How to Win the Pitch. Transcript
Insights include:
- CREATING THE BRIEF
- CREATING THE DIRECTOR SHORTLIST
- CHOOSING THE DIRECTOR
The panel also addresses these questions:
- How do we connect with people in agencies?
- Do directors get to see the brief you are working on, before they write the treatment?
- Can you give more insight into the process of working with the creatives and having to manage production
- How can new directors impress you on Instagram?
- Why don't agencies reveal who the other directors are in that triple bid process?
- How do you get new voices into the director ecosystem?
- What if you haven't won a treatment?
- How do you best support fair representation within the industry with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion
First, some photos from the event:
HOW TO WIN THE PITCH
@We Are Social December 12th 2023
Maria Katsoudakis, Brand & Marketing Director, Vodafone
Jess Ringshall, Chief Production Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi
Conrad Haddaway, Creative, Mother
Luke Mortimer, In-House Producer, We Are Social Studios
*** Important caveat***
Sometimes the recording of this event was hard to hear. So sometimes the transcript is a best guess of what was said.
WELCOME
SCREENING: Ads from each of the panelists
OVERVIEW
Jess - The process of creating an advert, from the brief coming from the client through to delivery of the finished film
CREATING THE BRIEF
Maria - How does a brief get made? What happens inside the client and who’s involved. Are there any thoughts about specific directors at this point?
Conrad - Who gets the brief at the creative agency? How does it get to you and how does the creative direction get made? Are there any thoughts about specific directors at this point?
Jess - When are agency producers typically involved in this process? What are your producers’ inputs? Are there any thoughts about specific directors at this point?
Luke - How does the agency in-house process differ from what’s just been described? When do you start thinking about specific directors?
CREATING THE DIRECTOR SHORTLIST
Luke - why the agency shortlists directors
Maria - brand input to shortlist creation
Conrad - creatives’ input to shortlist creation
CHOOSING THE DIRECTOR
Maria - What the client looks for and why
Conrad - What makes you like a director, what puts you off?
Jess - Risks & freedoms
Luke - More ways to be attractive, more things to avoid
Jess - Writing to time and shooting the script
QUESTIONS
1/ How do we connect with people in agencies? (this question is really hard to hear on the recording, but it’s probably this).
2/ Do directors get to see the brief you are working on, before they write the treatment?
3/ Can you give more insight into the process of working with the creatives and having to manage production
4/ How can new directors impress you on Instagram?
5/ Why don't agencies reveal who the other directors are in that triple bid process?
6/ How do you get new voices into the director ecosystem?
7/ What if you haven't won a treatment?
8/ How do you best support fair representation within the industry with diversity, equity and inclusion
WELCOME
Dan Keefe
This came about from a conversation that Caroline, myself and Luke had about how it would be incredibly helpful for people to know what happened behind the scenes, and what decisions were actually based on. So Caroline got in touch a few weeks later and said, “Let's do an event on it”. So please use this time to ask lots of questions. disagree with us, shout wherever you want to, this time is for you.
Caroline Bottomley
Thank you very much to We Are Social again, thank you very much to our lovely sponsors, LS productions who do production partnerships, and King Lear who do sound design and music, both of whom are fantastic.
So as you probably know, Shiny is about getting new and diverse directors into advertising production. We hope this evening's panel will help new directors understand more about the pitching process, so they can become more successful in winning work. Please make the most of the fantastic industry people here and please, everyone network with each other.
SCREENING
Adverts from each of the panel:
Vodafone: Christmas Elf
Mother, for Uber: Best Friends
Saatchi & Saatchi, for John Lewis: Snapper
We Are Social, for Lego
Caroline Bottomley
First of all, we're going to introduce Jess Ringshall who is Chief Production Officer at Saatchi and Saatchi. ‘Chief Production Officer’ meaning in charge of all of the production staff. She’s going to give us a short overview of how an advert starts with a client and ends up being made by the agency or through the agency.
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OVERVIEW: PRODUCING AN ADVERT
Jess Ringshall
I've got three minutes to talk about this, which isn't quite fair, because in most agencies this process can definitely take maybe 3,6,9,12 months.
I’m going to talk about an example that I didn't do. It starts off with a client coming to an agency with potentially a problem or a position. I'm going to use the example of Nike Londoner and I imagine that they came to the agency and said, We want to connect more deeply with grassroots sport.
The client will say ‘…We're really interested in this particular problem, we'd love the agency to try and unpack that further for us…’ The agency and the strategist will then take that particular problem and look for a set of insights that allow us to find a different way to unpack it. Not just to answer the problem, but to also find a creative way to approach it.
You have to put a huge amount of effort and energy into being able to put your own personal time aside, to look at how grassroots sports happen. You have to go out and find it. In this instance you might travel across multiple boroughs in London. There's a huge celebration about the commitment that somebody might find within themselves for their own sport. The strategist will then distill that into a brief for the creative department.You always want strategists to give you a pithy answer, an answer of how to celebrate the difficulty of operating at grass roots levels, but also to give real human insights into the issue. To find some nuggets about how people really feel about what it means to be part of a team or what it really means to finish work at five, and then get across London to go and join that sport.
So that the creative department will then go ‘...Great strategy, thanks very much…I'm really interested in an emotive story that allows you to not just feel what it really means to be part of a team or what it really feels like to have a commitment within the sport I do, within that I've got my own personal story to tell…’
The creatives might then distill beautiful script. The client might say ‘...We've got seven channels for you to get across: you've got above the line, and you've got TV. We want you to break that out neatly into social and also have these other bits and pieces. There's a digital journey we want you to unpack…’
You have to think about the core idea and how to distill that strategic point, then bring that big idea through all of those different channels. Now the next stage is ‘...Okay, production department, we want to do all of these amazing things, we want to find the right partners to tell their stories through all these different channels…’ The creative agency go to the producers who go off and work out how to best facilitate the way to bring those stories to life, whatever the channel. Then you go to Nike London and say ‘...Alright, it's really easy…’
Caroline Bottomley
That's great, there’s the headline. Now we'll dive into each of those areas in more detail. Maria, let's start off with you and the Vodafone advert. Maria is Brand and Marketing director at Vodafone. When an advert is going to be made, you're the place where it starts. Tell us what happens.
