Production in 2026: All change
With AI reshaping workflows and agency networks expanding their in-house production capabilities, the commercial production landscape is shifting fast. Tim Cumming speaks to a range of producers from The Sweetshop, Saatchi & Saatchi, Uncommon, Rogue, The APA, and The Martin Agency to sift through the changes and challenges they face in a rapidly evolving present, and to look towards the sector’s possible futures.
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How we make stuff – an experience, a slogan, an image, a spot, a banner, an earworm – and then combine and repurpose all that stuff for campaigns across a plethora of different platforms – is the backbone of production in the 2020s.
“It’s a really fascinating time,” says Morgan Whitlock at independent production studio The Sweetshop. “The pressure from the huge explosion in deliverables, the always-on content and the shift in how we consume media online and on our phones – that all seems to have arrived all together as we came back from Covid.”
Another big driver of change he points to is “the huge increase in in-housing at agency networks. It’s incredibly challenging for indie production; you can either bemoan that and scream at the tide or say, ‘why don’t I make something new in a way I never made it before?’ After all, one great thing about being a producer is that the job is always different.”
It’s worth looking around to see how fast the scenery is changing. Industry monolith DDB Worldwide (along with FCB and MullenLowe) is no more. Its absorption into TBWA this Christmas as part of a restructuring operation by parent company Omnicom has led to the loss of 4,000 jobs, a saving for the parent company of $750 million, and a remit to absorb AI methodologies into its creative pipeline.
Without good producers, nothing good gets made, but in 2026, that world of production is seeing the ground shift beneath its feet as it adapts to and absorbs the structural changes detonating like depth charges – in-housing, budget cuts, platform proliferation. And then there is AI, poised to ring changes that are predicted to transform society.
One great thing about being a producer is that the job is always different.
Jess Ringshall, Chief Production Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi sums it up as: “More deliverables, more formats, more stakeholders with less time and less margin. Costs rise, timelines compress and production is being asked to solve strategy problems at execution speed.” The result? “They’re killing the comfortable middle. Work either becomes wallpaper, or it gets sharper, simpler and bolder because only the clearest ideas survive the pace.”
Charlene Louise Maningding, a young producer at Uncommon, sees “leaner budgets and tighter timelines” and a tendency to pay it safe as obstacles to innovative production. “The people we’re trying to reach are looking for things that are made with intention and have the human touch,” she says. “And our current audience is much more aware and critical of what they’re being sold and how they’re being engaged.”
For Kate Taylor, Owner/MD/EP at indie production house Rogue, producers are the bottom line; everything comes their way. “We are the firefighters for the agency and client, the champions of the craft and the executors of the idea. Without producers and production, ideas are simply hallucinations.”
And just as a film or spot is interrogated down to milliseconds, so for a producer, time is the most precious commodity. “It’s the one thing we can’t make. Technology means that production is expected to go faster, every day. And lack of time is the single biggest threat to protecting great craft. We can work wonders on a shoestring, but we’ll always need the time to do it.”
Above: "We are the firefighters for the agency and client" - Kate Taylor.
Jess Ringshall sees her task as CPO at Saatchi as aligning production to creative, strategy and brand management. “One strong idea, many expressions, no dilution,” she says. “Production being treated as a strategic and creative partner at agencies and in brands’ businesses is key to a positive creative output.”
“Structurally, there’s a shift away from a production company framed around project management, and towards system design,” says Whitlock at Sweetshop. “The one-size-fits-all model is no longer true. I feel more like a systems designer than a project manager.”
Steve Davies at the Advertising Producers Association picks at the thread of agencies in-housing production. “If we look at things in terms of threats and opportunities, the threats are AI, the fierce level of competition – which is great for advertisers but tough on production, post, editing, music and sound design companies – and agency in-house production.” That, and the financial tightening of purses across the networks. “They’ve declined in value and market share on a trajectory that must be scary for those charged with their management.”
