Direct To Client: The More Direct Approach

The customer’s always right, right? So is it OK for clients to be cutting out agencies and working directly with production houses? Joe Lancaster investigates recent shifts in the modus operandi and finds everything changes (clients are getting more creative) and everything stays the same (it’s all about who you work with)

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ goes the adage, and advertising certainly doesn’t seem to be broken. People still buy products they see advertised and a strong campaign is proven to boost a brand’s profile, so the traditional client-agency-production company-post house model must be effective. But a recent increase in the number of clients side-stepping agencies and dealing directly with production houses has led to rumblings about the status quo. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the easiest subject to get people talking about. There’s an underlying feeling on the part of production companies that admitting to doing direct-to-client work is akin to biting the agencies’ feeding hands.

“It tickles me that agencies bemoan production companies going direct to client, when in fact they’ve been generating in-house video content for forever and a day,” says Angus MacDonald, executive producer behind countless fashion and luxury brand films, including the Armani Jeans films starring Rihanna (through Human Touch, Milan), Megan Fox and Cristiano Ronaldo (both through Advanced Room, Paris). “They want to produce but get uptight about producers talking to their clients. But I think the walls are coming down now. We’re seeing an ever-more fragmented market. You just have to be good at what you do, and charge a fair price.” 

Nearly a rum do

While it’s likely that there are cases where agencies are cut out of the equation, the majority of direct-to-client work seems to exist out of their realm anyway. “I don’t think we get opportunities to do projects that agencies would usually do,” says Hughie Phillips, executive producer at London-based production house Mind’s Eye. Around 20 per cent of Mind’s Eye’s work is direct-to-client and usually it’s for brands that aren’t attached to an agency, or it comes via an approach by the brand or an existing contact, such as the viral they made for LivingSocial after a member of Phillips’ cricket team introduced the two companies.

However, even when things are innocent there can still be concerns. “We had done a job with DDB for Captain Morgan, then we got contacted by Diageo [with a new Captain Morgan project] by a completely different set of people – it wasn’t as a result of the job we’d already done – and we won the new project. Immediately I was a bit concerned because I didn’t want DDB to think we’d been calling up their client and suggesting they should work with us directly,” says Phillips, who decided that honesty was the best policy. “As soon as it came in I told them [DDB] about it. If it had come off the back of having worked with Captain Morgan previously though, I would have felt very awkward.” 

Winning pitches fair and square

Last year Pete Chambers, MD of long-established production company Mad Cow Films, decided to launch a boutique agency arm of the business, Mad Cow Create. Like Mind’s Eye, the majority of Create’s direct-to-client work so far has been the kind of thing that agencies don’t traditionally handle, like AFP, apps, idents, brand films and presentations, and they’ve been working largely with media agencies. Their biggest direct-to-client project yet that was in competition with agencies has been for Brothers Cider, which they won “fair and square in the pitch” and handled as both agency and production company. “We don’t go looking to poach other agencies’ clients, it’s just pointless and will get you a very bad name and the worst will happen to you very quickly,” Chambers warns.

While the two Mad Cow companies operate separately, there are natural overlaps, and Chambers believes their broad experience and boutique size can be an advantage when it comes to winning projects. “Often we’ve found that by being quick and nimble and because we’re small and have the skill sets within the company to turn it round, we are able to do a creative pitch sometimes within 24 hours. We win work because their [the client’s] agency might take a week to turn around what we can do very quickly.”

But once a pitch is won, as the role of the production company changes, how does it cope with handling clients, the sometimes messy part of the job ordinarily dealt with by the agency? Mind’s Eye’s Phillips admits it can be tricky: “There are frustrations when you work alongside clients who, through no fault of their own, have little or next to no production knowledge. They don’t understand that you can’t just change the angle of a particular shot or move ‘that house’ from the left to the right side of frame!”

A shared vision

Does the lack of the agency ‘buffer zone’ hamper creativity? Helen Stanley, MD of commercials at Framestore, thinks there’s no right or wrong answer to that question. “I’ve worked on commercials where there was an agency, a production company and us, and it’s gone totally smoothly because the people were all brilliant at their jobs. I’ve also worked on similar projects where it’s been a nightmare, and that’s the same when you’re working directly with the client – it all depends on the people,” she explains. Framestore has gone one step further and worked direct-to-client as a post house with brands like Mulberry and LG, for whom, with Mindshare, they wrote and shot a stereoscopic cinema spot and some web films directed by Richard Ayoade.

Melody Sylvester, executive producer at RSA Films, has worked directly with a number of high-end fashion, fragrance and lifestyle brands including Agent Provocateur and, specifically, its trilogy of Johan Renck-helmed films. She feels that the meeting of the director and brand on direct-to-client projects can help the creative juices to flow: “It works incredibly well for all concerned, especially the directors and the creative directors of the brands, as they get to work really closely and in full collaboration. It’s all about the vision behind the collection, the show, the campaign and from what we can see, the best work comes from a shared vision – be it with the photographer or the director,” she says, adding that it’s also, “bloody good fun!”.

