Crux Digital Set to Explore the New Media Ecosystem
The spunky new division of EUE/Screen Gems - which has produced live web events for brands like HP - is leveraging its resources in commercials, entertainment and production for the digital age.
Crux Digital Set to Explore the New Media Ecosystem
The spunky new division of industry pioneer EUE/Screen Gems
is leveraging its resources in commercials, entertainment
and production for the digital age.
By Anthony Vagnoni
It used to be home to a soap opera, and now it's hosting web chats and live streaming broadcasts for brands and entertainment companies. Such is the rich history and current status of 222 East 44th Street on Manhattan's East Side, home of EUE/Screen Gems and its budding young digital production arm, Crux Digital.
Crux's formation not only mirrors changes in the advertising and media industries, it's designed to take full advantage of them. Its parent company is one of the pioneers of the commercial production industry and the company that created, among other things, the independent repping business as well as production company satellites. Among its sister companies are divisions that do everything from feature film and TV series production and distribution to managing major studio properties both in New York and elsewhere on the East Coast.
It's headed up by Managing Director Doug Wedeck, who's also EVP of EUE/Screen Gems and an experienced commercial executive producer. Its mission, as he explains, is to basically take all the tools and resources of EUE/Screen Gems and apply them to what he describes as "the new media ecosystem."
"It's a natural extension for us," says Wedeck of Crux's formal launch. "We've always been at the intersection of advertising, entertainment and new media, and have been a pretty diversified company for a long time." In addition to its work in feature films and TV series production, he notes, "we've also been working in the branded content and digital arenas under the EUE/Screen Gems umbrella."
The decision was made to corral all the studio's digital work for brands and agencies under a new boutique identity, and so Crux was formed in the late fall of 2010. By then, Wedeck and his digital team had already produced a number of projects, including a series of comedy web shorts for Pepsi's Amp energy drink, a video for Magnum's "Live Large" contest for Trojan and the agency Colangelo that starred the rapper Ludacris and a web series for Samsung titled "Across the Hall," starring "Entourage" actor Adrian Grenier.
Since unveiling the Crux name they've kept moving; the studio co-produced a live online video event last year for Hewlett-Packard and the P.R. firm Porter Novelli, as well as another live event for the video streaming site Ustream and USA Network to promote one of its TV series. And Crux's EP Rohit Sang has lead a team that's produced the video openings for the last three Webby Awards events, giving them a platform at this increasingly high-profile new media creative showcase.
The studio's projects run the gamut from entertainment-driven to tech-savvy ventures that tap into its menu of production resources; some are deft mixes of both. For example, HP's "ePrint Live" was a co-production with Space Station Media that featured the New York-based comedy improv group Upright Citizens Brigade (where "Parks and Recreation" and "SNL" star Amy Poehler got her start). The result was a streaming video event promoting HP printers that was broadcast live on the brand's YouTube channel.
With its Manhattan studio set-up, Wedeck notes, it's easy and cost-effective for Crux to create virtual environments, which is appealing to marketers wanting to take advantage of the web's immediacy to program marketing efforts in real time and engage consumers in events as they happen.
A good example was the Ustream project for USA Network, in which Crux produced a live web-chat event featuring Callie Thorne, star of the sports comedy series "Necessary Roughness." During the airing of the show's season finale last summer, Thorne was on site at the Crux studios, chatting in real time back and forth with viewers. "This provided fans of the show a unique opportunity to interact with the star of their favorite show live, and really ups the level of involvement," says Wedeck. "I can see us doing more of these kind of events, as they're very appealing, both to web users and to clients."
In addition to its agency work, Crux is also producing original content for the web. TiVo has picked up an animated series it produced called "The Angry Mob," as well as a Crux co-production called "Carlitos Is Pissed," and is offering them as web video content on its service. (You can check them out here.)
Crux's connection to the ad business, along with its deep roots in a range of media forms, has its appeal for clients. Jason Stewart, an independent producer who worked on the series of Amp viral videos that Wedeck's team produced for Pepsi, says that background was one of the aspects of working with them that gave the Pepsi client a measure of comfort.
"They really liked the concepts Doug and his team came up with," he says. "Given the budget that we had and that fact that this was something of an experiment for the brand, it came down to who made the most sense in terms of whom to work with.
