Humanity, humour and resilience take centre stage at shots Out Of The Box

Cling to the human!” advised Amy Kean in her presentation ‘Airheads’, giving a sense of the essential truth (and unrestricted plea) found in all of shots Out of the Box sessions last Wednesday [Nov 19th] at The Londoner.

Kean, Founder and CEO, Good Shout and Culture Editor, shots, urged the audience to “understand people before we condemn them.” Sharing several fake memes that had duped audiences at scale, she described what social media is doing to people as “abhorrent” and concluded that “the problem isn’t our stupid heads, it's our stupid hearts.”

The problem isn’t our stupid heads, it's our stupid hearts.

Let’s be clear, though, the problem is also AI. Many of Kean’s examples attested to this: Chris Hemsworth looking fetching in a blue dress, Bernie Sanders on the dancefloor with Sarah Palin, the F.U.R.B. letter from the wronged wife in Coldplaygate.

Above: Amy Kean delivering her ‘Airheads’ session on the need to hold onto human insight in an AI-driven world.

In his gif-tastic session, ‘The End Of The Beginning’, Chris Boyle, director and co-founder, Private Island, said: “We are through the looking glass: what’s real and what’s fake is no longer discernible and that’s intense. How does it affect our relationship to the truth?”

In an echo of Kean’s plea to hang onto our humanity, Boyle said: “If we try to behave like the machines, we give up the only advantage we have: our value is doing what the machine can’t.” He referred to being pulled into “brain rot” content in this, the third generative content-dominated era of social media that has emerged after friends and family (era 1) and content creators (era 2).

If we try to behave like the machines, we give up the only advantage we have.

“Platforms don’t reward quality, they reward whatever keeps the loop spinning,” he said. At the moment, that’s our eyeballs. Generative AI is a reflection but it is getting close to the point of creating its own “copies of copies of copies with no originality… it will inevitably start training on itself.”

The good news for the creative industries? There is an urgent need for brilliant content to stop the rot. As Boyle put it: “There is no ‘make good work’ button. This pendulum has to swing back to craft and intention will separate the good from the slop.”

Above: Chris Boyle presenting ‘The End Of The Beginning’, exploring truth, brain rot content and the impact of generative media.

Overseeing some of that slop antidote will be the heads of production who spoke up at the ever-popular AMA session, an annual fixture at Out Of The Box. Rich Adkins, Head of Production, Wieden+Kennedy London, said that client demands were leading agencies into new places. “We have to be in culture, so we are suddenly entering into new spaces and doing different kinds of work. As producers, it’s a scary place to be because we’re control freaks, although we are problem-solvers and adapting.”

We have to be in culture, so we are suddenly entering into new spaces and doing different kinds of work.

Amy Cracknell, Head of Integrated Production, M&C Saatchi, provided examples of recent work. She referred to a recent brief from the Archewell Foundation, created by the Sussexes. The theme was young people and social media and how harmful it can be, and the deliverables were a short film broadcast on CBS and a memorial garden.

Similarly, Poppy Manning, Chief Production Officer, Omnicom, shared an example of an in-house branded-content project with Amazon Prime Video: a documentary as part of its Sheba Hope Grows programme to restore tropical reefs. She reflected: “We can’t just stay in our traditional lanes.”

The panel was also asked about how they could work with upcoming production talent. Peter Montgomery, Droga5 London’s Head of Production, said that “older people [in agencies] can be guilty of going back to the same names.” He also reflected that, when it comes to seeing young directors’ work, “ten or 20 years ago, we saw less but remembered more.”

Eliot Liss, Head of Production, IPA, who was chairing the AMA panel, suggested that if a brief faced budgetary constraints, this might present an opportunity to work with a less well-known director.

Above: The AMA panel of heads of production discussing changing client demands, new production spaces and the realities facing producers in 2025.

This was the second time on stage for Liss: the day had kicked off with Liss in conversation with Steve Davies, Chairman, APA. After a LinkedIn exchange on the rise of in-housing in the summer, Liss and Davies showed they had reached a respectful alignment. 

There is a strong relationship between IPA and APA members.

Liss said: “As two trade bodies who are in an increasingly mixed-up and overlapped marketplace, the main thing to do for the benefit of everyone’s members is to create a rising tide against headwinds that can lift all the boats.” 

Similarly, Davies said: “There is a strong relationship between IPA and APA members. The structures of that and the work with [advertiser trade body] ISBA is a phenomenal foundation for the success of the industry. We’re committed to continuing that.”

Above: Eliot Liss and Steve Davies in conversation on in-housing, shared industry challenges and the importance of trade-body alignment.

