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NOAH BRIER: --Noah Brier.
I run the strategy department at The Barbarian Group, and I
am going to be moderating this panel of lovely individuals
talking about production values and the web, which are
two phrases that don't normally go together, at least
high production values.
And so we're going to talk about why and whether that's
something that we can change, and whether it's actually true
that high production and the web don't go together.
But before we jump in, I thought maybe these people
should all introduce themselves.
So if each of you could just go through, tell everyone who
you are, where you're from, and maybe a piece of web
production you're especially proud of lately.
ARI KUSHNER: Hello.
Oh, lately.
My name is Ari Kushner, and I co-founded m ss ng p eces.
And we are especially proud of a lot of the work we've done
with Cool Hunting and TED, having created Cool Hunting
Video and TED.
And recently, we did a piece for GE that's coming out that
we're really proud of that's a stop motion piece about a
brief history of light.
So it'll come out soon.
It's not out.
BRIAN DILORENZO: Hi, I'm Brian DiLorenzo.
I am director of integrated production at BBDO New York.
And most recently, I worked on the project-- it was for
Starbucks in conjunction with RED.
And it was a simultaneous, basically, sing along.
But we had 160 countries streamed live.
And the most exciting part of it was getting people where
they had virtually just dial-up speed and trying to
get an image.
That was really successful.
It felt like early space program sort of excitement.
Anyway, nice to see everyone.
JACQUI WILKINSON: I'm Jacqui Wilkinson, and I'm the SVP of
Digital at Smuggler.
We're a commercial production company.
But we work with advertising agencies, and we also work
with feature films. And we started a
feature film division.
And some of the web content that we're really proud of in
the last couple of years, we've produced the Ecko viral
that was around in about 2007.
That was a really exciting project for us, and it was one
of our break-out projects for one of our
directors, Randy Krallman.
We produced that with David Droga and Droga5.
And we're also involved in the Whopper Freakout campaign with
Crispin Porter and the Guitar Hero campaign with Droga5.
So there's been a bunch of projects that we've been
involved in.
Also, Converse with Psyop, one of the directors and animation
teams that we look after and represent.
GREG GALBRAITH: Speaking of Converse, I'm Greg Galbraith.
I'm the director of content and partnerships.
And probably the one thing that we're really super proud
of right now is what you're referring to is we just did a
music video titled Three Artists, One Song.
And it had great reviews, and it's always fun to do a lot of
really authentic rock and roll stuff.
And when you see that take off, it's always great.
RICK WEBB: Hi, I'm Rick Webb.
I'm one of the founders of The Barbarian Group.
Some of the high production values that we've been doing
in terms of--
I think what that connotates lately is we've been working
on the GE show for a while now, which is a live
production with games, making an interactive show online.
We did the HBO Imagine with Brian, of course.
That was pretty high production value.
We've also been doing something I think is
interesting with just straight up photo shoots that are
incredibly high production for Samsung using print
photographers and the product photography in a way that I
personally haven't seen done on the web much yet lately
either, which I think is interesting.
NOAH BRIER: Awesome.
So I'm just going to jump right in.
And I have a question for both Brian and Jacqui.
On one side, HBO Imagine and *** are, I think, high
production value in the way people think of high
production values.
And on the other side, you've got something like the stuff
you did for Ecko or Guitar Hero, where high production
value as far as the work that goes into it.
But what comes out on the other end is meant to not feel
like high production value.
So I thought maybe the two of you could just talk about how
those pieces came to be, and why you chose that way, and
how high values could mean different things.
BRIAN DILORENZO: Sure.
Well, with HBO, there were a couple campaigns with ***
and also with Imagine.
I think that there were basically three sorts of
components.
One was an installation piece.
And then there was content that was produced.
And really the place that it all came together in terms of
being able to see all the elements of the
campaign was online.
And there was a real concerted effort with the client to do
stuff that felt HBO to them.
And so HBO, being known for high production values, it was
fairly easy to convince a client like that that it was
really important to get a film, if you like, or video.
But basically, the visuals, and the performance, and
acting of something that would feel right for their brand.
And equally important was a concerted effort to try and
make something that would take narrative in an online way to
a different place.
And with each of those projects, they were done
slightly different.
But they were both meant to be nonlinear storytelling in a
way, where no matter where you started investigating the
online experience, you would find it easy to link somewhere
else and was trying to break away out of just a straight
streaming of film or a linear narrative.
NOAH BRIER: Awesome.
You want to talk about the Ecko or--
maybe the Ecko.
And talk about the amount of work that went into that, and
then making it look like it was something that some random
person shot, and how you came to that decision.
And it feels like a lot of the work you guys do is made for a
very specific web audience.
And what that audience is looking for and how production
values can create the right feel for them.
JACQUI WILKINSON: Right.
Well, the Ecko project was made fairly collaboratively.
And we work on projects--
sometimes, we just get a brief from an
agency, and then we pitch.
And we either win the project, or we don't win the project.
And this one was a fairly collaborative project between
Mark Ecko himself, Patrick, who is the founder of
Smuggler, and then also David Droga.