Technology means that production is expected to go faster, every day. And lack of time is the single biggest threat to protecting great craft.
In-house production may be in the interests of the agency, says Davies, but is it in the interests of the brand? “Free markets are the guarantor of value and having three production companies fight to make your commercial, on expertise and price, is the route to the best work at the best value.”
“It’s the single biggest stressor and threat to our business model,” says Rogue’s Kate Taylor. “It potentially means fewer opportunities for independent production companies and a temptation for directors to leave the security of the roster-based model and try the freelance market, working as a hired gun, without the support or guidance of a production company behind them.”
Above: Brett Alexander observes that, "producers can’t think solely in terms of execution anymore. We must think about content strategically and systemically, anchored in what the client’s business needs are."
Over in the US, Brett Alexander of The Martin Agency says that production has never gone through a greater period of change. As well as time, budgetary pressures, platform fragmentation, AI adoption, along with the rise of insta-creators (hello, Seedance 2.0) and shifting client behaviours, his solution echoes that of Ringshall’s at Saatchi.
“Producers can’t think solely in terms of execution anymore. We must think about content strategically and systemically, anchored in what the client’s business needs are. We’re at an ‘adapt or die’ inflection point. The old rules and norms don’t hold, and staying in that mindset is risky.”
Which means the ground shifting beneath your feet is not to be trusted to support you. “Clients want fast, cost-effective content, but legacy ways of working and layered decision-making can make that hard for agency production to deliver,” says Alexander. “Everyone in the chain is under pressure. No one's the villain, but something must give. The pressure won't disappear, but how we distribute it through shared accountability and realistic expectations will determine what survives.”
Everyone in the chain is under pressure. No one's the villain, but something must give.
Some things won’t change, believes Kate Taylor. “Any producer worth their salt knows that craft must come before anything else. Protect the craft and you protect the client, the agency and the director. But delivering great craft takes time and money. Clients want far more than they used to and within a time frame that is shorter than ever. So the biggest challenge to producers is to re-frame our own psychological understanding of the job. To be open and willing to be agile and nimble.”
With AI playing the part of a masked intruder padding through a once-familiar workplace turned new and strange, its potential for disruption, as well as production on hitherto unprecedented scales, is still being assessed, and in real time. “We’re using AI in production processes, and embracing it fully in the post-production process, where it’s currently at its most useful,” says Kate Taylor. “We aren’t using it in moving image creation, because that’s not what it’s good at.” She points to hilarious Instagram posts from Emmy-award-winning director/writer Sergio Cilli, as he tries to cast AI actors for a dishwasher commercial. “If you’re a director fearing for your future, it’ll make you feel better.”
Above: Sergio Cilli's hilarious AI 'casting' videos, which went swiftly viral.
Whitlock at Sweetshop takes an optimistic view on AI – albeit with caveats. “I’ve had conversations with clients where we’ve declined to create a project entirely synthetically, because we didn’t think it was right from a craft perspective, and we didn’t think it in the client’s best interests.” Long pause. “So they went and did it with someone else.”
“Consumers are particularly averse to synthetic human beings, and no one likes the sense or the feeling you’re being lied to, of something synthetic being presented as authentic,” he adds. “Clients and agencies want to use these tools, but at the same time there is a reticence and concerns about the impact they have, the ethics of it, the potential legal questions. No one has an issue with AI tools being part of the post-production process, and we’re working out what the line is and where it sits. It falls on us to help agencies and clients navigate that.”
Clients expect major reductions in cost and time, but the quality of creative craft is still the standard by which agencies and creative companies are judged.
For Ringshall at Saatchi, AI can liberate us from the repetitive, leaving us to accentuate the creative, without spraying everything in a synthetic sheen. And it will also, hopefully, highlight the crucial role of human creative strategy and instinct. “AI makes the best talent even more valuable,” she says. “Output is faster, but judgement, taste and creative leadership now carry the real premium and should be disproportionately valued. AI fills the gaps for speed and volume, but when brands want meaning, fame and long-term equity, they still back high-end craft.”
