A New Era of Strategic Production

Personalisation is here to stay, and the platform world has connected us to the consumer like never before. Gone are the days of our in-house production teams being called in at the end of the creative process to execute a simple TVC or film. Clients are now looking for wholly integrated, large-scale campaigns with meaningful, relevant and compelling content made specifically for different audience segments and channels. They are increasingly showing the extent to which they are willing to transform in order to achieve this and produce content that resonates with their consumers worldwide at the moments that matter. How production can address this transformation is under the spotlight now more than ever.

The world changed in 2020, but the wider challenges presented by Covid-19 only accelerated a shift that was already happening in the production sphere. For years, brands have been asking us to produce more content, quicker and for less, without the reliance on traditional shooting. The need for agility and responsiveness has never been starker, and now we must consider multiple deliverables for a variety of media types, with the content of these assets changing over time. The role of data continues to evolve in engaging specific customer segments with relevant messaging, and in giving us the opportunity to directly impact the growth of brands.

"Just producing content is not enough anymore. Content needs to be continually optimized based on insights gleaned from analytics to find the sweet spot between audiences, media and messaging."

- Michael Burgess (Publicis Production Chief Executive Officer - APMEA)

This demand for better-performing content has brought about a dramatic increase in the breadth and scale of the work we are pitching for. Production has had to become more of a strategic enterprise, introduced upstream in the process, and directly impacting the client’s bottom line. This has been proven by the Groupe’s recent win for GSK, who were facing a need for more personalised content at scale and a familiar problem of most of their centrally produced assets not being used in market. Publicis Production worked hand in hand with Publicis Media to create a model that placed the consumer at the centre of the process, with effective tracking and measurement of each asset’s impact on its audience. The key to the model’s success was to ensure that production expertise and insights from media data could be shared and integrated to maximise efficiency and deliver work that would truly resonate.

The GSK model showed us that to stay ahead of the platform world evolution, we must change the way we think, both operationally and qualitatively. A future-ready production solution needs a hybrid team and a philosophy of co-creation, where input and decision making are not linear, but concurrent, and consist of multiple team members with multiple skillsets and perspectives, and a round-table approach with clients, planning and co-creating assets together.

But what are the new skills we need alongside our existing and legacy capabilities? How do we evolve our service offering to properly adapt to these new requirements? And how do we service this digital ecosystem efficiently, profitably and with high quality work? It is clear that the Executive Producer of tomorrow needs to be truly integrated – someone who understands every asset type from live action to still image, every channel from TV screen to hand-held device, and every platform that connects directly to the consumer. But more than this, people who understand and can implement the deeper strategic merger of production, media and data will find themselves in high demand. This is where we have the network of talent to lead the way as a Groupe, and as demonstrated in North America, we must remove barriers between disciplines to make the most of this talent:

"When pressure to change comes down on you fast, one of two things can happen: either you splinter or you turn into a diamond. We turned into a diamond. It made us come together, firmer, harder, and we decided we would collaborate in a way that galvanized our internal talent."

- Nick Colucci (COO, Publicis Communications North America)

We introduced new roles to connect our expertise and facilitate this strategic shift - the Production Accelerator and Data Translator - content specialists with a deep understanding of media, origination, planning and technology, able to interpret data signals in order to evolve assets over time and ensure the greatest effectiveness. These profiles are core to creating an intelligent feedback loop, leveraging data and performance insights to the maximum and thereby informing the content that is produced, ensuring it can be repurposed and dramatically cutting wastage.

Our recent wins have relied upon building a model spearheaded by a hybrid team, ready to balance global ambitions of personalised content at scale with the real-world potential for adoption by the local markets. Barriers between production, media and creative were removed from the outset, and this spirit of transparency and collaboration has proven to be essential in allowing the free flow of data across regions as well as agencies, establishing solutions that are local-first in their outlook but governed through a central hub.

As with any such ecosystem, technology plays a core role, with automation and AI integral to success. We have developed an end-to-end technology platform that provides an automated assembly tool, access to data insights, and an unparalleled view of content delivery and performance, so we can produce assets fit for both channel and audience.

What all this points towards, and what 2020 has shown us more clearly than ever, is that production is a multi-layered balancing act between craft and technology, between creativity and performance, and between global and local.

"Everything has to work in harmony. It’s what makes it magic and exciting, but it’s also what makes it difficult. If you lean too much one way, you sacrifice something else, and you get your ass kicked in pitches!"

- Nick Colucci (COO, Publicis Communications North America)

One size does not fit all. How this balancing act manifests itself between regions will vary and we will continue to see the importance of staying connected locally to the environments and cultures we are living in. However, we have made a significant step by shaping our global infrastructure into a united platform rather than a holding company. This will give us a strong foundation to pursue opportunities more proactively, with compelling models to draw in new clients.

Ultimately, our business begins and ends with great craft, and the future success of this cross-discipline approach will depend on its ability to deliver better content to the consumer. We have shown that we can adapt and innovate to produce more for less, with greater efficiency and agility, even under the most extraordinary of circumstances. However, if the use of data and the spirit of co-creation do not lead to a higher quality output and richer consumer experiences, the transformation will be short-lived. More than anything, talent is what will drive this, and the intersection of production, media and creative is fertile ground to develop the profiles of tomorrow. We have embraced the platform world and opened the door to a new era of data-driven efficiency in production, but there is still huge potential to fully harness this connected ecosystem in the service of creativity.

Mike Cole

Marketing, Business Development & Communication Manager

• Publicis Production
• London, United Kingdom