature documentaries; and Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Owner and EP at Park Pictures, which launched its first feature production earlier this year, the comedy "Robot and Frank."
The conference also included its' popular "Lawyers on the Clock"' session, in which a regular hornet's nest of attorneys addressed key issues facing producers in a fast-paced, round-robin format in which each was limited to two minutes per answer. The topics ranged from the changing nature of what constitutes a commercial when applied to labor agreements to NDAs in the social media age to how to avoid copyright infringement claims. The panel included Douglas Emhoff of Venable, Jeffrey Greenbaum of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, Roberta Wolff, Esq. and Douglas Wood of Reed Smith. It was moderated by Adam Cohen of Kane Kessler and sponsored by the insurance brokerage house Taylor & Taylor.
Breakouts Offered Practical Tips
The breakout sessions were sandwiched between the morning panels and the closing panel on content creation. Among the areas that were explored were digital production, with sessions devoted to both the new AICP Digital Chapter guidelines handling digital work (that is, content created mostly via computer software as opposed to via physical live-action production) and to pitching digital production concepts for clients.
Among the participants in these sessions were executives at companies such as PSYOP, The Science Project, Trollback & Co. and Brand New School, as well as EPs with Arnold Worldwide and BBDO.
Music production was also included in the breakout sessions, with a wide-ranging panel headed up by AMP, the Association of Music Producers, which included representatives from Elias Arts, Songs Music Publishing, Yessian, The Lodge and Publicis Kaplan Thaler. Also part of this track was a review of trends in music for advertising presented by SHOOT that included panelists from NY Noise, Butter, Duotone, JWT and BBDO.
Several breakouts addressed issues of business affairs, including one that dealt with talent issues and payments, hosted by TEAM, and a rights panel that focused on rights and clearances for both video clips and music that included experts from Corbis and GreenLight Music. A final breakout focused on various forms of content production coming from the hybrid digital production company B-Reel.
What Integrated Production Means Today
The "Meet the Integrators" panel addressed the steady transition of agency production departments from being largely broadcast oriented – or divided between broadcast and print media – to being fully integrated departments that handle all manner of production work, from digital and interactive deliverables to TV spots, web videos, print and radio. Increasingly being thrown into this mix are projects that typically were not done by ad agencies: everything from experiential events to non-broadcast long-form programs to guerilla marketing and other forms.
BBDO's David Rolfe, who was one of the integrated production pioneers while at CP+B, said there were a lot of reasons behind the shift. "A key part of it was efficiency," he said, but added that it matched the wider range of things his agency was being asked to do at the time, circa 2004 or so. "Production just being about broadcast felt too narrow," he said. "It didn't accommodate what was going on around us. It was too confining."
Rolfe said the shift to an integrated model was about creating a "more expansive definition, one that dealt more with how we got things done" rather than the media in which it was going to be distributed. "It was also an effort to bring the means of production closer to the idea," he added.
"We all became integrated producers by necessity," added W+K's Lora Schulson. "If we weren't able to do these things," by which she meant everything from P.R. events to interactive, "then we were going to lose that work. If we couldn't find a way to produce it with the people we had, then it was going to go elsewhere."
BBH's Justin Booth-Clibborn said that he views integrated production as a way to "propel the making of things into all areas of the agency, even up to the client level." His focus now is keeping everyone aware of the basic components that go into "just what it is that we're making."
Two factors play into this, the panelists suggested: one was a growing need for agencies to have capabilities in house to do certain kinds of production in a way that's fast and inexpensive, and the other was the need to demonstrate that the focus of what the agency considers its mandate has changed.
The former is being accomplished by a broadening of the skill sets and services that agencies are looking to be able to do on their own, beyond their current involvement with in-house editing and post production. The latter is characterized by the evolution of the Head of Integrated Production title itself, which Schulson said sends an important message to all parties, both on the agency side and at the client.
The makeup of integrated departments has matured, the panelists agreed, to one where specialized talents and skills are more appreciated than they were at the onset of integration a number of years ago. "In the early days, I think the focus was on crossover talents – the super-dynamic producer who could do everything," Rolfe said. Now, he noted, it's more a form of "collaboration between specialists" who approach their respective parts of a project as dealing with different assets; "some might be broadcast, some might be social media."
This is often not an easy task, he added. "It's not always Kumbaya," he joked. "I think of it at times as enforced collaboration. But it has to be intuitive in order for it to work."
"And you need that authority which comes with the Integrated Production title to make all the disciplines work together," Schulson added.
"When do we get past the notion that digital means cheap, and film or TV means expensive?" Miller asked the panel. Rolfe pointed out that the problem often stems from the fact that many digital projects have lots of needs: "They usually entail shooting a lot of video, and that's a challenge," he agreed. Handling more production in-house at the agency may be a solution to this, he noted. "We need to have the ability to generate what our clients want and what our creatives need."
Schulson added that agencies now must have the capability to put ideas together and illustrate the concepts they want to pitch to clients. "We can't be calling our vendors and asking for favors all the time," she said. "We need to be able to do more of this on our own, and when we can't, then we go outside."
Rolfe said he used to call this kind of work "pre-production," by which he meant producing things on a lower level of finish or complexity before producing a more polished version, but now he prefers the term "production prototyping." It describes the testing, proof-of-concept phase that takes place more and more. "It's producing stuff before it actually gets made," he said, adding that "there's a fine line between how far you go before you've started actual production." He noted that some production companies, when asked to take part in this kind of work, are now asking for upfront development fees to cover their costs.
"And that's part of the education process," Booth-Clibborn added. "It's explaining to clients and account teams that you need to pre-test or pre-produce these ideas first, and that we may need to devote some resources to this in order to make sure that we can actually pull these things off."
Published 25 October, 2012.
All photos by Doug Goodman, courtesy AICP.
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