Three Minute Happiness

James Cooper

Short answer to that is when Noah Brier from Naked joins as head of planning. But things are changing folks. The lines are blurring and after all the fuss at Cannes between Gold winning BBDO and non-Gold winning Big SpaceShip it seems like the conversations are just starting.

Some context. Noah is a big brain from Naked in NY. Noah is joining The Barbarian Group - which is also full of big brains but has, until now, rightly or wrongly been labeled as a "Just A Production Company". This is a common enough story. You can read elsewhere what Barbarian have done or not done but the point is that it's companies like them, Big Spaceships and Perfect Fools (whom Mark Chalmers, former ECD of Strawberry Frog recently joined) that are now in the driving seat.

There was a minor spat at Cannes when Big Spaceship didn't win a gold for the work they had done on HBO Voyeur. For sure the awards system should be updated so that production companies can receive the proper credit they deserve - in the same way that it's perfectly clear who directs - and through which company - award winning TV commercials. Anyone who knows Michael at Big Spaceships will know he is not a confrontational kind of guy - he just wanted to start the conversation. It seems to me there are two things worth considering.

Firstly, ad agencies are very used to this relationship. It's identical to the TV process. Creative team come up with an idea. Director and Production Company then, in the best instances, make that idea into something amazing. Everyone knows who the best directors and companies are but it's still the creative team who go up on stage to collect the gong. I was wondering why the film production people don't get annoyed with this but then I worked out that fundamentally their life is a zillion times better than any agency creative. If you are a good director you earn a fortune, more than any creative, actually more than any creative director. You travel around the world shooting in excotic locations on everyone else's money. Life is good, why worry about *** like that? The problem is the digital production people, as a new sector, don't earn anywhere near that kind of cash. It's hard work, for the most part they get treated like *** and so, actually, yeah, it would be nice to get some recognition once in a while....

Secondly however,I don't think most of the people in the good production agencies will be worrying too much. They know they are onto a good thing. With a couple of key hirings, like Noah, or a few 'creatives' (whatever that means these days), client facing project managers etc they will be able to go straight to the client on some jobs and where that's not possible pick and choose the peachy jobs from ad agencies who mostly wouldn't know how to make a gold winning web site if their Cannes expense budget depended on it.

If I was looking for a new job, I know where I would start looking.