And the idea was to tag something.
With Ecko's history of being graffito artists, they needed
to tag something.
And it was this whole idea of what can we tag and what's
going to be the most exciting thing that we can tag.
And eventually, they came to the idea that they would do
Air Force One.
But what they had to do is they had to do it in such a
short amount of time because they didn't want anyone to
find out about it.
And so you can watch a making-of.
But basically, it's something that if you had a feature or
if you had a normal commercial time, you would have three
weeks of prep.
And you would be doing your casting, and you would be
doing your location search, and you would be doing all
these types of things.
And literally, it was about two days to pull off the work.
So the actual idea of tagging anything is always a secret
event obviously.
So it was supposed to look low production value, and it was
supposed to look like somebody had just gone and tagged
actually Air Force One in Washington.
But the filming of it, and the painting of the plane, and
doing all of these types of things ended up
costing a lot of money.
So ultimately, it doesn't look like super
high production value.
But the work behind in it, and directing, and the DP and
everybody that goes into it ends up creating the right
piece of work.
NOAH BRIER: And I think going back to one of the things
Brian mentioned actually--
and I think we were all talking before-- we were
talking a little about the Old Spice campaign.
And everybody saw that and talked about it.
But can you guys talk for a little bit about the
production values that are really different for the web
versus for other traditional outlets?
You just talked about making it look a very specific way.
You talked about adding some sort of
interactive, nonlinear elements.
But can you guys talk about what you can do on the web
that you can't do in those other channels and where you
can bring production values in a very different sort of way?
RICK WEBB: Well, I think there's definitional stuff
that for me, I have a really hard time with.
First off, production value on the web is one thing competing
for a higher budget, where there's all these other things
competing for a higher budget.
So you have to really defend production value versus the
cost of production.
It has to look good.
You have to defend that which means that there has to be a
strategic reason why it needs to look high-end.
And so I think that defines the ones that look high-end
versus an expensive production, which I think is a
pretty important distinction.
With Brian's stuff, so much of the money goes into the
plumbing, and the networking, and the back end of how it all
fits together that you might not see that.
And then with Imagine, how well it's shot is the only
thing you think of as the production value even though a
ton of the production went into actually making the
framework for it.
BRIAN DILORENZO: That's a really good point.
Even though the production was very much like we're used to,
let's say, for a television or a commercial production on it.
And it was really exciting to have a client because it's so
rare that you get the opportunity to get a
budget to do that.
But that was accomplished over a few weeks of
prep and then shoot.
And literally, I know with The Barbarian Group, it was months
of designing, and actually taking all these elements, and
figuring out the relationships, and building
all the pieces in a world that made sense.
And that process was months versus weeks.
You don't see it.
Hopefully, you feel it.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, and even all of that, you still have to
defend against just spending more on media, which you don't
have to do on television necessarily.
Because there's a finite, at least, percentage-based budget
or something like that.
You have to defend why it needs to look better, why it
doesn't have to just be shaky camera.
NOAH BRIER: Well, and on the media tip, I think one of the
things you mentioned to me, Ari, at one point was that
increasingly you're finding yourselves competing with web
celebrities for production--
RICK WEBB: Oh god, [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
NOAH BRIER: --projects.
And what they're bringing to the table is essentially a
media budget, whatever it is, a million followers and the
ability to make something, tell a story in whatever way
they tell stories.
So can you talk about that situation?
ARI KUSHNER: Yeah, there is a big challenge there for us
because it's--
for example, with someone like Howcast, which I really admire
what they're doing.
It's like if you're in the same room with them and you're
thinking about one versus the other, then it's like well,
they can guarantee 10 million views on this idea because
they have these links and these people.
And we are sitting there like, well, we have
a really cool idea.
And so the discrepancy there is so huge that it makes me
question about what exactly is it that we're presenting,
which is an interesting place to be.
Because I feel like when we started five years ago, it was
very much a reactionary thing to a traditional production,
and having 30 people on set, and not really feeling like
you made something that was the thing that you had in your
head or something like that.
And the video iPod was coming out, and video
podcasting was the thing.
And the 24p video cameras were in full effect, and it seemed
like the right opportunity to take advantage too.
It seemed to us that there was a new format at the time.
And I still believe a little bit on this.
And seeing something like HBO Imagine gives me hope because
when we saw the video iPod come, we thought,
well, this is it.
This new thing needs a new format.
It can't just be 60 or 30's.
It has to be something new.
And the first thing we did was Cool Hunting Video as a
response to that.
And from there, the company took off.
And so it's changed.
And now I find myself in production on a thing that
needs 30 people on set.
And so I'm thinking, well, now it's like--
you can't sit with the grip or something and tell him, well,
this one's for web, dude.
Because you get paid $650 a day on a TV spot.
You can't tell him, well, the budget is less here.
They don't care.
The craft is the craft.
And they're going to do the job well.
But I guess the point of it is yes, it's very hard to compete
with something like YouTube Celebrity in
terms of the story.