That level of industry collaboration will be vital in protecting the business interests of both ad agencies and production companies, and in making sure that the creative industries recognise the power of inclusion as an integral part of its growth strategy. In a session entitled ‘What in the name of DEI is going on right now?’ Asad Dhunna, CEO and Founder, The Unmistakables, said: “Companies are stuck and scared so they’re retreating.” This is at odds with the bigger picture. “Companies that prioritise DEI are more likely to grow and succeed in the future than those that are deprioritising it,” he said.

Think about how inclusion can drive relevance

Yet this paradox typifies DEI in 2025 where we’ve been bombarded with stories about companies rowing back on DEI initiatives. Dhunna has interrogated this and shared his findings. He discovered that ‘retreats’ were often ‘reframes’ and suggested that relevance might be a more helpful place to start. “Think about how inclusion can drive relevance,” he recommended. “If you can include more people, you can reach more people and then you end up with more success.”

Above: Asad Dhunna outlining the shifting landscape of DEI and how inclusion and relevance can drive long-term industry growth.

On the subject of success, Dexter Fletcher, director and actor, in conversation with shots Co-Editor, Jamie Madge, offered a simple formula for aspiring directors: “Get all the great people all around you, sit in the middle and claim all the glory.”

Fletcher, who has just directed the Lucky Generals Asda Christmas Grinch campaign through Curate Films, is also known for directing features, including biopics Rocketman and Eddie the Eagle, and the romcom Sunshine On Leith. His early acting credits included Bugsy Malone and Press Gang, followed by Hotel Babylon and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as a fully grown actor.

If you’re not aiming to be really great at what you do, what are you doing?

Describing his directing process, he said: “I’m drawn to certain stories: you get material and process it in the way you see the world. You pick up stuff along the way that appeals to you or makes your experience fun or intriguing or exciting.” He recalled being on set as a child actor with David Lynch when Lynch was directing The Elephant Man in 1980. He admired Lynch’s agility and resourcefulness. “A local man walked past with an arthritic old dog. David Lynch saw this image and was immediately able to encompass it.”

Inadvertently offering the audience some general career advice, Fletcher said: “If you’re not aiming to be really great at what you do, what are you doing?”

Above: Dexter Fletcher in conversation with shots Co-Editor Jamie Madge, reflecting on directing craft, career lessons and the value of great collaborators.

That commitment to being really great came through in the VCCP session on humour, No Laughing Matter: The Serious Business of Comedy in Advertising. Chief Creative Officer Jonny Parker and creatives Simon Connor and Alice Goodrich recounted their two-year process working with Bournville on its return to TV advertising in nearly 50 years. The team worked with comedy writer Simon Blackwell, whose credentials include Veep and Peep Show, on Made to be enjoyed, not endured, a sparring match designed to explode the pretentiousness around premium dark chocolate to highlight the down-to-earth deliciousness of Bournville’s dark variant.

It’s called a writers’ room for a reason: the best feedback you can get for jokes is people laughing.

Connor referenced the need to “talk to the audience in the right way: they [people in their mid-to-late 50s] grew up in a golden age of British comedy [with shows like] Blackadder, The Young Ones, The Fast Show and Bottom. It needs to be funny otherwise it seems mean-spirited, so there’s a need to talk to them in a language they understand.” Goodrich added: “When you watch comedy it looks effortless but there’s a science behind it.” She recounted the painstaking work with both Blackwell and Outsider director Harold Einstein and concluded: “It’s called a writers’ room for a reason: the best feedback you can get for jokes is people laughing. If you say it and people aren’t laughing, it probably isn’t funny.”

Jonny Parker encouraged the audience to use comedy as an antidote to “the heaviness of the worthy bullshit.” He added: “We’re not here to change the world, we’re here to entertain. We need to cheer everyone up as the world is pretty gloomy.”

Above: VCCP’s Jonny Parker, Simon Connor and Alice Goodrich discussing the craft, structure and seriousness behind comedy in advertising.

If any industry can take on the mammoth task of bringing cheer during tough times, it’s this one. As Private Island’s Chris Boyle pointed out: “As an industry, we are tenacious and unique. Solving creative problems is what everyone in this room is good at. We have precisely the best skills to thrive in what comes next.”

Solving creative problems is what everyone in this room is good at.

Agreeing with that sentiment was Michael Nouri, Founder of Nouri Films, a sponsor for this year’s Out Of The Box. Nouri offered shots some philosophical words at the end of the day’s eclectic and inspiring talks: “We don’t know what changes we’ll see in the next few years but this is a people business and we all have the same challenges. You have to create your own opportunities.”

Rok Bukovec, EP and Founder of Division.Films, added: “It was wonderful to see so many friends and partners gathered in one place. The world feels uncertain right now, and the pace of change is unlike anything we've experienced, but in many ways, it’s bringing us closer together. 

"Thank you, shots, for giving us a great platform to connect and reconnect.”