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CREATING THE BRIEF
Maria Koutsoudakis
Take Christmas, for example. We know Christmas is a great time for brands, particularly in the UK, to build emotional connection. And as a telco we also know that we're not necessarily the thing that anyone thinks about that often, unless it's broken. We’re extremely aware of a hierarchy in customers' emotional needs. So Christmas is a really important time for us. We started a platform back in the summer behind Wimbledon, based on the premise that connection fuels champions and the connection makes people feel something. We know the power of a network to connect people to each other, to entertain. That hashtag, #feeltheconnection started in the summer.
The Christmas brief given to the agency had two criteria. One was, “how do we build on the emotive storytelling of the hashtag #feeltheconnection & give a pivotal role to our technology in a fresh and interesting way this Christmas”. The second was, we had done a small game last year, called Elf and Seek. We wanted to take that asset from TV to social to activation into retail.
On big briefs like this one, we do a collaborative tissue session with our agency, in which they'll explore strategy. We had four or five proposals the agency thought could be interesting. Some were a fully formed script, some were just an idea. We sit in a room and discuss. There's pressure on us as a client, because you know the amount of work that goes into an agency presentation, and they present to you and in nought point six seconds, you're supposed to come up with something intelligent to say. There’s quite a bit of pressure to do that, but eventually you get a gut reaction. In this instance, when this script was given, you could see the reaction in the room. Then said ‘...That's the one…’, and dismissed the other four, and we went on from there.
Caroline Bottomley
So two questions about that one. One: Do you have any ideas of specific directors at that point?
And two explain “tissue session”.
Maria Koutsoudakis
A tissue session is a working session. It's not fully formed. It's a bit more collaborative. It's literally a few ideas on the back of a fag packet. They can be thrown away so it's meant to be ‘big opinions loosely held’. You've not fully thought through more options.
We're nowhere near the director at that stage - it's not until we have tested and aligned on a script, do we start thinking about who might bring the script to life.
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Caroline Bottomley
I'll stop at that point, and go on to Conrad; as a creative will you get involved in tissue sessions?
Conrad Haddaway
It depends if they want to let us in the room or not, if they trust us not to say anything stupid. Jess has done a good job of making what we do sound very important, but I want to say that I definitely don't know everything, the experience I can give is just my personal journey.
Our ideas always start off very top line, very loose. We'll get the kind of briefing from strategy, here's 20 slides on xyz, we're definitely going to do this, wouldn't it be sick if we did this, and so on. Then there's a lot of back and forth discussion with people who say, “that's pretty stupid. we're not going to do that.”
That's the very early stage. When everyone in the agency, and the client has agreed ‘...Yes, this feels like a good idea, we really want to go forward…’ we all get super excited about it, we have the money to make it, that's when it starts becoming a bit more real. Then we have to get our solution, we have to make it make sense.
Caroline Bottomley
Tell us about Robert De Niro.
Conrad Haddaway
That started off as very top line, trying to make a very simple, silly idea sound like there was a bit of thought that went into it. It was ‘...Okay, we have this product, we need to talk about saving money and food, saving money and doing stuff…’ There's a million different ways to talk about that. It ended up getting boiled down, to who is the most unexpected, or the scariest person to walk up to and say something really, really fucking stupid. And that happened to be Robert De Niro. And it spiralled from there pretty much.
Caroline Bottomley
Again, you're not really thinking about directors at this point.
Conrad Haddaway
Maybe a little bit, our job is to think about what the idea is, how we want it to look, what do we want the vibe to be, Directors are in the back of our mind, because the way creatives often write scripts or come up with ideas, it will reference this scene in this movie, where there was this conversation that was super awkward. We love that kind of referencing because sometimes you’re not sure they understand the idea too, like “...Okay, I don't really get it from what you've written because it sounds a bit dumb and I wouldn't ever give you a bunch of money to make it, but now I've seen it in a film, it makes sense and it feels real...” We don’t necessarily know exactly who we're going to work with at that point. But we have a bit of an idea how we want the vibe to be.
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Caroline Bottomley
Okay, great, thank you. Jess, this comes to you after the creative department. The Snapper advert was slightly different, wasn't it, because you got involved at an earlier stage than you would do normally?
Jess Ringshall
Yes, it was an unusual scenario, because we were pitching for the work while selling work. John Lewis had been within the incumbent (previous) agency for a long time. We pitched for the client and had to do tissue sessions as part of the pitch process, and therefore try and table quite a lot of the work. I was very insistent that I was there from the chemistry meeting, because John Lewis has an extraordinary kind of franchise that’s existed in our advertising world for a long time.
All we knew of the first brief was that it would be an iteration of something they'd already done. That franchise is what it is, and we had four months to produce something. Next year will be slightly different. This year was about making absolutely sure that we could hold sacred what they'd already built from a creative perspective. The first thing I said to my CCO before we went into the chemistry meeting was, “wow, there's not a lot of time before we've got to make this”. In production, it's always the same, there's not enough time. And I asked my question to the client at the end of the chemistry meeting “...What are you most worried about?...” And it was time.