But I guess at the end of the day, it's about the idea.
Because I feel like you have an incredible idea with HBO
Imagine or the Tropicana Sun.
It's an amazing piece.
And it shines through.
RICK WEBB: I think there's more to it than that though at
least with Imagine and anything like that.
When we talk about it just comparing
videos, you're right.
It becomes impossible.
You're competing from [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
Frank could just go do it.
He'll get a lot more hits just from doing that.
What we're doing in those situations is we're forgetting
about everything else the web does.
And so there's no utility, there's no interactivity.
If we're just trying to compete with the videos, we're
kind of screwed.
Because we've already taken 10 of the tools in our toolbox
and thrown them out the window.
Imagine was highly interactive without all these other parts
to it besides the videos.
And that, I think, is where it becomes justified to spend a
lot of money on the web is when you're offering something
that you can't actually do with just a celebrity and a
camera or putting your television ad on air.
ARI KUSHNER: Right, that's the value in a sense.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, so the million dollar websites are
going to look like Facebook.
They're just going to be websites that are expensive to
build that do something cool, which is not what we talk
about when we talk about production value.
NOAH BRIER: Well, I think though--
maybe, Greg, you can talk a little bit about what you're
trying to do from a brand perspective.
Because I think that a lot of what you're trying to produce
for Converse is not just the content, but the interactivity
around the content.
And even if you're not producing your own platforms
for that interactivity, it's still core to the idea.
GREG GALBRAITH: No, exactly.
We're lucky that we have a huge following of consumers.
You look at our Facebook, I think it's probably around 9
and 1/2 million kids who follow Converse.
So we don't look at it as, OK, there's going to be a specific
production value or anything like that.
Usually, the thing that drives everything--
no matter if it's basketball, or skateboarding, or music--
is is the message real and authentic.
Some messages might not need something that's going to be
really produced.
And we're looking to do something very intimate.
We just did the Gone to Governor's Island summer
concert series.
And one of the things that we did was we had a small
production company called Show Cobra.
And they produced these very intimate, pretty low-fi music
moments with bands before they would play the show.
And it just an added value proposition, a you're going to
sponsor this big, free concert series.
What else can we do to bring it to life?
And that was one of the things.
And stuff like that acts as a great way to complement some
of the bigger things we do like Three Artists and One
Song, where we work with our agencies Anomaly and
Cornerstone, who are amazing.
And they produce stuff about as good as anybody in the
industry does.
So basically, whether it's a high production or a low
production that you're-- the authenticity and
the message is true.
That's really what we have to shoot for.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, and then I think that
ties into the whole--
all these conversations start thinking about
punk rock or whatever.
And there's the reaction to Yes.
And the aesthetic values that people like at any given time.
And the web's totally gone through-- you see this with
8Bit Rockers.
And Lo Fidelity was going through this--
we had limited bandwidth, so that really--
low production values looked like that was happening.
But that is slightly starting to change I think.
You have things now like The Big Picture and these things
where people want to see these vast, bigger, sweeping things.
They've all got these larger monitors and iPads.
And they want cinematic content more now.
I think that's changing a little bit that can justify
higher production values now than previously, where you
just wanted it to look shaky because that was cool.
GREG GALBRAITH: I definitely agree.
I think Three Artists, One Song--
I think going into that project, you have to say,
well, that could end up in a theater somewhere or that
could end up on TV, which eventually, it did.
And you have to say, well, OK, there needs to be a specific
production value that goes into that.
Whereas a lot of the viral videos that we do--
whether it's skateboarding, or basketball, or
something like that--
it's more about really trying to capture the
vibe that we're after.
And sometimes, even those are at a higher production level.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, it'd be kind of depressing if our *** was
only a high production value because it might go on TV
later though.
It's the [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
BRIAN DILORENZO: Yeah, it's interesting though because
when you think of just where things are going with how high
quality streaming is now, and things are HD, and things are
interactive.
And I'm just imagining that we're going to hit a
crossroads between gaming and television as an interactive
source and what the internet is.
And all these pieces are going to need to be interchangeable
and work on that.
So I love what you said about authenticity.
The hardest thing to do is to do something that just--
people get a good, visceral, nice reaction.
I remember seeing the Ecko stuff and loving that.
But I do feel like it's almost like budgets are going to be
pulled slightly kicking and screaming towards needing more
production values.
So that we can take advantage of the fact that things can
look nice and sound nice.
And those pieces have to work across a spectrum now.
NOAH BRIER: Well, on the topic of budgets and pulling for
higher production values, where's that money going to
come from I guess is the thing that I've been wondering.
And in talking to a lot of you, one of the things I am
hearing is that it feels like it's increasingly becoming
pots of money, where you're not necessarily just making
things for the web.
You might be making things for lots of places.
And so instead of the web being a silo and TV being a
silo, it is about producing content, and choosing, and
reediting, and doing things, taking the best pieces, and
putting them in the places where they are most
appropriate, and maybe combining them with some
interactive elements, or doing whatever
else needs to be done.
Is that the case?