"The production companies that are going to benefit in the future are those that understand multiple forms of media," Stewart continues, "and companies like Crux have that background." He points out that pure web content outfits like Funny or Die don't fully understand what it takes to work with brands, while traditional commercial companies don't understand formats beyond the thirty-second spot. "But with the huge network within the Screen Gems companies, they have a lot of talent and resources that they can reach out to," he adds.
Jonah Minton, VP, Sales for Ustream, points out that "we do a lot of custom production work for our clients, and we have a select number of preferred production partners. Crux/EUE fit this bill due to their capabilities, resources and experience in this space. Doug walked me through their case studies and capabilities and I was blown away with what they've accomplished."
The opportunity to partner on a project arose when Ustream was asked to produce the "Necessary Roughness" web chat event, Minton notes. "Crux did a fantastic job setting up the studio environment to match the look and feel of the client's needs, and provided a great technical team to execute the live online broadcast," he says. "They executed flawlessly, and the network was very happy with the experience."
What appeals to Minton about the Crux model is "their ability to understand and compete in an advertising world that demands knowledge and experience in both the traditional and digital space," he notes. "They're able to speak both languages at the same time and make clients feel comfortable that they can meet the needs of all parties involved."
Wedeck says Crux is designed to provide a means of entry for agency people to this network of talent and connections. "We realized the new rules of engagement demand new tools," he says. "And it's not only the content that matters, but the contact is just as important. So our goal was to become a one-stop shop for our clients, in both traditional and digital media. If you think about the talent base we have available to us, it's clear we have the capabilities to generate content that drives traffic, makes impressions and builds valuable consumer connections for brands."
It's worth noting that EUE/Screen Gems is more than just a production house; its feature film connections and its EUE/Sokolow television production arm have given it a hefty address book chock-full of what Wedeck describes as 'creators,' an accepted term in the TV business but somewhat foreign to the advertising world.
"These are people who are creative, but not 'creatives' in the traditional advertising sense," he explains. "They can do everything from help develop and create an idea all the way through to producing and finishing it. A lot of people who come out of the digital world were trained that way. They're not from the traditional commercial production world." Instead, they're closer to the writer/producer model seen in TV, he notes.
An example of this might be Rick Merecki, a young director from Australia who's recently entered into an association with Crux that will have the studio represent him for digital work for agencies and brands in the US. His three web films for STA Australia, the Aussie travel association that promotes student travel, have become internet sensations and have been covered by travel pubs and blogs around the world. (Check out "Move," "Eat" and "Learn.")
Wedeck says Crux intends to take a flexible approach to the projects it produces, since what they get asked to do can vary widely. "Some ideas or projects come in and they're fully fleshed out, and others are halfway there and you have to work to develop them all the way through," he explains. "And that's one of the fun things about it. There's no formula to doing this, no one way that things are being done today."
And Crux is taking that flexibility and rolling with it, Wedeck says. "We're developing true partnerships with agencies, brands and platforms, giving them a digital destination where we can develop, produce and test ideas. We want our clients to feel that we're an extension of them, with our New York studios at the center."
Are they set up to handle the new budget realities of web work? "Absolutely," says Wedeck. "We have infrastructure here that no other production company has, and that allows us to produce these web jobs that typically don't have the same kinds of budgets commercials do. And when you're working on the digital side, the objectives are different, the metrics are different and the approach is different. Often what you'll find is that the content drives a lot of these projects, not the production values."
Does Wedeck envision a day when Crux will be bigger than the traditional commercials side of EUE? "That's a good question," he says. "I think there's a day coming when Crux will be very substantial in terms of size and the kinds of projects we undertake.
"I'm not one of those people who believes that the TV commercial is dead," he continues. "We've been hearing that for years, but it's just not the case. We've tried to be ahead of the game here in anticipating the shifts in the industry, but they happen in their own time. We recognize the importance of the commercial business, not just to the agency community but to ourselves as well. That said, we've always liked to stay diverse, and this is just another example of that. We don't abandon one thing for another here; we just maintain what we've been doing and build new ventures as we go along."
Published 1 February, 2012
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