It was an unusual position to be in from a production perspective. The first time for me to be part of a production pitch process all the way through, where the ideation of the work was very much based on how we were going to make it, the partners we were going to work with, our approach to music, our approach to everything. So I worked very, very closely with our CCO. It was a bit of a once in a lifetime opportunity to be that involved up front. But there was also this odd thing of wanting to slightly amend this very concrete approach which John Lewis used previously. I was involved very early on, and it massively helps, because in traditional briefs, where you aren't thinking about directors in tissue meetings, we were thinking about directors in that and when we were writing the work, we were asking what is the tone of voice of person that we're writing this to? How is somebody going to bring this to life in a slightly different way?
So it can happen that way, but it doesn't tend to.
Sometimes you go “I've written a script, and this is who I want to be a director.” You're thinking very much about the practicalities of getting this made on time, to budget, without disasters happening.
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Caroline Bottomley
Luke, as an in house producer, how does this process apply to you?
Luke Mortimer
I’ll give a little context, because every agency in house production might work slightly differently. We have We Are Social Studios, which is the in house production of We Are Social, the creative agency. We produce the majority of the work that is developed within this agency. We're fully integrated, so we can work directly with creatives as soon as a client brief comes in. We're can have those initial conversations and be involved throughout that process. It’s best when we are involved in that creative development stage, because we can see the ideas that are forming, and know what the client's budget is.
If the ideas are becoming bigger and bigger and the budget is small, that's not the fun part of the job. You have to sometimes rein in what's possible and what's feasible. But you never want to say, “No, it can't be done”, because there's always a way. But yeah, we're involved in that process. We see it through creative development, to get to the stage where we start thinking about directors.
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CREATING THE DIRECTOR SHORTLIST
Caroline Bottomley
Okay, fantastic. In the next section, we’ll look at how a director shortlist gets put together, and why you choose one director over another.
Luke Mortimer
A director shortlist is put together by the agency, generally, shortlisting is done by the agency, based on the agency’s knowledge & previous experiences. For instance, we recently did an ad with Sam Ryder, because it was super important to work with a director who had a proven track record of timing commercial communication to music, that was part of the brief.
It's up to the agency to shortlist, because the onus is on them to deliver the vision they’ve sold us on time, on budget and to execution. They have to be responsible for who they recommend. More often than not it's the agency producer who puts the list together. Sometimes creatives will say ‘...I'm loving this person, they’re really exciting…’, or ‘...I've had a great meeting with so and so, they are great…’ Sometimes they may have written something with somebody in mind. But more often than not, the agency producer will put the list together and then work with the creatives to unpack what they have written. The agency producer will talk to the production company to see if everything is do-able.
You work through the list collaboratively, with the creative department. Sometimes it's a formal process, where a creative might write a direct brief that gets signed off by the clients. So that is about making sure there's a really clear perspective; ‘...This is who we're going after, this is what we want...These are the promises that we're working to…’ Sometimes it’s more informal - they sign off the script and say ‘...Let's see what happens…’
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Caroline Bottomley
Maria, you'll be aware of different directors and their work because you're getting involved in making decisions about them. But are you researching directors in order to contribute to the shortlist?
Maria Koutsoudakis
I used to exist in a world of FMCG, where if you're lucky, you made an ad every three years. Now we make maybe nine ads a year, but our production department will make 90 ads a year. There is no way that a client can have the breadth of experience when it comes to production houses. Because all you can base your knowledge on is your experience. I mean even nine ads a year, that's quite a lot, very few brands produce that much. So we lean really heavily on the agency for their shortlist recommendation.
Jess Ringshall
The agency goes through an incredibly forensic process in order to present the shortlist to clients. Why they've chosen a director, all the credentials that sit behind that choice. As you say, the production department might be making nine ads for Vodafone, but they're making, maybe another 25 for another load of clients. The agency has a lot knowledge to guide a client.
Caroline Bottomley
Can we look at the creatives’ input to shortlisting, because some people (like me) think the creative department is influential in deciding directors. Are you saying your interest in directors is as much about getting ideas & references from their work, as much as thinking about who might actually direct?
Conrad Haddaway
It's definitely a bit of both. It depends on the client you're working on, it depends on the job, how fast you have to move, stuff like that. My creative partner and I will see stuff on Instagram, think ‘this director looks sick’, share that and then keep that person in the back of your mind. So when that time does come around, you're like ‘OK actually we saw this person, they'd be wicked.’ Then you send them to the producer and say ‘...We'd love to work with this person…’ Depending on the size of the job, they might say ‘...Yeah good joke mate, they can't pay for you to go to LA to work with this person…’ but it would give the producer an idea of the kind of work we like. Who you may or may not get depends on the scale of the project. Hopefully we can be influential in it, but it's not always up to us at the end of the day.
Jess Ringshall
Massively influential. Tastemakers for sure. 100%.
Caroline Bottomley
So it’s very much worth directors trying to get onto your radar.
Conrad Haddaway
Yeah, it's always great to meet and chat to new people. A certain director may not be right for a certain job, but if you get in contact saying ‘...Ohh yeah I really love your work…’ - if we love your work then we’ve connected. There's actually a director we’re going to speak to later tonight and it came up from a casual conversation - ‘...love your work, really sick, not got anything in the pipeline right now, but would love to just chat and get to know you a bit more…’ I think that’s always really helpful. From the perspective of being a director, if you see an agency that you really like or you find the creatives that did that work, it never hurts to reach out and say ‘...I would love to chat…’ because more often than not people would be up for it.
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Caroline Bottomley
Great. Thank you. Jess, you're very much giving the idea that agency producers have a massive Rolodex, that you are the resource for the rest of the agency.
