Jonathan Shipman on 'The New Normal'

Jonathan Shipman on ‘The New Normal’

McCann/New York’s Head of Production supervises a department that’s
managing change while still producing an impressive volume of work. 

By Anthony Vagnoni

McCann Erickson’s Jonathan Shipman, Director of Broadcast Production, started in the business at the agency formerly known as Benton & Bowles—later DMB&B and now more or less a part of Publicis—and spent several years there before joining Ogilvy & Mather, where he worked on such accounts as Jaguar and American Express, among others. He was hired at McCann in New York by former Head of Production Peter Friedman in 1999, and succeeded him at the department when Friedman left in 2008 to join the PGA. These days, Shipman oversees a department that produces copious amounts of broadcast work for such clients as Verizon, U.S. Army, Kohl’s, General Mills, L’Oreal, Goodyear, Major League Baseball, MasterCard and others, as well a healthy complement of public service advertising. During his tenure Shipman has spearheaded a number of key initiatives, including steering McCann’s production department into working with a more diverse roster of production and post-production vendors and suppliers. He’s also helped transform the department into an R&D incubator, as evidenced by their role in the development of SPLIT, the recently-launched global creative technology venture for McCann Worldgroup that will develop cutting edge tech solutions for clients and brands. He spoke recently with SourceEcreative about the role of TV for his clients, the importance of creating a fully integrated production department, the need for the industry to nurture new talent and the level of professionalism demanded today to ensure that client dollars are being well spent—while their stories, as the agency likes to say, are being well told.

You joined McCann over a decade ago. How has the nature of the work you’re doing changed the most?

That’s a huge question. I think what has changed the most is what a production department is. I mean, you go back roughly five or six years, it was very clear what a production department was—it made TV commercials. Now, we’re responsible for a wide range of productions falling into a number of expanding categories. The problem is, this expansion hasn’t ended. And people ask, well, when are things going to settle down? When is the new normal going to happen? And my belief is that the new normal is being able to accept constant change—that we’re going to be in an ever-moving stream of ‘normal.’ So, that’s what’s changed the most; what I’m going to produce today may not be what I produce tomorrow.

How much of what the department does now falls into the category of a TV commercial?

It’s still a lot. You look at accounts like Verizon or Kohl’s, they’re constantly in production. I have nine producers working on Verizon at any given time, and six of them on Kohl’s. Both brands have some retail aspects to them, and they have to react to the marketplace quickly. So TV is one of the main ways that we do that. For them, it’s a mainstay; it hasn’t diminished at all in terms of importance. TV is very much a part of what we’re doing. But what’s changing is where you start from. A lot of advertising used to start with the TV idea, and they’d figure out what the web idea was, and that’s different now. TV is no longer the platform, but part of the platform, and that’s a huge difference.

So in this new matrix, are producers being brought into the ideation phase earlier?

There’s really no right or wrong way in this respect. What I’ve found is that, regardless what you’re producing, if you’ve earned the respect of the creative team and the account team, then they bring you in when you need to be brought it. If you’re a valuable resource and have something to contribute—well, agencies are great at using valuable resources, and they rarely fail to take advantage of one. 

There are those producers who have something to contribute at the ideation stage, and that’s often found in the digital realm. I’ve got Catherine Patterson, who I brought in as our digital executive producer, and she’s frequently brought in at the ideation stage, along with me, because it’s something that I like to do. Some producers prefer to just get the idea and then they set out to determine the best and smartest way to execute it, while others want to part of it from the very beginning.

How are you structured here, in terms of the broadcast producers and the digital producers?

Our current structure is continuing to evolve; again, there’s no one correct way to do this. Our department is truly a fully integrated department now, but I have to explain what, for me, integrated means. So, if you look at the structure, just from the broadcast portion of it, we have 14 executive producers, and each is responsible for specific brands. In some instances, we have dedicated people on certain accounts, while in other cases people switch off between brands. For example, Michele Ferone is our Executive Producer who runs the Verizon group, while Debbie Dunlap is our EP on Kohl’s. I also rely heavily on Daniele Korn, our Director of Broadcast Operations, who’s been my partner in much that we’ve accomplished to date.

