London Production Houses Are Setting Sights Beyond the UK
Steve Davies, Executive Director of the Advertising Producers Association, leads the charge as the London-based production trade group extends its reach beyond Blighty.
London's APA Increasingly Setting Sights Beyond the UK
Steve Davies, Executive Director of the Advertising Producers
Association, leads the charge as the London-based commercial
production trade group extends its reach beyond Blighty.
By Simon West
Steve Davies can be a tough guy to reach. I know, I've tried.
He's just back from Argentina, and was dashing between meetings when SourceEcreative caught up with him last week in London. It's a safe bet it won't be long before he's headed off somewhere else. It might be Russia, where the always stellar work of his organization's members will be screened shortly. Or maybe it will be China, where more screenings and meetings are on tap. Or perhaps it will be India, where his group – the London-based Advertising Producers Association, the industry trade association of UK TV commercial production houses, editorial companies, VFX studios and music houses – will be launching one of their London Advertising Forums in 2011, as a follow up to their previous events in Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai.
Is it safe to say that the APA and its members are taking a more expansive view of the marketplace these days? "I think our members are much more interested than ever in going beyond our borders," says Davies. "There used to be a time when the production companies here could depend on the London agencies to produce enough scripts so that they could keep busy with quality work, but things are different now. And on top of that, there is so much good work coming out of other countries today." (Click here to view a sampling of some APA members' latest work just posted by member companies.)
He says that one motivation behind the APA's outreach efforts is simply to let agencies in other countries know that APA members are interested in working with them. "That's particularly true of the events we've done in China," he offers.
Davies points out that while much in the world of advertising distribution has changed, the principles behind its production have remained largely the same. "What our members are good at is making top quality creative content," he says. Regardless of the venue - in-store videos, smart phones, iPads, laptops, in cinema, wherever-advertisers still need to engage their audiences, he notes. "So in that sense, the basic skills of production companies are easily transferable."
As for the production company business model and how it's been evolving to meet new market conditions, Davies is of the belief that, even before major changes began to impact the industry, English production houses were already in a good starting position. "Generally, production companies here in the UK are designed to be as nimble and efficient as possible," he says. By working with a small core staff augmented on an ad hoc basis by a wide network of talented freelancers, he points out, "our members are already working off the most flexible business model out there."
The APA does a number of things designed to not only promote the work of its members (and, by extension, the work of their agency clients), but also to celebrate the quality of work itself. Long recognized as one of the preeminent advertising creative centers in the world, London's production community trumpets its own every year with something called the APA Collection. It's a showreel of the best work done by members in the previous year, and the 2010 edition was just unveiled at a swank soiree held last September at One Marylebone, before a sell-out audience.
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"I think our members are much more interested than
ever before in going beyond our borders," says Davies.
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Yet the APA Collection gets more than just a coming out party, Davies says. Following its debut event, a special APA Collection bonus DVD is distributed with the DVD edition of Shots magazine, increasing the global exposure of its members' work. After that, the Collection hits the road, with its first screening in Tokyo last month. Most recently it was screened at the Ciclope Festival in Buenos Aires – a new festival for the TVC production community in South America, where Davies gave a talk about the APA - before heading off to screenings in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities.
They're also getting prepped to launch the Beak Street Bugle (Beak Street being the home of the APA offices in London), which Davies describes as an email newsletter "designed to keep agencies worldwide up to date with the best new work and latest happenings in London, and to keep London production companies top of mind." They've brought in Lyndy Stout, the former editor of Shots, as a contributing editor, and will be distributing the newsletter globally via a new agreement with SourceEcreative.
APA is part of the London based Commercial Film Producers – Europe organization, which is an association of European TV commercial production trade groups. In addition to his role as Executive Director of APA, Davies is also the Executive Vice President of CFP-E, and he administers the organization from the APA offices in London. Its President is Francois Chilot, who is also President of Les Producers in Paris.
One of the major initiatives of CFP-E, Davies points out, is the World Producer's Summit, held in conjunction with the US-based AICP. Held each year in Cannes, the Summit brings together the owners of the top 100 production companies from around the world for a luncheon meeting where the EPs share intelligence and insight and build relationships. This is of particular value, Davies notes, as "many of them will find themselves working for the same agencies and the same clients but in different markets."
At the recent Ciclope Festival in Argentina, Davies and Chilot teamed up with Matt Miller, CEO of AICP, to hold the first World Producers' Summit to take place outside of Cannes.
Davies says that by and large, the UK's production community enjoys some unique advantages. First off, its member companies work off a standard contract for production that is the same from agency to agency, client to client. This frees EPs from having to work out the details of production contracts with each different agency they work with, he notes, "allowing them to focus entirely on making the commercial as good as it can be."
"Another thing that's a bit unique to the UK is that we're a real community," he adds. "We're all here in the center of London. There are about a 175 or so members of the APA, and I could probably walk to about a 150 of them within ten minutes of our office. So everyone knows one another. You see people in the pub on Friday nights, and maybe they've just produced a great spot that went on air last week, or they've won an award, and you can think to yourself, 'That will be me next time.' It creates this great competitive environment, but it's a positive one, where you're always reinforced by the community. It creates a vibrancy that has a real value, and I think that plays an important role in making London work as good as it is."
So what does Davies see for the industry in 2011? He bases his forecast on what he's seen happening this year, and so far it's encouraging. "We've seen TV advertising bounce back strongly after the recession," he observes. "What we've finding is that more and more content is being required by advertisers all the time, as there are more and more screens and more and more opportunities for them to place their advertising." Yes, the budget pressures and the competition make it difficult, but he's confident about the future.
"Our members are a pretty resilient lot," he sums up. "We had about a 175 companies before the recession started two years ago. At that time, the general prediction was that a number of them were already pretty well stretched, and with the tough times coming we figured we'd lose a good few. But here we are two years later and they're all still there. And I think that means they're not just resilient, but also adaptable."
Published 13 December, 2010
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