Jess Ringshall
There was a point in my career where creatives would behave exactly as you described ‘...I've just hung out with this person. I've just been to ***** rooftop bar with so and so, they're wicked and I want to work with them…’ all the rest of it. But the last couple of years have been really difficult for people to have that level of connection. I think agency producers have always had the rolodex. You ask them about any project, anything that's gone out, they'll be able to go ‘...Yeah, I know the production company. I know the director. I probably know what the budget was. I probably know how many days it was…’ It's an Agency producer’s passion to really understand and unpack all that stuff. And it's in their wheelhouse to understand what motivates the creatives, what their taste is. The creatives have a much better view of the client’s direction of travel and their visual world, their tone and all the rest of it. It's absolutely about supporting and making sure that the creatives are comfortable. Creatives ultimately sign off on the director choice. Agency producers are phenomenal at being able to, pull out information. That's their real passion, to be that rolodex.
Luke Mortimer
One of the main differentiations between my role as a producer from Jess with Saatchi is just that we/ in-house producers don't work with production companies, because we are the production company. We don’t necessarily work with directors who are signed by a production company. We work with independent or freelance directors or with directors who are repped by production companies but who are open to loaning them out. That's the main difference between how we work. But we’re very similar in that we have a rolodex of people we've seen or researched, and same with the creatives suggesting people that they'd like to work with. Again, it's that budget and availability conversation. I remember one example: a creative came to me and said ‘...I want Taika Waititi for a 50 grand online social job..’. And I was ‘...no, not quite. That's not going to happen…’ You've got to say that sort of thing in a pragmatic way, but that's part of the great process, finding that person who's right for the brief.
Conrad Haddaway
This is a thing that I hadn't really thought about until hearing you make that point. A lot of creatives like to work very differently, and it's always good to stick to your creative vision. I'm definitely going to fight for the idea. But there's also a point when holding on and being a bit of a diva about it is not really good for anyone because it's only 50 grand, it's not going to happen. If I just stormed out, then obviously nothing's going to happen. It's great to have those compromises and having those conversations ‘...OK, well, if it's not that person, who is it, how can we work it out and what is it specifically you like about this work?..’ It's really important to be super open about that stuff.
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CHOOSING THE DIRECTOR
Caroline Bottomley
Brilliant. Thank you. Let's go on to the last bit, what makes you choose one director and what makes you decide against another director. Maria, you were saying some really interesting things about branding as a director.
Maria Koutsoudakis
As a client, no disrespect to creatives, we don't want our money spent on experiments. We want to know that this is going to come out the way it is and not to have an inexperienced director, we see that as a little bit of a risk.
So what we’re looking for from a director is a bank of evidence that the director can do what you say we need to do, in order to make our ads successful. A year ago when we did a Wimbledon 360 advert and we needed a director who had an evidence base that they had shot in 360. There's not that many of them and the one that came in, happened to be 20 to 25% more expensive than the other person that approached the story more from an emotional point of view.
But we went back to the brief and the brief was to showcase a piece of technology and the technology was 360. We needed someone who we knew could do a good job of that and that became really important.
Often in a brief we've got something that we know is vital and what we look for is an evidence base for this. We may not have worked with the director before, that's not the issue, but we want definitive proof that this director (and it's the same way we do with casting an actor) has done this before and can do it again. That might not be how all brand directors work, but that's exactly what I look for. It’s that consistency and proof. There’s a stylistic thing as well, which is some directors have a handwriting in the way they like to shoot things. Is it a bit retro? Is it a bit more of a sort of a haze? Is there a point of view that they bring? Others will shoot in any style for the brand. We look at that as well because there's certain brands that can get away with retro. And there’s certain brands, like Vodafone, that can't because it's not ironic. So, we're very sensitive to a few things that we look at.
My priorities are that it's evidence based you can do what you said you can do, and secondly for an invisible brand like Vodafone, that there's an evidence base that you understand our brand.
For instance, we have a red world and I know a lot of creatives hate that. They say ‘...You're making me create this fake red world you're making everyone exist in and there's too much…’ The number of conversations we've had about too much red, not enough red. You're red washing, not red washing. Shades of red. Red can go dodgy. You spend your whole life discussing zones of red. But I look for a director that understands that, and doesn't fight me on that. That says ‘...I get you. You're invisible. The Red World makes this a Vodafone world…’ Otherwise there's no Vodafone in an ad. Creatives don't always agree with my interpretation of it and I'm happy to have that challenge, but I don't want to fight about the existence of the Vodafone world.
We've learned this over time, and our creative agencies have learned it too. There's certain things we don't budge on. Then there's some things we need to face, such as, if you want 360 experience, it's going to cost you 20% more. Maria, make your choice. And so we have that discussion.
With directors I want them to show me they understand the business and show me they understand my brief. We go through responses to brief and I'm like ‘’’You haven't mentioned the brand once in your response…’ or ‘...You haven't played back to me, or said I hear you…’ Sometimes you’ve got to repeat the brief, to say ‘...I've got it. I got the joke. I understand what you want…’ It makes us as a client feel really comfortable. ‘...They understand my brand. They understand the challenge. Now we can move on…’ If you don't say you can see me and my team, I’ll sit through the process and wonder whether they really understand this, about a network that's invisible? Do they get the joke? Or that it's not about a mother & daughter. It's about a network engaging a mother and child.
Sometimes there’s a misinterpretation, the creative says: ‘...Oh yeah, I know. That's understood…’ You might say it's understood, but unless I see it written, I'm not confident that we're all on the same page. So, play the brief back, understand what's critical to the client. And say that a few times because then we're thinking ‘...OK, you got it. You understand those parameters…’ Then we always ask for evidence base from a creative point of view. That's the way we operate. ‘...Why are you choosing this director and what skill do they bring to the table that's 100% aligned with the job that we need to do..?’ We're quite rational like that. that's what we look for. It does vary, but those are some of the things that we look for in the decision.