In terms of how things work in an integrated universe, I tend to blend all of these things together, because we’re responsible for all of it. We’re not responsible for distribution generally, except when it gets into things like a program we’re doing now for one of our clients that’s an integrated project—we’ve hooked up with a production company where they’re going to be involved in the distribution of the idea. I can’t say much about it now other than that it represents a real confluence of contributions on the part of everyone, from the creatives to the producers to the production company itself. It’s been one of the most exciting things we’ve worked on to date.

Do you see this kind as a model for the future?

Absolutely! I think the sweet spot of the production department lies in integrated production. We have a digital unit here that’s part of our integrated department. We actually started to do all that—integrate the department—before we had the work, as it reflected what we knew were going to be the needs of the future. And now that work is here. We’ve been breaking down the silos between disciplines, such as art buying. We now have the art buyers involved at the start of these projects.

Do you talk to other colleagues at other agencies about how they do things? Is it a constant search for best practices? 

Yes, absolutely. Before I even started to move towards integration, I talked to a number of colleagues outside the umbrella of McCann but within the umbrella of IPG, and actually went to visit a few offices in and out of New York to see what they were doing. I tried to borrow bits and pieces that I thought were appropriate for us here. Some of the other agencies I visited are much smaller, or more digitally-focused.

In order to stay on top of new work and trends, we meet once a month within the department just to review work. We examine the issues we’re facing, and what we’ve just accomplished. People talk about their recent experiences on jobs. It’s fun, and a great opportunity for the department to share and be together.

How much in-house work do you do?

We’ve been spending a lot of time on this topic lately. If you read the blog of Jerry Solomon, an EP at Epoch, one issue revolves around who’s going—and I haven’t interjected my own opinion on this yet—but who’s going to develop this talent? At any great production company, they have their standard-bearers who draw in the work, yet at the same time they work to develop their younger talent. Look at Jim Jenkins and his philosophy at O Positive—he wants to be not just one of the lead directors at his own company, but also a creative director who helps train and influence younger directors, to help bring them to a specific level and skill set, and I think that’s necessary. It’s one of the reasons why agencies don’t have directors on staff—their needs for them tends to run hot and cold, based on what kind of work they’re producing.

In terms of editorial, we have one studio dedicated to client work and one that’s dedicated to producing broadcast quality work. We use the former for everything from pitches and presentations to focus groups, and it’s also a tool for the agency in terms of our new business efforts. The other functions as a profit center that allows our clients to benefit from high quality editing at a lower mark-up. The real challenge is in getting the right talent. What worries me is people who are not focusing on the future. If people aren’t investing in tomorrow’s talent, it’s all going to dry up. And if what works today isn’t going to work tomorrow, where does that leave us? 

I think one of the big benefits of an outside, independent editing company is that they have anchor editors and assistant editors who are editors in training. They get the right exposure and training, and they learn at the knees of these very talented people. And if they don’t learn at the knees and are just learning on their own, I think the quality of work won’t be there—which is true for a director as well, to a degree.

Let’s talk about procurement—is that an issue for you?

Indirectly. But what’s key, and what I think needs to be explained, is that as an agency, we don’t do a good job of publicizing just how much we look out for our clients and have their backs. With or without a cost consultant, we are incredibly careful with their dollars, making sure we’re getting the most bang for their buck and the best deal they can get. We have an unbelievably talented and tenacious set of broadcast business managers connected with producers that really understand, at the senior level, how production functions. They know what constitutes a fair price, what’s reasonable to expect in terms of budgets, and how to negotiate against the needs of the agency and client. I think if we had better explained to our clients what we’ve been doing on their behalf, certain issues wouldn’t come up. Even without client procurement departments or cost consultants, when possible we negotiate discounted rates and lower mark-up with production companies. It’s not procurement that made lower mark-ups happen; it was producers and business managers working with the understanding that, as an agency, we have a large dollar amount to negotiate with.

