Creative Production

From too much to too little: The Unintended Consequences of Decoupling

You open your email one day to review the boards and budget for your seventh campaign of the year with the same hero shot captured six previous times in the last nine months.

Your next message is from your attorneys: your company is being sued for infringing on the intellectual property rights of a street artist, your social media team has flagged a trending hashtag calling out your company for using an image without the photographer’s permission and when you search your archives for the perfect scene that you know you’ve seen before, it doesn’t come up in the search results in any of your three DAM systems.

To quote the Talking Heads, “You may ask yourself, how did I get here?”

As we ushered in the new millennium, everything was on track to be a stellar time for the traditional advertising model. The growth of all things digital was in full swing and every new e-commerce offering needed a splashy campaign. The economy was booming and consumers were spending money. Lots of it. What wasn’t to love?

Well, the dot com bubble burst like a melon tossed from a moving car.

Out of the ashes came the rise of social media and other digital channels, which offered new ways to reach people and a lifeline to agencies. More channels meant more content to create. However, the 2008 implosion of the housing and financial markets once again took steam out of the ad industry’s engine.

These two financial downturns, coming after decades of questioning the value of traditional marketing, led advertisers to accelerate their drive for efficiencies, re-evaluating the amounts spent on advertising and the ROI of their marketing dollars. Inspired by the success of decoupling media agencies from creative agencies, the rush to divest from the ‘one size fits all’ Agency of Record (AOR) was on.

In addition to the need for cost savings, marketers faced the continued proliferation of media options, increased consolidation across global markets and the desire to harness creative innovation wherever they found it. This laid the track for mushrooming vendor rosters with specialized offerings in the marketing supply chain, which further reduced advertisers’ reliance on traditional full-service agencies.

As marketers leaned on more creative partners, in more markets, to generate more content, to distribute across more media channels, this demand for “more” created an unintended byproduct of “less.” Less experienced, albeit highly creative, content creators. Less centralized management of the brand. Less understanding of the importance of functions like business affairs. Less asset management oversight.

Compounding the problem for larger advertisers is that each market, and sometimes each business unit, began operating within their own tech stack, and often each of those stacks were not, and are not, well structured or effectively interfaced. Issues like a lack of universal nomenclature or hierarchy for asset management are very common between markets, brands and vendors.

That all leads to chronic usage rights violations or the same music being licensed or product shots being captured again and again, because it is easier than trying to unearth whether another market already licensed it or shot it last quarter.

When no one with the right expertise has responsibility for the big picture, keeping the trains on the track can quickly become dependent on a combination of the hard work of isolated experts throughout the supply chain and a lot of luck. Comprehensive and universal production & asset management guidelines can go a long way towards solving this, and some production consultancies work with clients to set up the structure and maintain it throughout the creative supply chain.

Several models have been developed in response to marketers’ efforts to regain some control over the content creation process. Some of them lack the power to get over the mountain of challenges facing the marketer in their efforts, while others can prove costly or create friction in other parts of the creative supply chain.

1. A return to a version of the AOR for production.

Holding companies have been bolstering their production offerings and combining existing teams under new banners. Comprehensive services can lift a lot of the burden from brand teams, but they come with a premium price tag. Also, independent production companies and editorial houses have criticized the transparency of the bidding process when an agency from the same holding company includes their sister production entity in the mix.

2.The rise of the in-house agency.

While there may be cost savings realized and a better understanding of brand goals, many in-house agencies have a specific remit for the types of content they create. Therefore, they lack the power to pull other creative partners, especially on a global level, into a unified approach for production best practices, talent & rights management and mar-tech streamlining.

3. A marketer-led center of excellence.

Some marketers have discovered the sweet spot of implementing unified global production & asset management best practices as well as sensible cost efficiencies while maintaining creative flexibility. They are creating a core internal team that partners with key vendors to establish universal production & asset management guidelines, manage talent & licensed element rights, and streamline and connect marketing technologies and ad delivery.

This selective centralization, led by a team that has a comprehensive understanding of the brand and the subject matter expertise to guide outsourced providers, allows the marketer to maintain institutional knowledge and consolidate some support with key vendors, while keeping the flexibility to explore options for creative ideation, production and editorial.

The modern marketing landscape, with its proliferation of specialized services, demands a deft hand to weave together the disparate threads of content creation, asset management and brand consistency. By fostering a centralized hub of expertise and oversight, brands can navigate the complex web of modern marketing with a clear vision.

In the face of today’s challenges, establishing such a center, supported by the right partners, can be the cornerstone for success in an era of unprecedented change and opportunity in the marketing world.

For those who’ve embarked on this journey, they can rest assured; it will never be the “same as it ever was.”

theteamcompanies.com

About the authors

Mark Egmon, VP, Marketing and Business Development, The TEAM Companies and Larry Byrne, CEO, Lakehouse Partners