Is that where we're headed?
BRIAN DILORENZO: Yeah I tend to agree with that.
I think that right now there are different pots of money,
where working with clients where they would have a
digital budget, and sometimes an event budget, and a PR
budget, not to mention whatever commercial production
budget you would have. And finding ways that you can have
a production that would really be able to take advantage of
delivering the right sorts of content to those masters,
which is a creative trick in itself.
And there's a real challenge to do that.
So it's just not matching luggage for everyone.
But those take a lot of work in meetings, working with your
client to have people share and give up those budgets.
And I think that media is the other
component to that as well.
And if you can get earned media by doing
rights for the splash--
and there's been some interesting things with huge
production values.
I think of the Nike project that was Write the Future as
something that I really know that it got seeded originally
Facebook and YouTube.
I know it was also probably had some commercial buy to
support it.
But it was meant to go guns blazing, I think, in a way to
gather a lot of attention.
And seemed to do that, and garnered a bunch of views.
I don't know.
It's close to 30 million views or something.
But it was probably worth the investment in
the production values.
RICK WEBB: I think you nailed it with if you can offset the
reduction of paid media with the earned media.
If you can prove that the bigger production will garner
a more substantial earned media hit, then you can take
some of that money from media, to go back to
your question exactly.
NOAH BRIER: One of, I think, the best examples of that is
the Ecko stuff.
It's funny in watching the case study for the Ecko video.
It feels like, well, instead of buying a bunch of TV spots,
you just made something that then ran on a whole bunch of
television stations or [UNINTELLIGIBLE] during news
hours and every other time.
Was that the trade off all along?
Was that the plan?
JACQUI WILKINSON: I think so.
I think that that would be a question for David
Droga and Marc Ecko.
But yeah, ultimately, and I think it was a piece of the
storytelling.
And it became a part of the media buy, which was--
YouTube basically was a part of the storytelling.
And I feel like ultimately all of the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that
you can do, so many different things, they can come to us
with a budget and say, we want to do this many commercials,
and we want to have this many little viral things that we
need you to shoot in your 15th or 16th hour after you've
already shot everything.
And we need stills.
But as long as it's telling the same story,
I think it's fine.
And I think that with the Ecko, it was
worthwhile for sure.
Was it the idea in the first place?
I don't know.
ARI KUSHNER: But it seems like it's linked to this thing of
how do they do that?
A lot of stuff that travels and goes further, I find
myself in editing revisions with clients often saying, if
I make this change, I won't want to send
it to anyone I know.
Because the threshold of the thing becomes from OK to
embarrassing.
So if we go in this direction, just beware that it is now a
commercial.
It loses the authenticity.
I don't want to share this with anyone because I feel
like it's a commercial.
It's not something fun to watch, or a how did they do
that, or a fractured piece of storytelling that you're
putting together as you go along or anything like that.
It loses that.
And that's the threshold.
GREG GALBRAITH: I totally agree.
I think that's why we're lucky to have such good shops.
Anomaly, of course, does specifically back us.
And we're always going back and forth with the ideas.
Our director, Brandt [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
out in the audience.
Scott Nelson, he's always fighting the good fight.
And back to the point of when you have a really good idea
and you want to take it to that next level, it starts out
as something, and then it takes off.
The Three Songs, One Artist, we did that concept a
couple years ago.
And it was a big, huge campaign.
And then when we came back to it again this year, Scott had
been saying all along, we should always do these, we
should continue to do these.
And then so we did one.
And we kept a high production value.
But what was great was we saw it take off on the web.
And it was something where you were very proud of.
And you became so proud, you're like, well, maybe if we
could maybe find a little bit more money,
let's run it on VMAs.
And it's great to see those sort of things happen.
And being on the agency side, I know how hard it is.
Sometimes you want that to happen, but a lot of times,
the client just can't make it happen.
But we're pretty lucky that a lot of times, good ideas often
do get funded.
BRIAN DILORENZO: I just want to add to that too.
Maybe it's because I work in advertising, but I don't mind
seeing something that is labeled Converse.
If it's a good piece of entertainment,
I will accept that.
I'd rather see that than some crappy music video.
I think that we all just want to see stuff good.
And I do appreciate things when they feel that there's
enough integrity to it that they want to put
their brand on it.
And that's a nice place to be when you can work on projects
that get to that point, that are just like this is what
it's for and enjoy it.
RICK WEBB: Well, I think you're more making the
distinction between an ad and a film by a brand.
You're not talking about you don't think the logo
should go on it.
It's much more that--
ARI KUSHNER: Yeah, exactly, I'm not a purist in that
sense, of course.
I just think that there is a very fine line there of
something that you see and acknowledge as a great piece
of content and you just want to share regardless, whether
it's Levis, or Pepsi, or Converse, or whatever it is.
Those are all examples of good things that are out there.
It's working.
RICK WEBB: Well, they're both rewarding too.
Like you sit there and you're at Hulu, you
gotta watch your ad.
That's the price you pay.
You know it.
You watch the ad.
