In the fast-paced world of live events, where timelines are tight and resources are often limited,...
Get your sand tools out!
There’s been a seismic marketing shift in the last five to seven years. Many of our video production clients no longer solely focus on monolithic commercial “campaigns” a few times per year. Attention has shifted to nonstop daily editing and repurposing of social and paid media assets, print and animation, across every imaginable platform.
Advertising budgets are shifting toward daily, high velocity content production and placement and away from commercial campaigns. For one of our clients, the spending ratio is about 3:1 now, content production being the ‘3’.
Strategy is now more about continual presence, in other words. Add instant A/B testing to the mix and you get continual improvement out of the model as a bonus gift.
The story for us as a production company has been how we’ve helped this cause by bringing our talents and toys to this new sandbox.
The key issue: agencies of record can’t work fast enough or be responsive enough for a continual presence strategy. They’re not built for that. So, the demands of continual presence forced our clients to build their own production shops and in-house content houses.
Truth be told, it started with media buying and strategy development a decade ago. Once that was in-house, brands started terminating their ‘Agency of Record’ contracts for certain brands and projects and began doing the work themselves, cheaper and faster. They’re even hiring “hands on keyboards” Producers, Creative Directors, and Art Directors internally. Net, many brands now have in-house production staff supporting their brand teams.
As a production company, Mills James occupies an interesting place in this new sandbox. On one hand, we’re not an agency so we’ve avoided that pain, yet we’ve also actually helped clients internalize aspects of production, ostensibly putting us out of business with them!
In the end, none of those clients have picked up their new toys and stormed off. Our clients are doing what makes sense for them business-wise, but they’ve also come to see the limits of their model at times.
Rounding clients out with on-demand superpowers. We invest in the kind of on-demand talent, capabilities, and gear in-house teams would never want on their on the payroll or balance sheets for the simple reason that they wouldn’t ever use them enough. We have capabilities that can save the day when you need them, and only when you need them: studio facilities, higher end motion design, 3D visualization, virtual production, higher end cameras for those times clients really need to shine. We have yet to meet a client who wants to own an Arri Alexa, yet we have dozens of clients who want that look for special occasions.
Expanding overflow capacity so in-house producers don’t have to say no. Forget the fancy cameras, we can’t tell you how many times our in-house producer friends hit their limit but hate saying no to their internal clients. We step in so they don’t have to do that, nor work all weekend.
This is easier said than done unless scale and agility are wired into your DNA. You need to have the capacity to round out their team at a moment’s notice. We do. You have to know brand standards and brand character. We do. You have to bring A players who can produce great work faster than others. You need the emotional intelligence of that ‘friend when you need it’, heartily welcomed into your house without living there.
Our job is always to exceed expectations, but the models are changing. We’re here to hand you a bigger pail and fancy molds when you need them so none of your sandcastles ever wash away.
At this point in the metaphor, I should probably sea myself out.
