Integrated Case Studies Reveal Complexity, Collaboration
Dynamic projects from Coke, Honda (pictured here) and IBM were deconstructed by our panel at the NAB Show. Find out what our experts had to say about the process here.
Integrated Production Case Studies Reveal
Complexity, Collaboration at NAB Show
At SourceEcreative panel, speakers from Coca-Cola, Mirada, Tool and
RPA dissect multifaceted media projects that had many moving parts.
A trio of complex, dynamic and multi-faceted media projects produced for The Coca-Cola Company, Honda and IBM served as the centerpiece of SourceEcreative's panel at the NAB Show, held last week in Las Vegas. Titled "Creating Cross-Platform Content: An Inside Look at Integrated Advertising Production," the panel presented a cross section of client, agency and production company perspectives on the current state of integrated ad content production.
Sitting on the panel were Nick Felder, Global Group Director of Film and Music Production for the Coca-Cola Company; Jason Sperling, Sr. V.P, Group Creative Director at RPA, where he spearheads Honda North America; Javier Jimenez, Co-Founder and CEO of Mirada Studios and a Partner and EP at Motion Theory; and Dustin Callif, Executive Producer of Digital at Tool of North America. The session was moderated by SourceEcreative's Anthony Vagnoni.
The panelists addressed a wide range of topics relating to the increased amount of integrated production clients are demanding. Among those were the role that clients themselves play in managing the integrated process when multiple agencies are working on a single campaign; the need for agencies and production companies to work in a more collaborative manner while producing this type of work, and the accompanying need for the two to forge earlier and closer relationships than typically found on traditional commercial jobs; and the benefits of single-sourcing integrated production projects to companies that can handle numerous components of the campaign, ranging from film and video production and post through to web site design and planning, etc.
The session kicked off with Felder showing a two-minute video used to promote Coca-Cola's support for the 2012 London Olympics. Dubbed "Move to the Beat," the project called on global superstar DJ Mark Ronson to use the sounds of athletes and their events to serve as the underlying beat for a major concert event to mark the company's Olympics sponsorship. (To read more about the campaign and screen video clips, click here.)
Felder pointed out that while Mother London was the lead agency for the project, the total number of agencies handling everything from point of sale to P.R. to social media was close to 10, and each of them had various forms of deliverables (video, behind-the-scenes, photography, etc.) that they needed to pull out of the live event.
Managing the process, Felder said, can quickly transform a client into a referee or traffic cop, one whose goal is to make sure that everyone gets what they need out of the experience. It's an unorthodox position for clients to find themselves in, he added, and many are ill-prepared for it. Those sophisticated enough to employ knowledgeable production people such as himself – Felder has an extensive resume as an agency producer and served as Head of Production at several New York shops – tend to fare better with massively integrated efforts such as these, he offered.
RPA's Sperling and Tool's Callif teamed up to describe an ambitious integrated Honda project called "Good Reasons." The campaign, which started as a purely interactive project, was designed to keep Honda top of mind on the web at a time when the brand had to pull back on its TV schedule owing to production shortages caused by last year's disaster in Japan.
The idea was to have the brand's on-camera spokesperson, actor Patrick Warburton, appear as though he was taking over various web sites while revealing many of the good reasons car buyers should consider Honda. While delivering his points, he would interact on screen with these sites, which were seen in the background. RPA turned to Tool of North America to not only construct the web site for the campaign but to produce all of the interaction between Warburton and the web environments in which he's seen.
Callif showed a behind the scenes video that detailed what Warburton had to do in order to get the shots the agency and production company needed to integrate the live action with what was going on in the web sites that surrounded him. Interestingly enough, he noted that this type of production is typically very rigid and precise; the actor, working in front of green screen, had to hit specific spots on the stage or in the area around him to make it look on the final composited web site that he was manipulating web pages that he himself was a part of.
There was little room for improvisation or revising the script on the spot, Sperling added, because many of the moves were planned in advance and had to match up to the work that the digital teams were doing designing the digital backgrounds. All of the video content for the project was directed by Tool's Evan Silver.
Both Callif and Sperling claimed that producing this job required a deeper level of commitment and trust between agency and production house, with the two at times working out of each other's offices, in order to execute the job. (To screen an extended version of the "Good Reasons" video, click here.)
Backing up the belief that a deeper level of collaboration is an important key to the success of integrated projects was Mirada Studio's Javier Jimenez. Jimenez noted that integrated projects work best when the integration process starts at the very beginning, at the ideation and planning stages.
He screened a video detailing what went into the production of IBM's "Think" project, an ambitious live exhibit presented at Lincoln Center in New York City last fall to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of IBM. It included the production of almost 100 hours of video content, which was presented on a range of specially-constructed, seven-foot interactive flats screens that were arrayed in the exhibit. Visitors were guided into the space by a video wall that ran almost the length of a city block and which was constantly displaying graphic content created by Mirada in a process called data visualization.
The entire project – which illustrated the impact that IBM technologies have had on society around the world – was directed by Motion Theory Partner and Director Mathew Cullen, who also served as its Creative Director. The company worked closely with IBM's branding consultancy SY Partners, and benefitted from the fact that it has shot numerous spots for the brand via its agency, O&M. A combination of narrative storytelling, experience design and information architecture, the project took Motion Theory almost 18 months to complete. (For more details on "Think," click here.)
Jimenez acknowledged that undertaking highly integrated projects like this are not without risk, and that they often entail investments of time and research on the part of production companies such as his in order to execute them. But he added that they're clearly the path of the future, and while not every project will be as complex or far-reaching at IBM's was, he expects that many more will test the limits of production companies, clients and agencies.
The panel summed up by noting that the process of orchestrating many integrated productions is often worked out on an ad hoc basis. They expect that the trend of agencies teaming with clients and production vendors to produce elements for traditional broadcast and digital media simultaneously – as well as for print, out of home, event marketing and other forms of media – will become increasingly commonplace as brands continue to fragment their communication with consumers in different ways.
Published 21 April, 2012