You can still feel positively inclined towards that ad even
if you're not going to pass it along.
The motivation to pass it along therefore makes it so
you have some social media potential, which means I can
justify taking it away from the paid media potential.
ARI KUSHNER: Right.
I agree with that.
RICK WEBB: But they're all ads.
ARI KUSHNER: Yes, I see what you mean, yes.
GREG GALBRAITH: I feel where you're coming from when you're
looking at something and you're thinking, OK, we have
millions of kids out there on Facebook.
Is this going to pass the acid test?
And usually, a lot of times you can just look at it and
go, oh, I'm not sure that's ready.
Or maybe it might be too edgy.
Or it's something that you're always balancing.
But that is definitely something that from a client's
side, we're just always wrestling with.
ARI KUSHNER: Yeah, and it becomes very subjective like
choices of music and different things like that that you just
know from your gut feeling.
Like, that's the right music, for example, for this piece.
And if it's not, then it messes the whole groove and
the whole thing.
So those challenges, I feel like, is what I was getting at
of something that you're proud of and that you feel achieves
the thing as a whole versus something that's been tinkered
and loses the essence of what made it good
in the first place.
NOAH BRIER: Yeah.
Building on what you said about Facebook actually, I'm
just curious.
To me, another one of the great opportunities of the web
is that you can put something out there and maybe pull it
back if it's not quite ready.
Is that something you do?
Is that something you think about?
Or is it always just published and done?
GREG GALBRAITH: Rarely have we ever run--
I don't think we've ever pulled anything back that I
can think of.
But usually when we're pushing stuff out to all the kids on
Facebook, we're just thinking, all right, it's a rainbow of
people who love Converse, artists, musicians, sports,
everything.
And so you try to make sure that you're doing something
that everybody's going to at least be interested in.
You might not skateboard, but maybe the music to the
skateboard piece is very interesting.
You might not like heavy metal, but wow, that was a
pretty wild video.
You want to do something for everybody,
but you want to be--
for the kid who really loves skateboarding or really loves
heavy metal, you've got to make sure that it really
resonates with them.
And yeah, some kids might say, oh, basketball, it's not for
me, so I'm probably not going to click on it.
But if they do, hopefully, the music's strong enough to where
like, oh, what, wait a second, who's doing the music here?
And so you're definitely always thinking, what is that
kid going to think?
Because it's a huge number, and it's global.
NOAH BRIER: This is a general question for
anyone in the group.
But I think that we've talked a little bit about budgets
specifically.
But traditionally, web production budgets just
haven't been where traditional production budgets have been.
And that's for, I think, a lot of reasons that you are
welcome to talk about.
But are we going to see web production budgets catch up?
Are we going to see that--
clearly, there's an increasing amount of money going into
digital media.
But are we going to see the digital
production money follow?
Or is it always going to be thought of as a place where
you can make things for cheaper?
RICK WEBB: I think it has to catch up.
There are so many content creators out there now.
Every kid's making these viral videos.
They get 10 million hits.
You mentioned the other day about how Lady Gaga and things
like that are becoming the most viewed
thing on YouTube now.
I think there is that trend towards people appreciating
high production values again.
The other thing is we, as brands, are competing in this
giant universe of all these other content creators.
We only have a few tricks up our sleeve that they don't
have.
They will like our stuff if we do something they can't do
themselves.
And production values are a big part of that.
Like the Intel thing that they're doing with Vice, or
the Pepsi thing, or the American
Express Members Project.
That's another way, but we gotta do
something they can't do.
And production values-- making these massive productions that
are just over the top awesome is a thing we can do for them
that they can't do for themselves.
So I think ignoring the economic side of it, that's
another very valid reason for it.
A kid can't make Imagine.
NOAH BRIER: On the tip, actually, since it's an
interesting counterexample to a lot of the stuff we've been
talking about, which is very video based.
But can you talk about production
values in making sites.
A lot of the production value in the Pepsi thing is actually
in the plumbing.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, that's a whole other-- on the website
side, we're competing against kids in Y Combinator that are
$20 grand websites.
We can make sites that are a million dollars.
And we can make an awesome sight for a kid that is a
million bucks if we wanted to that they couldn't make
themselves.
You can't get 50 of your friends and do 25 two-week
sprints when you're still in high school.
So the site itself is another way that we can spend that
money and do something they can't do for themselves.
The flip side is that it's competing for
the production dollars.
Because you can do a million-dollar site, you can
do a million-dollar high-end production video thing.
You can't do both when you only have a million bucks.
Right now, we end up half-assing both of them.
ARI KUSHNER: And I guess there's something to be said
in the Pepsi example of the Refresh Project of saying,
well, we're going to commit.
And even though the Pepsi person isn't here, I feel like
they've gotten the closest to the TED thing, where it's like
we're committing this money to funding good ideas in an
amazing way.
And most of the money has gone into that.
I think it's $30 million or something being put into that
and not into an awesome-- other than the first 30-second
spot, it doesn't have much of a follow up in media.
But it's so good on its own.