Caroline Bottomley
And just to make things entirely clear, you get the final say on deciding the director.
Maria Koutsoudakis
We do, we do.
We’re the least experienced people in the room, but we do, and that's what we look for. We always ask for agency recommendations. In our case, we have to triple bid and we hope that an agency is recommending three people that they don't mind working with. In general they don't present someone just to fill the triple bid.
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Caroline Bottomley
We were going to talk some more about the triple bid, but I don't think we'll have time.. So let's stay focused on what makes you go “Yes” to a director and just as important, what makes you say “No” to a director.
Conrad Haddaway
There's a lot of factors that come up. You might have someone with a really interesting point of view and they’ll bring a certain spin to the concept. Or a director who has tons of evidence that 100% they could do it exactly like we expect it to be, they’re a wicked cool safe option. We know we're not going to get sacked because of the director.
Then you might have someone who has a really different point of view, and we love experiments. Maybe we've spent months coming up with this idea and we’re very much in our headspace, but sometimes I love to hear someone say ‘...This is a better way to do it…’ because a lot of you directors know a lot more about what it means to bring stuff to life on screen. We really love to be told that we're a bit wrong there, like ‘...I saw how you wrote this, I saw what your idea for this scene was but actually. I want to do it like this…’ We are totally open for that, that’s what makes this part of the process really fun.
We're not super precious when we write things because for the past nine months has just been a PDF on a page which is not very fun to look at. A lot of those conversations are back and forth, we look at it like a collaboration. I know a lot of people say ‘...do you want to collab…’ and it's the ultimate trick language to use. But for us that's what we really enjoy. Because we can learn a lot from you and hopefully you can learn something from us. As long as the idea is in there then that's fine. We're mainly looking to see that the concept is there. How you deliver it, there's a million different ways.
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Caroline Bottomley
Thank you. What do you think about that, Jess, in terms of director pitches and the idea that there is leeway to have input into creative direction when you're pitching.
Jess Ringshall
This is a hot topic from a production perspective - the bidding process, how treatments are written and how agencies find the right people. The triple process is super important and it's exciting that it's within our wheelhouse to have creative difference. I used to love that creative agencies would send a script to a production company and the director could really, truly try and respond to it from a creative perspective. Within that script there would be tonality and there would be a sense of the brief and all the rest of it.
I'm a bit concerned at the moment that agencies are sending over director packs that are pages long in terms of a brief for a director and that gets restrictive for production companies and for directors. How can they respond to it when we’ve given them the tonality, the cinema, cinematography perspective? It's leading the witness too much. But I hope directors mostly respond to how they want to make the piece of work, and that is what's brilliant about the bidding process. You've got to totally understand what you're being asked to deliver, but you have to be able to give an authentic response to that.
That's what's exciting about getting three different treatments, to see the nuance of how directors might approach one thing or the other. It's such a rich and important component of the process. It's difficult because sometimes you might have an amazing conversation one to one with a director and a production company about how they might approach something, but then it doesn't leap off the the page, so then I have to convince a client that they really get it.
The market is looking for the most risk averse option at the moment, I get a bit worried about needing to see a certain level of work or execution that a director might have done or have on their reel. because it immediately eliminates a huge amount of directors who are really exciting who they might have had I mean we're talking to emerging directors, right? And how you're going to break into the industry?
At work I put a lot of pressure on my agency and my creatives and my production department to give feedback, talk to them. Why wasn't it right? Why didn't you feel that? Were there too many tropes in there? Why did you feel was inauthentic? Why did you feel like they missed the mark?
Often a brand isn’t on board because you didn't tell them a story about themselves upfront. That's important, it's important to tell them what they need to hear first (though for some clients, it's not). You want them to say ‘...I just got my effing hair blown back because you told me something I didn't know about myself and I'm really excited about what you're going to do to the story…’
I struggle a bit with needing to see a lot of work in somebody's reel. Like we discussed, the alternative before was meet them in a rooftop bar and said ‘...fuck, you're cool, let's talk more. Here's my 50 grand project, let's try it. And sorry (client), there's a bit of risk...’
Luke Mortimer
Yes, absolutely. There's always a conversation about what directors have done before, eg how they how they treated food, how they treated beauty, how have they appropriately looked at the brand colours and all the rest of it.
Directors put so much time and energy into treatments,, it's huge investment from them. There's a huge responsibility from agencies and in-house agencies to feed back and really invest in that process. It shouldn’t be just ‘thanks very much’.
Caroline Bottomley
That's great. Luke you're a great source for emerging directors because you're working with more branded content and you often have smaller budgets where there is room for a bit more risk isn't there?
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Luke Mortimer
Yeah, absolutely.
The treatment is a way of seeing how director's thinking. But I also think the part before that, the chemistry calls we have as producers and creatives is so important. I've been on calls before where I've really pushed for one director who was less experienced than the other two. As soon as we had the chemistry calls with the three directors, the person who was less experienced was the most enthused and excited by the project, excited by the brief, excited by just the whole creative idea - we were coming up with ideas on the call. Compared to the other two, we got a distinctive energy.
A really key part is also that we're going to be working with this person quite closely over the next three to four weeks or of months of pre production, so we want them to be nice people. Be enthused and be excited about the idea because that is also part of the pitch. The treatment is a very important factor, but also wanting to work with these people is important.
Caroline Bottomley
So the chemistry call, is that is generally a zoom?
Luke Mortimer
Yes. One other thing to take into account is the production company who wraps themselves around a director. Quite often I'll go ‘...The director’s only done music videos, but the production company is Pulse or Riff Raff…’ You know you're going to have the most experienced producer and that they’ll wrap an amazing team around the project, like an incredible cinematographer. They are investing huge amounts into this director to grow. That's the bigger package that isn't necessarily in the treatment. Producers are able to give an additional layer of added value with a particular director. It's bigger than what might sit on their on their reel.
