Can the industry de-couple production without decoupling creativity?

That was the question at the centre of a lively debate held earlier this month by the IPA, which also involved ISBA, CIPS, agencies, production and intermediaries.

The discussion was kicked off after Peter Buchanan, the COI's deputy chief executive, argued the merits of the COI's 'third-way', a route to having your cake and eating it, which allows production to be de-coupled without decoupling creativity.

Buchanan believes this process delivers cost savings but also, by being closer to the creative product, adds value.

Is Buchanan right? Or is there no such thing as best practice in production decoupling; is it simply a case of what works at the right time and in the right way?

My opinion is for an advertiser who has a number of brands managed by a number of agencies there is real value in consolidating the production and delivery of their advertsing media into a media production company.

Clearly the production company has to have the scale and resource to manage the clients marketing and advertsing activity by having a multi channel offering to achieve real value.

The production company's position in the advertising supply chain remains the same as its always been it's just that they've become more client focused and added client services to the front of their offering.

Providing clients with transparency and control over the production and distribution of their camapaign activity.

Whether it's good for the creative product or not, increasingly short deadlines and tight time scales will force it to happen widely within the next 3 years, I fear. Agencies creative departments will be slashed, with art director/copywriter teams (if they survive) spending half their time approving visuals/rough cuts sent from different time zones and doing the bare bones of and idea that gets sold to the client. This will lead to a huge reduction in quality of the creative product and (therefore) value to the client but it will be quick and cheap. Doesn't sound like much fun, though.