And maybe the money goes there.
The money's going to a good thing.
And people get to vote on good ideas for their friends.
And those ideas get funded in $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000
increments.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, or the Red Bull way.
They don't spend it on good ideas.
They spend it on bad ideas like back-flipping
helicopters.
I can't back-flip a helicopter on my own.
That's cool.
They're spending their money on that.
ARI KUSHNER: Yeah, I guess the value of that is
that it's a good deed.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, and so production values are tough
because we can't--
we used to, in television time, on a second per second
basis, be able to compete with James Cameron.
We'd spend-- what was it--
millions of dollars a second on television commercials.
Whereas now on the web, we're not doing that.
So it's not like we can make Lord of the Rings.
Somebody else is already going for the
high-end production stuff.
So it can be a component of it.
But if you had a million dollars to do something the
kids can't do, this, I think, could potentially become one
of them, but isn't quite there compared to our other tricks
in the digital arsenal.
ARI KUSHNER: And on the James Cameron note, Panasonic has
just released the first 3D prosumer
camera, which we've purchased.
And it's coming to our steps in a few weeks.
So it'll be interesting to see what that does.
Because five years ago, again, with that advent, you could do
what we did.
And now five years later, it'll be interesting if there
is a variation of that for 3D.
I'm not even sure.
It's kind of a gamble.
But it's $20,000, 3D, and you're ready to go.
But who's going to watch it, right?
You can't watch 3D online.
There's a hardware issue.
But that discussion was there with HD five
years ago when it started.
It's like, why have an HD channel?
Now everything is an HD channel.
Online, I mean, 720, whatever that means.
NOAH BRIER: I've got one more question.
And then I think we'll turn it over to the audience to see if
anyone has anything to ask.
But to me, the promise of the web is in the ability to do
things you can't do in other places.
We talked about it a little with the non-linear
storytelling.
But lately, I've been getting the sense that we've been
artificially boxing ourselves in.
The big platforms that have started to emerge-- whether
it's Twitter, or YouTube, or Facebook-- are
creating boxes for us.
And we are increasingly producing things for those
boxes instead of trying to produce things that break out
of them and do things that you really can't do anywhere else.
And I guess I just am curious if you guys are feeling that,
whether you think there's going to be a reaction to it,
whether I'm going crazy.
RICK WEBB: For me, that's one of the most maddening things
about our business right now.
There's no secret to how those awesome websites that we all
use every day, Gmail, and Facebook, or even Twitter, how
they're built.
We could build those.
And actually, it's easier for us because we don't have to
make money off of it.
The one hard part they all have is removed as a
requirement for us.
We just have to have people show up.
But we don't do it because we're so fixated on other
aspects of our business.
It drives me crazy.
GREG GALBRAITH: It comes down to convenience.
We just recently embraced Twitter.
And so there's a lot of kids that are on Twitter.
And we have a lot of cool stuff to show and say.
And so to your point, you go where you gotta go.
But I definitely agree.
There's always opportunities to do stuff that is super
different and really try to think out of the box.
Anomaly came to us with an idea--
just as an and it was a year or so ago
called Domain Nation.
It was like a little bit of a punk on the Google search.
So whatever you're typing in on Google search--
say, around prom time--
a 14-year-old kid is like, how to kiss.
So he types that in this Google search.
And then we have a little box on the side that says, oh, so
you want to learn how to kiss?
And so we would have this funny video vignette.
And at the time, it was like, wow, nobody's doing that.
We were the only people over there.
And we would figure out what our search terms--
it could be rock and roll, it could be something silly.
But yeah, there's always going to be ways to leverage a lot
of these technologies.
And I think that's the way you need to look at it.
NOAH BRIER: Cool.
Anybody have a question?
I see a hand, but it's sort of--
yeah.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
I work at a big, dumb agency in the digital group.
And I love my big, dumb agency.
But it's neither here nor there.
I think a question that I have is gone are the days of being
able to get Barbarian, or get Firstborn, or get North
Kingdom to make you something of really high production
value without spending a bunch of money.
And the thing that's gotten difficult for us is from both
a client standpoint and also our traditional counterparts'
standpoint, the budgets haven't really changed.
So my question is when we've got that idea, when we've got
that sort of thing, are we looking for
lean and hungry shops?
I guess that's the question.
RICK WEBB: Let's make some assumptions that your big,
dumb agency isn't dumb.
And you're not dumb.
So you want a high production value website for a reason
that's strategically valid.
And then I think the first thing would be your clients
bought in on that.
They get the strategy that you have to make this really high
production value, North Kingdom style--
because they were always the masters of it-- website.
And yeah, they've gotten too expensive maybe.
But to go to your question, there are always kids that
love that ***.
Most of our artists that come into our company now are kids
that grew up on that.
That's their new rock and roll.
They are like, I love doing crazy art *** in Flash.
And I think they're out there.
We don't do a lot of it anymore because the strategies
have changed a lot of the times.
There are times, like with Brian's thing, that it is the
strategy still.
But a lot of times, it's not.
