The New Video Village: What Are the Secrets Behind Great Partnerships?
How do you pick the right partner? Well, it’s a complicated question. If it were simple, there wouldn't be such a swathe of bingeable dating shows, advice columns, and ‘just-swipe-right’ apps. And in the world of production, the answer is becoming increasingly important.
This is partly because the question itself is being asked more often. Data published last year by APR, the content creation optimisation consultancy, showed that one third of the companies they polled were working with over 100 production partners.
According to the consultancy’s report, this web of production and agency relationships is growing in all sorts of different directions. Some brands are working directly with what APR calls ‘hybrid agencies’ (production companies who have expanded to support creative through production), whilst others are creating and managing ‘Preferred Partner Programs’ in which they build a roster of pre-vetted and pre-negotiated production partnerships across their varied content creation needs. Others, meanwhile, are fully decoupling production - meaning the brand hires the agency for the creative idea and hires the production company to produce the creative concept.
So, as the density and complexity of our media landscape continue to grow, so too does the value of working with true experts in a given field. Rather than collaborating with production generalists over a number of different campaigns, marketers are now looking to harness the expertise of multiple vendors across different parts of their content creation process.
As a result, the nature of a successful production relationship is changing. To find out more - and how all parties can maximise the benefits of a successful partnership - LBB together with APR has enlisted the help of experts from across the industry. To get a full sense of the picture, we heard from Tag EMEA CEO Andria Vidler, &Friends founder and co-CEO Tom Maberly, OLIVER’s global head of production Peter van Jaarsveld, and The Hershey Company’s senior manager for indirect procurement Dana Kleiser, alongside APR’s very own Cathy Stanley and Mary Dunn.
Get To Know Yourself
Although the comparisons with dating psychology can be glib, there’s more than a fleeting similarity between the two worlds. For example, before working with others it’s important to understand yourself first.
“Something I always tell our clients is to ensure that you know what you want”, says Cathy. “Or, in other words, the output or results that you’re aiming towards. That way, you can map them backwards to the right talent. That might sound simple, but it’s amazing how often it gets neglected”.
As much as the technical aspects of the industry become more complex, the secrets to success still remain fundamentally human. “When we rebranded from Mr White to &FRIENDS, one of the reasons to do so was that we believe that we do our best work amongst friends”, notes Tom. “Creating those open, collaborative, no pre-conceptions environments is key to the creative process working well. As cheesy and cliche as it sounds, it's about teamwork from creative strategy to asset delivery”.
The prioritisation of those human aspects are reflected by our brand spokesperson. When asked what they’re looking for in an ideal production partner, Dana tells us that “Our desired qualities in a production partner include experience, honesty and transparency, collaboration, communication, partnership mindset, agility, strong DE&I focus, a willingness to accept feedback, responsiveness, sense of urgency, and a balance between people and processes”.
For these reasons, it’s difficult for our experts to understate the importance of a good cultural fit. “If you think of an interview process, half of the time you spend talking should be about your own culture, and the other person’s values”, says Mary. “The RFI [request for information] process should always include cultural questions”.
But how can both parties ensure that they’re putting their best foot forward and working to ensure that all-important cultural fit? To borrow another cliche, it takes two to tango. There are ways for both sides of the relationship to offer value - for example, Peter believes that OLIVER’s in-house approach provides an organic way to facilitate a good cultural match.
“It naturally lends itself towards building really close relationships with our clients”, he says. “The operational proximity allows us to operate from a position of deep understanding of their world, which combined with a shared vision and highly collaborative approach helps us to develop solutions that are grounded in the realities of production while setting our clients up for success”.
Finding that cultural match is a priority from the other side of the relationship, too. Dana notes that “we’re very open and transparent about our longstanding values of togetherness, integrity, making a difference and excellence; we seek to align ourselves with partners who share these same values. Our relationships are based on mutual respect, trust and understanding”.
Fittingly, the brand has a process in place for ensuring that prospective production partners are likely to match up to their own internal culture. “Beyond actively searching and screening for partners who are experienced, ethical and able to service our requirements, we also assess organisations and specific account teams for cultural fit”, the spokesperson tells us. “We openly share our vision, mission, values, and desired behaviours to ensure expectations are clear from the outset and that ways of working are aligned. Our onboarding process, mutual goal setting, and ongoing feedback mechanisms ensures this alignment is sustained”.
Experience is another sought-after quality. For Andria and Tag, success on their part has been built on a diversification of their expertise. As client needs have broadened out into new areas, so too has Tag’s offering. “Having been operating for over 50 years, our experience and learnings across all sectors means we have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t”, she says. “A key focus for us has been identifying those areas that needed additional knowhow and acquiring businesses that bolster our services. Recently we’ve acquired Moni Media, an ecommerce expert, L&A, a social media expert, and The Gate Films - film experts to hone in on specific client requirements we’ve seen grow in the past few years”.
Connection on a human and cultural level, integration, and diverse expertise are all ways in which production companies can become valuable partners to their clients. And yet, what about the other side of that partnership? What kind of habits are common across brands who’ve made a success of their production partnerships?
Willing Collaborators
For clients who find themselves working with more and more production partners, roster management should be a priority. As Mary explains, “too many options can become chaotic, so check in with your marketers to see who is using what. Something we often see is a partner being used once and then ignored - so is it really essential to keep them within the ecosystem? So the ability to establish guidelines and a process for how to manage your production roster is becoming an essential skill”.
Nodding her head, Cathy strikes a note of agreement. “What’s also essential is accountability as part of that process. Somebody within the organisation should be able to justify why you are working with as many production partners as you are - but I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve seen who aren’t able to answer that question!”.
“It’s funny, because I think all of us have some kind of ‘everything drawer’ in our kitchens”, adds Mary. “And that’s what the most successful production partnerships avoid! Someone has to take on accountability for organising what might otherwise be clutter”.
From the production perspective, our experts are united in identifying a common characteristic across their most successful relationships. “I would say that the traits that are common across our most successful partnerships are around being open, collaborative, and having a shared vision”, says Peter. “Production moves fast. Things change, and there are loads of moving parts. Staying close to our clients and being able to reach out and discuss things head-on - combined with a level of honesty - goes a long way towards delivering great work”.
It’s a view shared by Tom. “Common traits in our most successful partnerships are openness to collaboration - actual collaboration, meaning being equally as willing to be led as to lead”, says the founder. “And trust - trust that their budget is being spent efficiently, and being confident in the fact that more of their spend ends up ‘on-screen’ as opposed to it being syphoned off through layers of management”.
For Andria, it’s important that clients share the same level of ambition that’s common across her own teams. “We look for a shared vision for greatness. Within our partnerships, we always want to produce the best work we can for our ambitious client base”, she says. “Having clients who are motivated by creating engaging, innovative, and sustainable campaigns is always a win-win. Thankfully, we have partnerships built on exactly that”.
It’s within all of these ways that both clients and production partners are finding ways to thrive in this new, more flexible, era of content creation. And, happily, many brands and vendors are producing incredible and effective work amidst that backdrop. “Collaborating with different people and perspectives carries the dual benefit that you’re exposed to fresh ideas more often”, notes Cathy. “Creatively, there’s a tonne of value which can come out of that”.
Perhaps more than ever before, production success in 2023 is about relationships. In the search for effective creativity, finding the right partner is often more than half the battle. If marketers and creators can get that right, and manage those relationships well, there’s plenty to get excited about in this era of specialisation and expertise.