Caroline Bottomley
A production company is saying ‘...We signed this director because we think they’re amazing and we're going to make sure everything is delivered…’ It makes a difference.
Luke Mortimer
Yes, though typically the director would be independent. Then I would be their production producer, so it wouldn't be necessarily that package. But everyone's got connections, whether it's editors they work with or DP's, so every director still comes with a package.
Caroline Bottomley
What are other reasons why a director might fall off the list, as well as not doing well on the chemistry call?
Luke Mortimer
If they're not addressing the the actual brief and the core of the creative idea.They've missed the mark, that's where we differentiate between who gets the job and who doesn't.
Jess Ringshall
Or they don’t write the script to time, this is something that I see a lot.
I'm a big champion of emerging directors and new directors who have only worked with music videos & smaller budget content They need to write a 60 or a 30 and I read their treatment and know that it’s 2 minutes. Quite often I read a treatment and have no confidence we can do it in a day, that it needs three days.The treatment isn’t just a sales tool, it's also a a working tool that we will refer back to 1000 times over and check ‘...What do they say in the treatment..?’
It’s important the director really distills the treatment. Cut it down, just cut it. There's techniques that you learn over time, your producers and the people around you should help you tighten.
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Conrad Haddaway
The Uber ad, everything was totally planned. It's exactly how it was intended.
But also so much stuff happens on set and all the funniest moments or the best takes is stuff that wasn't intended. You dont have to play exactly what we've written back to us.
Also to your point, don’t overwrite too much. It's OK to have some ideas in your back pocket, you dont have to write everything in. Maybe sneak some in later that we can actually use.
Jess Ringshall
As long as you have the narrative absolutely buttoned down, everything else is there to play for. The worst scenarios I've been in are where you're flipping through a script and what we've shot doesn't make sense. We’ve got two hours left and it’s ‘...How are you gonna edit this together?..’. If you're absolutely narratively buttoned down, then you can have fun with the improvisations. Do crash zooms and all the rest that you want to do, but the client needs to know you’re giving them 30 seconds that they can apply a huge amount of media behind. Once that works and makes sense, then you can have freedom elsewhere.
Conrad Haddaway
Yes, exactly that. Cross the T's and dot the I’s. Eat your broccoli, then have your ice cream at the end.
Jess Ringshall
When we did John Lewis, Megaforce' treatment was exact, it was so pared back. It was essentially a shooting board, it was exactly what we're going to see. Either you choose to do it or you don't. It was 100% perfection, beautiful, perfect. And then they added all the magic on top of that. There was a creative confidence and there was a creative ability, and the feeling ‘...Holy fuck, we might get more out of this than we thought...’
When I get a massively overblown treatment, I don't know what to focus on. I want one sentence that's going tell me what’s what. With directors of that kind of scale (Megaforce), they are probably able, compared to someone who's got no work on their reel. People will say ‘...Sorry, who is this?..’ Because obviously successful directors worked incredibly hard for it and have done amazing, amazing work, so it's slightly easier to believe it's going to be sick. But definitely have confidence and back yourself and your work.
Caroline Bottomley
There's so much more that we could talk about, but we've got to get people involved and questions. I'm going to ask a woman first.
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Audience - Question 1
How do we connect with people in agencies? (this question is hard to hear on the recording, but it’s probably this).
Jess Ringshall
It's a mix for sure. I can only speak for for the production community and how agency producers work. I implore and and constantly bang on to my producers to make sure that they're talking to reps. Individual producers are also meeting directors. So it's about being out and open as absolutely possible. We spend quite a lot of time getting production companies in, getting directors in to do showcases and really being able to create that human connection. I also hear that there's a lot of slipping into the DMs on Instagram and other socials. There's different ways that production companies and directors are engaging with producers, which is great because I'm loving all of this work. It's coming through my feed, so it’s still a massive hustle from the production company and director. But the agencies are wide open and spend a huge time with all of that community.
Conrad Haddaway
It's such a mix of people - we may have just come across them, or people reach out to us directly. Some director reps we go to regularly, like Dark Energy or The Visionaries. It's always good to go to them because they might have people on their books who aren't on their website. They don't put everyone on their their rosters, especially up and coming directors.
Luke Mortimer
There’s a lot of ways it can happen. At the end of the day we’re just people, with personal opinions and tastes. If there's a particular ad or film you've seen that you really like or there's one company that is like doing loads of cool shit, then find them on Instagram, find them on LinkedIn, find their website. Connect there, it’s way, way easier to have an actual human conversation with one person, as opposed to messaging the front desk. If there's a certain type of work you want to get into, if you know the direction you want to go in or there’s people you really rate, then my advice is to start there. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to go through the normal channels.
Maria
I think the effort is best spent on the agency versus the client. That's why we employ agencies or our studios because they bring those recommendations to us. It's not our specialism. It's not our day job.
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Audience - Question 2
Do directors get to see the brief you are working on, before they write the treatment?
Conrad Haddaway
A lot of the work you see is made along a traditional pipeline. You’ll see the script or the concept that we've written up, which varies as to how prescriptive and how much detail we give.
Some treatments we’re sent are 50 pages long and they're ‘...Here's how I want the colour grading. Here's how I want the framing. Here's the storyboard…’ etc. Sometimes it could just be ‘...Here's the concept. Here's the vibe. And here's a couple of images…’ The spectrum of stuff that we receive is quite wide on the level of detail. There should be at least a little bit of detail.
Luke Mortimer
Yes, especially for the quick turnaround briefs or really short timelines. Sometimes the brief is a work in progress that could easily change or it could be a very loose script. As well as giving the director as much heads up as possible, sometimes we have these chemistry calls with creatives and the client before treatment writing, because there's parts of our process where we're aware that the client is really hot on certain things, or there’s things that are really important to the creative team. From production side, it's about giving as much of a heads up and giving as much info to the directors as possible.