But if I'm a kid and that's all I want to do--
I don't have a business, I just want to
make cool Flash sites--
I'm going to do it for a lot cheaper.
So I think absolutely in those situations, you're there, and
you're smart.
You can direct them, which didn't exist before.
10 years ago, there weren't really smart people in the
digital side of the agencies.
So you had to outsource the whole thing.
Now you don't.
You can outsource the right parts to a young kid
definitely.
A very self-defeating answer.
AUDIENCE: What if you got to do everything you wanted to
do, and it was brand agnostic, and people got to choose what
brands they thought went with your stuff?
Now there's only one person up there from
an advertiser, right?
Converse?
But what if in Facebook--
I don't know--
there were all these videos that were from Burning Man.
But for some reason, it was the way people were dancing,
and it made them think of Converse.
And so 100,000 people voted that
Converse should own those.
And if you got 100,000 votes, you'd have to
pay X amount of money.
I don't know.
What do you guys think about that?
ARI KUSHNER: You're blowing my mind.
RICK WEBB: Well, hopefully, with 100,000 people who have
already seen it thinking about Converse, why
pay an ad for it?
GREG GALBRAITH: Yeah, I was going to
say, we'd say, thanks.
AUDIENCE: But the site would make you pay.
RICK WEBB: But we already watched it at that point.
AUDIENCE: Right, but the consumers choose.
And the advertisers have to pay.
RICK WEBB: I think there's two things going on.
There is definitely where you source an interesting,
creative idea.
And I think both on the agency and brand side, we never stop
looking at cool things that we can co-opt, not to sound too
evil about it.
So the creation, where it comes from, it could work in
that point of view.
But you're market system's kind of flawed because 100,000
people just saw it for free.
So that's pretty much--
you're good to go at that point, right?
GREG GALBRAITH: I guess so.
RICK WEBB: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
AUDIENCE: But you pay--
all right, I was just throwing it out there.
ARI KUSHNER: Get back to here in two weeks.
RICK WEBB: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
NOAH BRIER: There's a question up in front.
AUDIENCE: So you were talking before about how the assets
are being used online, or on television,
all different places.
Are clients organized their own marketing groups in a way
to fully use what digital can bring for them?
So if you're doing all these great production values, does
the client have the group internally that knows how to
work with [UNINTELLIGIBLE]?
RICK WEBB: Sometimes.
Like this guy, if he was working on a game, a movie, a
television spot, and a website, you have a big
picture enough to be like, oh, I could use
that over here, right?
GREG GALBRAITH: Well, yeah, you definitely want to--
if you're going to spend money on something-- so a good
example would be, say, the Gone to Governor's Island free
concerts series.
So you're there 10 Saturdays all summer.
And it's like, well, what else can we get out of it?
Well, we had Goom Radio--
they do Converse Radio on their player--
we had those guys show up.
And they simulcasted each live show and then
rebroadcasted a few.
So to your point, you gotta think, OK, so I have a finite
budget, so I want to get as much out of this as I can.
RICK WEBB: But you have a big picture.
You can see all those and move them around.
Whereas if I was the digital marketing manager for one soap
product at Proctor and Gamble, I probably
couldn't pull that off.
I wouldn't even know what else is going on.
NOAH BRIER: Yeah, I think also there's a question around--
the clients that you're all dealing with.
Where are they coming from?
I think that one of the things about digital is that it
exists horizontally throughout an organization.
A company's website is something that goes
throughout, but do the people that represent that website
live in lots of departments?
Or do they just live in one?
Are you still only dealing with people from the marketing
department?
RICK WEBB: Oh, it's totally different in every company.
BRIAN DILORENZO: Yeah, I'd second that.
It really depends on the company.
And there are times--
coming from another large agency too-- where we, in the
past-- and so I think this is just part of the whole effort
of everyone figure out how to rebundle and
get good ideas done.
In the past, there would be digital executions that would
be, let's say, Flash ads.
And there would be television.
And those things could be sold.
And work for the same products, the same launch, but
really work on different paths.
And there's a concerted effort on both sides-- on the agency
side and on the clients' side-- to get the right people
in the room.
And that's what it's about right now is just trying to
get the right people in the room and figure out, OK, how
do we disperse stuff so that it makes sense.
RICK WEBB: And that's something a big agency might
have a better handle on.
We might have deeper ties to the IT department handling the
website than BBDO.
But you can actually be like, we know this goes on the
website, we know this stuff is in their rich media banners,
we know this stuff is going to cinema, this stuff we're
working with massive on a game thing.
And you can see that big picture even if you have lots
of different stakeholders at the client side.
Whereas if we were like, oh, this would be great on TV, we
don't necessarily even know who to talk to about that.
NOAH BRIER: Any other questions?
There was a hand in the back before, but maybe
that was the same--
RICK WEBB: Over there.
NOAH BRIER: There we go.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: My question was about what you said--
towards the middle--
the benefits of the web is that things
could be pulled back.
I thought that the web had the opposite thing, that once you
put it there, it will forever live in the Google cache.