Yet production companies often talk about being squeezed between lower costs and things like slow payment and sequential liability. How important is it for you that the production community remains healthy?

I believe it’s a big mistake not to ensure that they remain healthy. As one EP said to me not too long ago, ‘Yes, we’re working for you, but on the other hand we’re working with you, and our success is your success. If you don’t help us achieve that success, that’s your failure.’ And I couldn’t agree with that more. Yes, there is money to be made, but there are also reputations to uphold, clients to be satisfied and retained, business to be added.

Years ago, you’d find that there’d be these periodic favors that you’d ask from production companies—that sort of ‘help us and we’ll help you’ approach. Often these were the kind of projects where everyone would get involved because of the quality of the creative. But several years ago, the ‘favors’ started to become the norm. I really had to convince everyone in the department that this was now the norm. What used to be a once every six months instance is now more like once a month, and sometimes it’s not just about the creative but about saving a client or winning a new client or doing something the client didn’t ask for just to see how they’ll like it. 

As a result, we had to change our approach and how we’re relating to the production of things. We can’t feel guilty when we ask for these things, because we’re all trying to do the same thing, which is survive and do good work. It’s no longer a favor, its part of business. I’m sure as you’ve seen what’s happened—now, when we do the 30-second commercials, you’re also doing the B role, the agency version and the viral version, and the production and post production companies understand that and they expect it. And they know your budget doesn’t just cover just a 30 anymore. So that’s become the new norm. And when it comes to working like this, it’s our responsibility to be more organized and focused, and not take things for granted anymore. 

In what ways?

I think it means being better prepared going in. You used to always hear, ‘we’ll fix it in the mix,’ or ‘we’ll fix it in post,’ which meant that decisions that needed to be made at the right time were postponed until later. Production is a collaborative process—sometimes even the people on the set don’t represent all the opinions that count, and so you need to get more coverage. I’ve been in conversation with production companies about this, and it’s really about re-thinking the production process when budgets are very tight. We don’t have the money to ‘fix it in the mix’—we need to get it right the first time, and for everybody. What that means is finding consensus in the beginning, and maintaining that throughout the whole process. I think it’ putting a lot more responsibility on the producer, and therefore on the agency. 

I have high expectations of my producers and that goes back to what we talked about earlier. One of the other things we’re changing here is that we’ve always had specs, but I’m pushing towards the specs being more specific. Typically, they’re very general. I’m not suggesting that we simply go and shoot the animatic—it’s more about being clear at the right stages as to what the goals and objectives are. And that’s going to be very important as we move forward in this integrated model. Having a better understanding of how information is taken in will impact how that information goes out. The more we understand how to make use of our integrated model, the more it will affect our decision- making process. 

Have you ever had any interest in directing yourself?

I directed actually, for a very short time and for a small agency at the beginning of my career. I love working with directors, though. I think my strength is in collaboration with directors, being able to help them push things along.

Any favorites?

We’ve had a lot of success stories with directors. One was with a guy named Christian Bevilacqua, who was with a company called Therapy Films. This is one of my favorite advertising stories. Several years ago, we had a campaign for MasterCard which was an early integrated campaign. It was called the Golden Ticket—there were these five golden tickets hidden in magazines all over the US, and if you found one you got to have a priceless experience. One of them was having Julian Schnabel paint your portrait, another one was going to Paris with the chef Daniel Bouley and having dinner with him. Most of the budget was being spent in print, and they wanted to do a microsite to support it, as well as a 60-second commercial revolving around this guy who has a roaming eye, looking for priceless things in life, for which we had a very small budget. And they also wanted do these little artful documentaries about each prize. We racked our brains to find a great director, and I discovered Christian, who only had four things on his reel. But they were perfect for what we needed. I brought it to the creatives, and they spoke to him and thought he was brilliant. We did that campaign and he did an amazing job, and we were able to reward him for this with bigger work. That’s where I think we belong—being able to develop and reward talent, and build better relationships and collaborations.