Conrad Haddaway
Yeah. Give them the best chance possible because we want the best
Jess Ringshall
A good production department should give you a good sense of what you should expect in a chemistry call with a creative team. Like ’... I'm happy with the level of branding that we've done previously or there's a concern around our story arc or there isn't enough joy in the campaign…’ And we look to you to unpack this for us. That's the magic that in house producers or agency producers bring, but you have to be quite authentic in your treatment. To win a job, you have to make sure that you're saying that you know what everybody wants. But it's very easy for people to tell you to do this, go left, go right, you know, this is why treatments can get overblown. That's why sometimes director packs can be super long because we're trying to see we know that these are the concerns. And that’s why the purity of a succinct treatment is so lovely. When you get a very pure response to a brief from a director who says‘…this is how I want to make it and these are the three days and this is how I'm going to approach the edit…’
It's easy to get very forensic about how you might win something, but there's a lot of agendas. It's a complicated process. There's lots of people within it and you'd hope that the agency or the in-house facility will give you a good briefing. If you're not getting good briefing, you need to ask for a good briefing. You need to say ‘...No, it's not 100% clear what you're asking me to to fix…’
I would love a bigger dialogue between the production community and the director community.
Conrad Haddaway
It's also the case that based on those first conversations that you have together, if it ain't right, it ain't right. If you're feeling like you're having to put way much more detail in than is natural to you, maybe it's just not a right fit.
Sometimes it's not right and it's not the worst thing in the world. Your idea not going ahead is better than you being forced to spend the next 3 months, 9 months pouring your life into something that you're not happy with.
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Audience - Question 3
My question is for Luke, with regards to the Lego ad. Can you give more insight into the process of working with the creatives and having to manage production. I’m thinking about visual effects and whether you're working with in house visual effects, artists or outsourcing it, as well as the music.
Luke Mortimer
Sometimes we work with the We Are Social creative agency, ie creative teams who are in house here. But we also work direct to client. Lego is one of those direct clients. We work with the Lego Agency, the creative team are from Lego.
They came up with the initial idea and script, and they came to us as we're one of their production partners. It's an interesting model because the creative team are our client - they are the brand, but they are also the agency. But it was great because it was a really collaborative process.
We saw the script which is obviously lovely and we immediately started looking at director options. Because the story was female focused, we put forward three female directors for that and then it was a triple bid process. We awarded the job to Coral Brown. Then we started the whole production process. That was virtual production, so we used so like a big LED screen. Obviously we didn't really go to Mars, so everything we used was shot in a studio with a mixture of built sets as well as virtual sets. That was all done through We Are Social Studios. But it was also a collaboration with Teleport Studios, who are are virtual? That's their their bag, they had the studio. Then we went to a post house and did the grade. We work with whoever's right for the job. We don't have in house post production facilities here, so we're open to work with any editors, freelance or in post houses. It depends on the budget.
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Audience- question 3 pt 2
The Lego creatives, how does that work in? They're bringing the money and you have to manage expectations. Is it easy to let them know eg that's not in the budget any more.
Luke Mortimer
The process is still the same. We have a creative team from Lego and we have an agency producer, but from Lego. There was a senior marketing client but they weren't on set with us. Our agency producer from Lego was essentially our direct client. It's a slightly different sort of model.
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Question 4 Mia Powell
Mia from Prettybird. Hi. We have quite a lot of up and coming talent on our roster. If they are sliding into your DM's, what's going to turn you on, on their page? This sounds like a Tinder thing. Do you get what I mean?
Conrad Haddaway
I don't think there's anything specific that we look for and it doesn’t need to be alll work. I look for a picture of how that person is. It could be personal stuff because it’s the sort of platform where people are more free to put themselves out there. It’s a quicker way to get someone's vision. Because your ideas that have made it into fruition on your reel on the production company website have gone through 20 different people, have changed so many different times, your ideas are going to be very filtered. Whereas with someone’s IG profile or having a face to face chat, we can focus on how we vibe from a creative perspective. It's a lot easier to get a sense of someone, so I wouldn't say there any particular dos and don'ts. It's just about getting to know the person really. Maybe don't post any weird pictures.
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Question 5
This topic came up at a recent industry event. Why don't agencies reveal who the other directors are in that triple bid process? I wanted to get your thoughts on that because if you understood who else was on the bid list, it might change the way you approach the brief and you might be bolder. A lot of agencies won't tell you.
Jess Ringshall
More and more now if people ask me directly, I’m honest and transparent about it, If it’s going to make you be bolder then I'll tell you everyone who's on the list. Maybe start lobbying if they're uncomfortable.
The only way to operate is to be super honest, right? Here's my budget, are you up for it? There's two other people that are pitching for this. That's the only way to operate, isn't it? Somebody eloquently made the point that we're all just people. It's a people industry. It's about making the right connections and slipping into the DMs and all the rest of it. I think if you ask a direct question to an agency and they go ‘...I can't tell you. Well, they can, absolutely, but they don't. But anyway, lobby for this, please.
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Question 6
How do you get new voices into the director ecosystem? If brands need evidence that they've done something before, how do new voices get in?
Jess Ringshall
Yes, it's a really tough one. We talked about this earlier. Especially for clients needing evidence of other commercial reel on their real to prove they had that experience. it's tough because you know as producers, you can see music videos and and short films that directors have made, and see their eye and their creative vision.
But obviously if they’ve already done a food commercial and the client wants to see that you know how to make food look as amazing as possible, that’s great.