Brett Alexander says that the danger in AI is delivering the expected, not the surprising or brilliant. “There’s a constant need to protect against sameness and the ‘good enough’ mentality that creeps in when AI is treated as a shortcut instead of a creative multiplier. We run the risk of over-optimising for efficiency at the cost of authenticity, distinctiveness, cultural impact and craft.” The dichotomy is, he says, that while commodifying creative production, it can also push boundaries in meaningful ways. “It allows us to push beyond what we think is possible. But at the same time, it also risks trivialising the artists and the craft behind that work.”
Either way, it’s producers and production houses that will be the squeezed middle. “Clients expect major reductions in cost and time, but the quality of creative craft is still the standard by which agencies and creative companies are judged,” says Alexander.
“There’s no doubt of the time and cost efficiencies with these tools,” adds Whitlock. “If we can build a workflow that allows you to keep delivering high-level craft but utilising tools that allow for scale – the scale of the creative and the scale of deliverables – then we have the tools to meet these challenges, and that’s new, and that’s really exciting. It’s easy to talk about more with less,” he adds, “the key for us as producers is that it has got to be better with different. And that’s really exciting. And you have to do it now, on the job.”
Above: Kate Taylor notes that, "the biggest threat to the talent pipeline is the trend of working from home. Nothing teaches you production like boots on the ground, in the production office, on set."
Brands follow where consumers lead, and producers must keep pace with both, without leaving either of them behind. “Consumer behaviour leads and changes more quickly than brand behaviour,” says Brett Alexander. “Consumers set cultural norms. They set demand and shape how they want to engage with a brand. At the same time, attention spans have shortened and trust has shifted toward peers, influencers, and creators.”
Which means the multi-tiered assembly that producers are increasingly tasked with putting together and putting out there, is the way ahead for many brands and buyers. A suite approach, utilizing automated tech where it helps, and human creativity taking control where it doesn’t.
Which suggests that new talent, being embedded in life with AI than older, more experienced hands, are in position to take the lead, even as breaking into the industry becomes more challenging.
Great producing takes years of graft, tenacity and determination.
“There’s a need for a new skill set for production and producers,” says Sweetshop’s Morgan Whitlock. “And that will reward and benefit emerging producers. But there’s a shift in where the entry points are. They used to be very clear. There were fewer doors, with clearer signposting.” And while there are more pathways of entry, he says, “the signposts are smaller and harder to spot.”
Rogue’s Kate Taylor has a practical remedy. “Great producing takes years of graft, tenacity and determination, and the biggest threat to the talent pipeline is the trend of working from home. Nothing teaches you production like boots on the ground, in the production office, on set. And nothing teaches you better than learning from someone else and learning from their mistakes, before you have to learn from your own.”
Uncommon’s Charlene Louise Maningding’s way into the industry was via Arts Council initiatives and a film programme at Tyneside Cinema. She started bouncing around various crew roles to get a toehold, then a foothold, then her first steps into production. “It's important that producers emerge from the craft side,” she says. “This has given me a good understanding of what it means to be on the ground and making things with my hands. Having spent time being crew-facing and agency-facing, I can see how all the jigsaw puzzles fit together. Getting a holistic point of view early on in my career was invaluable.”
However, she adds, more work is needed to diversify the industry – diversities of class as well as of cultures. “Briefs need regional nuance as much as global perspectives. And while there are efforts to bring minorities into the industry, they should be nurtured in their journey. The odds are stacked sometimes as a young Filipino woman who grew up in Newcastle,” she adds. “However, it’s important to try to be the change you want to see.
"As a young producer, it can be hard to find your voice and speak up in a room where everyone may have more years than you. But we have to do it, especially if we want to create rich, culturally informed work that connects with others.”
