“Italian Creativity Will Stop at Nothing”: A Tour of 1806 Agency
Creative representation and production agency 1806 Agency grew out of Livello 6, which was founded in 2002 by Isabella Martinelli and Andrea Bertuzzi. The new agency brought together a gang of photography and production professionals in 2010 and ever since the company has taken pride in innovation and ‘concreteness’. The team there is constantly on the search for the best and broadest range of talent to make sure they can propose a wide number of options for any given project.
The Milan-based agency has several divisions, focusing on CGI and post production, animation and motion graphics, video advertising, digital and alternative media and illustration.
We chatted to founder and CEO Andrea Bertuzzi to get to know his business.
LBB> What's your philosophy on discovering new artists? How do you work with the talent pool in Milan and overseas?
Andrea> The search for artists is always ongoing. Curiosity and instinct help us find the talent. Sometimes we’re driven by the market research, some other times we are just looking to discover new ones. Milan is our headquarters and from here we directly manage the talent, understanding and analysing their work in order to grow our relationships, keeping an eye on international markets, where thanks to our partners we can handle our clients’ productions.
LBB> You also provide production. Are there any projects that you've recently worked on that illustrate your expertise here?
Andrea> Production is an essential part of our job as it allows us to give an all-round service to our clients and the artists that we manage. We’ve just recently realised worldwide campaigns for clients such as Carrera, Polaroid and Heineken, where we handled every aspect of the production.
Our production process starts when we receive the brief from ad agencies and/or clients. According to the different needs both of our talents and our customers, we build ideal working teams and develop the project following every production step up until the delivery of the file.
For our FW 2018 Polaroid campaign with our photographers Nick & Chloè, we took care of the location scouting, casting, realised the photo shoot for the campaign, more than 50 pieces of digital content and over 60 product still-life shots, all in only two days.
SS 2019 saw Carrera choose us for the third season in a row as their production house and management. The result was two very intense films with American actor Matthew Nozska and model and pilot Carmen Jorda, directed by Federico Mazzarisi, plus all the photographic campaign shots for sun and eyewear by Elio Nogueira.
For Heineken we've travelled the world with our photographer Andric and realized over 50 shots for the world-leading beer brand.
LBB> Why do you feel you need to offer production as well as representation when there is a healthy market of independent production companies?
Andrea> As described earlier, we believe it’s very important to have an overview on the whole process in order to best manage the relationship between the client and the talent. The reality is that we’re not only a talent agency but also a production house that is intended to be a production partner for international clients in Italy, but also worldwide. Our network is able to manage photography and video production on a worldwide scale, thanks to the partners we have made over the years. In Italy, we are playing on our home ground - we have the sea, history, mountains, architecture, sun and snow, and we know how to make the most of every production for each client.
LBB> Tell us a bit about your partners. Who are they and where?
Andrea> We have partners in the most important markets in the world. D’ELE Management is our partner in China and proposes and produces our talent in the Chinese market. In Europe we manage everything directly. We also have partners in Brazil, Turkey and India. And we are about to close a very important deal for the Malaysian market with a focus on Singapore and we are changing our American partner, but we'd rather leave a bit of suspense as that will be a great surprise.
LBB> What's the key to working internationally out of Milan?
Andrea> Italian creativity will stop at nothing. We combine creativity and tenacity with pragmatism - a concrete approach that over the years made it possible for us to achieve great success on various levels, even on productions with international budgets.
LBB> What do you think is your company culture and how is it unique?
Andrea> The uniqueness in our working method is to always be on the lookout for every detail, no matter what the scale of the projects we are pursuing. We are flexible without losing pragmatism, curious whilst we get straight to business. Of course we also have teams of professionals that with varied backgrounds and are very specialised in what they do while being in synergy with us.