It is a harder sell for new voices but we're having those conversations more and more and bringing people forward. Hopefully, we’re opening that door as much as possible, I think music videos, short films, all those things are still really valuable and important.
Conrad?
I think the most creatively confident agencies are the ones that hire the people with the new voices. Mother’s collective power is they're very creatively confident and it's their ability to be able to appropriately manage their conversation with their client, which is “...Don't worry, they've got a very particular vision, a very particular tone that we're really excited about them bringing and we will guide them…’
Agencies aren't 100% accountable at the moment, you have to help sell the newer voices. Let's create the package around newer directing talent that allows an easy conversation about their vision being bought. I worked at an agency a long time ago where it didn't matter how good the script was, nobody wanted to make it work, I couldn't get a director to be interested in it. So we had to work with emerging directors because those were the only people who are interested.
Isn't it more creatively confident to choose somebody who isn't? Aren't we the ones with all the the knowledge and the power and there and the ability to guide our clients, we've got these long standing relationships with our clients. That's putting responsibility back into an agency, Mother's very good at it
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Question 7
I’m an emerging director, what if you haven't won a treatment?
I've been approached by a few brands or agencies and I've worked really hard on these treatments. I feel like I did a really good job but they decided to play the safer option.
Is there a better way to work than writing treatments? What if I could set up a meeting with the agency and they say ‘...We understand that you're up and coming. Can you tell us a bit more about your story and other treatments you've done or that that you haven't won…’
This year I was approached by Sky Sports, Nike, big brands. Every time they say ‘…We love your ideas, but this time we decided to play at the safer option…’ So I haven't got the portfolio to show you on my instagram, but I've got the ideas to show you.
It would be much easier if you could come to directors and ask ‘...What have you done? What treatments have you not won? But how can we help you with that and feedback?..’
Conrad
Yes this feels connected to the previous question, this whole thing of how to kind of get the foot in the door.
If there is an agency where you’re doing your Nike pitch and for whatever reason it doesn't go through but you really rate the script, you really rate the team, then it's a shame it didn't go through, but yes it would be great if they said I'd love to chat more. That's a possibility, but at the end of the day there is only so much you can do.
It's on the creatives, the agency, the client to do that because when we're looking at directors, how do you get someone new in there and for me at least, it's like what's the point of making crap I've seen a million times before. What's the point? What am I doing?
It's really important to say there might not be the experience there, but there's one or two examples that really show that this person gets something different, let's put them on the list.
But then there's so many other things that have to convert, and it takes a million other people getting on board to say, yes, sure, let's do that. But it's on everyone to take on a bit more of that responsibility.
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Maria
Probably puts puts the onus on us little, from a client perspective as to The Why. If you're making that £800,000 decision in 5 minutes, you need to have confidence as to why you think you're right. If the evidence base isn't there, what do you bring? And then how does the agency help communicate that back to us?
We've done it before, we've used a we used a first time director when we did Roxy in lockdown to produce an ad in 14 days, on a handset with no one being in the room. Everything about that was absolutely new. The reason we chose her was because of her understanding of social media, because of her social media profile not because of a director profile. That was the onus on the agency to say ‘...Trust us…’ - and those words do work. We do trust our partners and that's why we work with you guys. But it has to be clear as to The Why. eg If there's a skillset you bring, and there's a link between that and the brief you can find a Why.
Jess
The other thing is, your sales team need to go on an absolute charm offensive of saying ‘...She's been on 4 pitches this year for XY and Z. Somebody *** **** sign the woman immediately..’. Don't forget you're not telling a story of failure, you got onto all these pitches.
Question 8 Caroline Bottomley
it's quite a different question, but as a team, how do you best support fair representation within the industry with diversity, equity and inclusion, specifically with your partners?
Luke Mortimer
In terms of us, We Are Social Studios, we work on a long list of directors once we've got the brief. Then with the creative team we narrow that short list down. But if it is a triple bid situation, we always try to ensure that at least one of the three is from an under represented community, to really champion as diversity as much as possible. So that's what we do from my side to make it a fair and level playing field.
Jess Ringshall
We have an initiative called New Creative Showcase, so every year we spend a lot of time (actually quite often very informed by by shiny and the work shiny do) to showcase often 11 or 12 directors and we've made the commitment over the last couple of years is to work with them. They're being one of those directors across that the following years will treat with them or we'll give them work. So rather than having a a blanket approach across our bidding system, it's about committing to those 11 or 12 people across the year. Our criteria around how we select people as part of new creation showcase is about emerging diverse talent.
Maria
These conversations help because they remind you to have the conversation, and when you sit in a pitch process on a brand process, you're thinking about so much: the brand, the budget, the timing, the business, the context, the competition, the talent, the representation. And this is just another thing we need to have a better focus on. I think these forums are great opportunities for you guys to meet agencies and for us as clients to reflect back. Have we had enough conversations. Have we put enough pressure on them? Generally, the answer is no, because I don't think there's ever enough conversation or even enough pressure. We need to keep going back at it and and that's my learning and my reflection. So I think these forums genuinely do help to raise those agendas. It's been a while since COVID. Maybe it’s time to have a better conversation and understand a bit more.
Conrad Haddaway
A concept and telling a story, the best way to get a good story is from having that lived experience It's on us to look at the work through an impartial lens to be honest. And think long and hard about what's the concept? Who is the right fit for this? Because it’s the right thing to do also it massively benefits us that who has a different perspective which may or may not have been seen before or put forward before. So not only is it the right thing to do, also most of the time it's just much better for the work because normally you don't get a director from this kind of background, and normally this person hasn't been given a platform or given the money or the opportunity to do that. I would say most of the time it's a win - win.
Caroline Bottomley
Brilliant. Thank you very much. So huge round of applause for sharing all this knowledge. Thank you very, very much
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