Like most high-end fashion brands, when planning a new campaign Agent Provocateur handle their creative in-house and then, like agencies, invite admired production companies to pitch for the job. “We make a decision according to how well the director and production company understand the DNA of the Agent Provocateur brand and what they can add to the shoot,” says creative director Sarah Shotton. “It gives us the opportunity to explore all the creative talent around us and to join forces with the best people in the industry. After all, there is strength in numbers!” 

Trust and commitment

The choice of director on any project can be a delicate matter, but according to Mind’s Eye’s Phillips, it’s even more crucial on direct-to-client projects. “I think there is a type of director that you work direct-to-client with and there’s a type that you don’t,” he says, in reference to the increased amount of contact between the two parties.

Creative studio Andersen M (siblings Martin and Line) have established themselves as go-to directors for direct-to-client projects, with the majority of their work coming in that form. Perhaps it’s because they treat the client exactly as they would an agency: “We approach both relationships the same way. A good working relationship is built on trust and commitment and we have always enjoyed that with both agencies and clients. Ultimately, the client is the one we’re working for.” It takes two to tango of course and book publisher Pan Macmillan sound like an ideal client. They contacted Andersen M having seen their previous work and asked them to make a stop-motion animation viral for Kate Morton’s novel The Distant Hours, giving them just a vague description of the story. “The client was happy for us to interpret and do what we wanted which was fantastic. This gave us the opportunity to try out new ideas and animation techniques,” say the duo, who were only asked to make minimal changes to the finished film.

But can a project be as brilliant as possible without the magic touch of an agency creative team? MacDonald believes it can: “Many directors and producers are at least as capable of writing effective scripts as agency creatives these days. They’re all-rounders. That said, there are ex-creatives who really come good behind the camera. It’s a mix and match world. Now, there are more options.” 

Creative clients

On the other side, Mad Cow’s Chambers points to the higher creative capacities of the clients themselves: “Working with clients these days is in many ways like working with agencies. They employ some very intelligent marketing people now and that didn’t use to be the case 20 or 30 years ago. These days brands will come to agencies with a really good idea about what voice their brand should have. It’s a different world and with the different mediums available to them, you often get some very hip clients indeed.”

While many direct-to-client projects are one-off pieces of work rather than a complete strategy that will play out over the course of a number of seasons or years, the opportunity of a foot in the door is often enough to form a lasting working relationship, says Phillips. “If we’re working directly with a client and they know we’ve done a great job the previous time they’ll come to us and say, ‘this is what we want to do, this is the budget, what ideas can you give us?’. That makes it easier to grow a company.” Another advantage of this is that it leads to a reduced amount of pitching, which can be a time-consuming and expensive process, particularly on direct-to-client jobs because they often involve pitching, “not just an idea, but also a little bit of strategy too,” Phillips says.

RSA’s Sylvester agrees. “We like an on-going series of films as it gives you a chance to develop the relationship and the ideas over a period of time, like we have done with Johan Renck’s trilogy for Agent Provocateur.” It’s clearly a relationship both parties are pleased with. Creative director Shotton says the brand was “very happy with the results” of the campaign and another RSA shoot is scheduled soon, this time with Jordan Scott at the helm.

The general industry consensus is that the roles of agencies and production companies are becoming more similar, and just as direct-to-client is a delicate issue for production houses, agencies bringing elements of production in-house is something that’s closely monitored from the other side of the fence, says Chambers. “They’re [agencies] creeping into our domain. A few things have happened recently about them taking casting out of our budget and even offline edits and stuff like that, and I don’t mind that. When we work with an agency we stick to the APA’s rules and if agencies try to encroach on those rules then we kick off about it.”

Several agencies have begun insisting on handling their own post production too, though it’s only for the smaller jobs, says Framestore’s Stanley: “Most of them [agencies] are very careful to say to us that there’s only certain types of work that they take in-house and [it’s not] the bigger series and the bigger VFX-heavy ads because they’re also realising it’s a very labour-intensive and expensive business.”

And despite the sometimes sensitive nature of working direct-to-client, production and post houses don’t appear to have designs to put agencies out of business either. “This isn’t about us trying to become an agency. Agencies do an enormous job – brilliantly – of managing the needs of multi-faceted clients, often globally,” says RSA’s Sylvester, while Phillips adds: “We’re not coming up with executions across print and outdoor etc. The concepts we come up with are solely content-based ideas and that’s where the massive line is clear between a production company working directly with the client and what an ad agency does. We’re not going to roll out a massive campaign across all media.”

MacDonald believes that ultimately, there isn’t much point in getting worked up over the issue of direct-to-client as the power lies with those holding the purse strings. “The clients are in the driving seat so they can have whatever they want,” he comments. He also thinks that strong, dynamic agencies won’t suffer from budgets going elsewhere, but that not everybody is safe: “If a client wants to work with BBH or Droga5, who can argue with that? They’re brilliant creative agencies. The people who I think are in danger are the agencies who pay lip service to old economy client strategies. Agencies were born out of the need for creativity,  but if they’re just offering an enlarged account service then I think in terms of value for money, clients realise they can do better.”

A more flexible route

It’s not broken, and nobody’s trying to fix it. But perhaps, rather than a better way of doing things, there might be a different way of doing some things when it suits the individual project or client. It seems that the modern ad industry is less like a train track where a project travels down a fixed line from station to station, and more like an airport where people and companies can come and go, meeting and working with whoever they think best suits each project’s journey.