Chief Production Officers Ponder the Meaning of the Role
Matt Bonin (at left) is the new CPO at O&M/New York, joining McCannulls Brian DiLorenzo as the only two Chief Production Officers at US agencies. We spoke to both to find out what the new job is all about.
Chief Production Officers Ponder the Meaning of the Role
Elevating the role of production in a new media environment and
giving it a seat at 'the big table' is driving the advent of a
new role in agency upper management.
By Anthony Vagnoni
In an age when companies now boast Chief Talent Officers, Chief Knowledge Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Experience Officers and Chief Digital Officers – to go along with CMOs, CFOs, CIOs and CEOs – is the era of the Chief Production Officer finally at hand?
That's the question some are asking now that Ogilvy & Mather has just named Matt Bonin to the post as Chief Production Officer for O&M New York. He now joins Brian DiLorenzo as the other CPO based at a flagship New York ad agency; DiLorenzo was named to that position at McCann last September.
A veteran of both the agency and production sides of the business, and with solid chops in the areas of integrated production and digital, Bonin comes to O&M from TBWA\Chiat\Day where he was Executive Director of Integration. Prior to that he was an EP at Tool of North America, and was also head of integrated production at Trailer Park, the hybrid agency/production company based in L.A. He came to that post after spending five years at CP+B, helping to originate the integrated production model with work for such clients as Burger King, Volkswagen and Microsoft.
He was named to his new post by Steve Simpson, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy & Mather North America, who said in a statement that "Matt's arrival accelerates the work we have done at Ogilvy in working in a more fully, deeply integrated way and – beyond process – he will be central to our efforts to develop new kinds of content."
At O&M Bonin will be responsible for unifying all creative production needs, Simpson continued. "Broadcast, print, digital, technology solutions, film and other creative channels will all work through Matt and an integrated production team."
DiLorenzo joined McCann New York in September, from his position as EVP, Director of Integrated Production at BBDO. He was hired by Linus Karlsson, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of McCann New York and London. The move reunited the two executives, who had worked together at Fallon in the 1990s, where DiLorenzo was Director of Broadcast Production.
While both say they can't speak for other agencies, there were similarities in how they view their new positions. Essentially, they're not tied to title inflation or the business community's embrace of what's called "the C-Suite." Rather, it's about acknowledging that at their very heart, agencies make things, and in many respects what they're being tasked with making these days has changed radically.
"In this day and age, where there are so many different ways you can reach people, the road to a client's door is often littered with great ideas," says Bonin. "The key is to figure out how many of those ideas can you execute for the client's budget, and to the vision that the agency wants to achieve." And so there's this recognition of production being a more critical part of that process, of getting what Bonin says is "a seat at the big table.
"There's a movement underway here, certainly in New York, to simplify down to the core competencies of what we do," he continues. "So in essence, production makes things. The creative department ideates. The planning group does strategy." One of the goals of this back-to-basics thinking is to be able, he adds, "to describe things more clearly," a move that's become increasingly important as definitions blur and deliverables vary widely.
"I think it's an acknowledgement that there's now a more expansive role for production," says DiLorenzo. "We see the position here as an evolution of that role, and reflecting a deeper level of involvement between production and creative." In a sense, it elevates the top production position to the same level as the top creative position, DiLorenzo notes.
It's also about providing a production perspective on things like "the direction of the agency, the direction of how we'll approach the work we're going to do for clients and how we're going to solve business problems for clients," adds Bonin. "And this gives production a voice at that level and in those conversations." The CPO role at O&M, Bonin feels, sends a message both to clients and the agency that "there's a person in place with the clear oversight and the experience to tackle all sorts of production issues."
DiLorenzo says that there's a new mantra at McCann that embodies the new role of production, "and that's if you can think of it, we can make it. And once you're in that mindset, you naturally expand the role that you're playing."
So "making" things, which used to be print ads, radio commercials and TV spots, now can mean concerts, live events, products, software, apps – you name it. And that changes what a production department is, DiLorenzo says. "Positions like Head of Broadcast or Head of Integrated Production denoted very specific manufacturing processes, for lack of a better term," he explains. "And technology has changed everything, so we've gone beyond what an integrated producer might do."
The concept of integrated, for that matter, mostly addressed the need to "do things together more efficiently," DiLorenzo adds. "And this is now all that and more, with the more part being not just coordinated and efficient, but evolving into new kinds of things to produce."
In this regard, DiLorenzo says, you now need to not only take a broader view, but you need to work "more upstream than just manufacturing and producing. It's a huge change from just being part of production. Now you need the highest possible vantage point to do the best job you can, getting involved in things much earlier on. It's about being way more strategic and proactive."
Bonin says this redefinition of what's expected from production will be a big part of his brief at Ogilvy. "Part of the challenge that's been posed to be me by Steve and John Seifert (Chairman of O&M North America) is to look at the vision for accomplishing things and getting things done," he says.
One of the challenges these executives face is that the kind of work that agencies are being asked to do – or are developing on their own, in the more proactive manner that DiLorenzo suggests – defy easy description, and hence are difficult to silo.
Bonin, for example, worked on a Nissan project before leaving TBWA called My Versa Road Trip. "It was a social media-based filmed content contest that touched upon four different disciplines within the agency," he recalls. "So casting for the project – that is, finding the right talent and matching them up to the work – becomes part of what a CPO can help with and have input. My job will not be to micromanage, it will be to get the right people onto the right projects and see just what these things can become."
Will the CPO role change the back and forth between production and a brand's marketing team? "I think there's already a healthy amount of industry-wide Directors of Integrated Production having direct client access," Bonin explains. And while he feels that having a CPO title may help open doors in some instances, "I sort of see things continuing along those lines and not changing dramatically."
If anything, the position is helping give production deeper feelers into what clients are planning. "Because of all the different kinds of projects we're doing now, there's no longer a static kind of delivery," says DiLorenzo. "So it's more important than ever to get in front of your clients and talk about methodologies, which now can change almost project by project."
Both DiLorenzo and Bonin feel the CPO role is not a replacement or substitute for the existing Director of Integrated Production or Director of Broadcast Production roles within big agencies. If anything, they see them working closely together.
"There will still be a team of leaders here, and I'll be helping to collaborate with them and establish the clear vision of what we want to execute," says Bonin, who adds that he expects to be able to take a higher elevation view, "seeing patterns and places where things can come together, and having the ability to push some of these initiatives forward."
"I still see the need for a Head of Production, and the reason is that we're all expanding and growing and there's work that needs to be done on an integrated level all the time, twenty-four/seven," says DiLorenzo. "Production is constantly changing, so you need to be able to explore new ways of doing things and new opportunities. And you have what once were internal resources at agencies now being run as growth-model businesses, so you have that component to deal with as well. And all of this is above and beyond what the production department has to do to react to client needs on an almost real time basis.
"So I see the role as complementary," he continues. "I don't know how different agencies may do this, they may parse this function out in different ways, but we see it as having a sharp point - it's a pyramid structure, where you still need great people running the different departments." This allows him to spend more time dealing with things earlier on in their formative stages, he adds: "What I'm trying to do is work really upstream, and you can't be upstream and downstream at the same time. It just gives you a lot more reach if you have strong partners running integrated production."
For Bonin, the CPO role is designed to bring clarity to the importance of production, and to communicate that properly. "It's not designed to out-title anyone, as Steve said when he announced this to the agency," Bonin notes. "It's more a way to show the breadth of the things he wants me to be responsible for, and to communicate that clearly within the organization. And that's a core part of what we'll be doing as well."
Published 2 March, 2012