And what I really want to know in the world of technology and
with the ability to lose control of--
just like a video can become viral positively, it can
become viral negatively.
And I guess how you all adjusted your strategies as
agencies to deal with it.
Because it seems like you could very easily get in the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] to do PR duties at some point.
And how the space is emerging.
RICK WEBB: Yeah, pull back is a weird phrase.
You can pull back funding.
But you're right, once it's out, it's out.
If you screwed up and it's some horrible thing, it's
never going away.
That's definitely true.
But you can definitely test things without blowing your
$50 million media budget.
But if you make a misstep--
NOAH BRIER: But I think also-- like you said--
I much more meant build on rather than pull back.
But I also think the other part of that question is
really interesting and speaks to what we were talking about
before with dealing with these YouTube celebrities.
Do you guys see your businesses changing to have to
include more of this stuff?
Are you going to have to get into dealing with social media
PR and all of these other pieces that come along with
making content for the web?
ARI KUSHNER: It's online forever
unless you take it down.
RICK WEBB: It's still online though.
Yeah, I think we do definitely.
I've pretty much resigned myself that PR is coming back
into marketing and advertising.
And that will all be merging back I feel like.
Because certainly, if I put something out there and I
accidentally offended the entire Catholic population of
the country, I'm going to be responsible for that fallout.
I should probably have the capabilities there instead of
dumping it in the lap of some PR company that has nothing to
do with it.
Because then you become much more cognizant really, well,
I'm going to take the risk, and I'm going to have to pay
the price if it's wrong.
You've got a little bit more responsibility and
accountability there I think.
But I think it would be interesting more like BBDO,
where the PR component when you're a larger agency like
that is a different thing, right?
GREG GALBRAITH: Yeah, there are definitely campaigns where
sometimes you're working with the PR partner, which could be
an entirely different agency.
Sometimes you've got smaller clients where really you're
doing a little bit of everything on it.
So it really varies from client to client.
But I think the general rule now is you really can't--
unless there's a very specific media buy-- if you're going in
to produce anything that's supposed to be integrated and
deal with PR, and social, and content, you've
got to show it all.
Not that they're going to buy it all, not that they're going
to buy it all from you.
But you've got to show how the thinking extends through all
of these different channels.
RICK WEBB: That is totally true.
For us, it's weird.
Because we don't do TV, we don't do radio.
But you gotta show how it could extend into those.
NOAH BRIER: I think we have time for one more question if
anybody else is up for it.
There's a hand.
AUDIENCE: Hi, guys.
So you were talking about how the reason why you guys exist
is because you can do stuff that a 12-year-old can't do or
something along the lines of that.
I think it's a good statement.
But I'd like to know how you educate your
clients on that fact.
I work at Converse with Greg, so I get it.
I'm sure there's a lot of marketers get it.
RICK WEBB: A plant.
GREG GALBRAITH: I pay him.
AUDIENCE: A plant.
But I bet there's a lot of marketers out there that don't
understand that.
I guess the overall question is how do you educate your
clients in today's topic about production value on the web.
RICK WEBB: I'll take it slightly from the side
approach to that and say that the clients are way better
than they were 10 years ago when we started.
There are tons of people like him now that are marketers
that care about the internet and social.
So it's way easier than it used to be.
But that challenge isn't completely gone.
Sometimes they're like, I want to do this.
And we're like, well, you could do that, but anybody
could do that.
I'm not saying it's a hard and fast thing.
It's definitely not a reason to exist to do something the
kids can't do.
But it is a good strategy often for the brand to be
gifting something to the public.
But the training them of their stubbornly not getting that is
definitely hard.
You can lay out a strategy though as--
I'd almost pass it to you as the one planner up here.
NOAH BRIER: Yeah, I think it's just a process.
You do a lot of explaining of how it works, and what it is,
and what's going on out there.
I think increasingly we sit down with clients and talk to
them about new stuff that we're playing with.
Because they're not spending three hours a day playing with
new things.
And we all go home and do that.
But it's just the never-ending cycle.
I think that it's not something
that's going to go away.
I think that with the amount of time people are spending on
the web, clients are certainly a lot more comfortable with it
as a place to spend money and to do cool things.
So that's my two cents.
ARI KUSHNER: Ongoing, it's the ongoing debate.
That's the reason for the panel basically.
Because there's the two sides.
We have two clear sides, the user-generated thing and the
craft-based good idea thing.
And they can merge, as we've seen in the Ecko.
And they can not merge, as you've seen in my example
where I found myself not be able to compete with what
Howcast was bringing to the table.
Because it's a totally different thing.
Maybe it's two separate things in the end.
GREG GALBRAITH: I do agree though.
I think when you look at it as it is a gift, so I'm going to
dump a lot of resources and money into this project, then
you're looking at it as this is for you, this is a gift.
We're very proud of this idea and this concept, so we want
it to look and sound as good as it can.
RICK WEBB: Also, just the percentage of the population
on the web is approaching 100%.
Almost everybody has been affected by some marketing on
the internet now which--