Photo: Bram van Woudenberg
“When walking, walk. When eating, eat” – Zen proverb
Production is a complex business, and Decoupled Production has been a trending phrase for several years in the advertising industry. What is Decoupled Production? Well, it helps to first understand how “full-service” ad agencies work, so let’s start there…
A full-service ad agency wants to be a brand’s “one-stop-shop” for marketing campaigns. Their traditional role is threefold:
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come up with ideas (ideation)
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produce them (production), and
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place them (media buying)
However, just because an agency is great at ideation, it doesn’t necessarily make them the best choice for production or buying. This is where the decoupled approach comes in.
So, what is Decoupled Production?
Decoupled Production describes the approach of separating production from ideation and media buying. In other words, of handing the task of production to the partner that is most expert at it – a production company.
Once your production is decoupled, you have the freedom to generate ideas from wherever you choose, whether it be boutique agencies, your internal teams, or even your audience.
Why are brands turning to decoupled production?
Increasingly, brands are retaining a single production company to take on all their production work, regardless of whether the ideas were generated by an agency or by an internal creative team. Centralizing production work under one banner brings many benefits:
Creative freedom & Hollywood quality
With the explosion of digital content platforms, expectations around quality & quantity of content has increased dramatically. Decoupled Production companies are uniquely positioned to deliver the level of production and storytelling to which audiences are accustomed.
Deep expertise & focus
A specialist Decoupled Production company will bring a breadth and depth of production expertise and know-how that an agency can rarely match. Just as importantly, a Decoupled Production company is laser focused on amazing production, rather than splitting its focus across multiple disciplines.
Cost control & transparency
A traditional agency may hide and obfuscate real costs behind a rolled up quote. Hiring a production company directly affords a brand much more transparency into costs. Consolidating all production work under a single production company allows cost sharing across projects, as well as volume-based cost efficiencies.
Global scale
In many cases, a Decoupled Production company will have access to a global network of resources that can be scaled up as the client’s demands and deadlines intensify.
Speed
Never has there been a need for more content than in this day and age. The traditional agency business model is based on selling hours, meaning they will generally take longer to adjust or change during the production process. Dealing directly with a production company, whose business model is to get it done as quick as possible, will almost always produce faster results.
Brand Integrity, Efficiency & Consistency
Using technologies like media asset management systems, a Decoupled Production company ensures a single “source of truth” repository for assets, maximizing reuse and avoiding duplicate work. This also ensures brand integrity and consistency across content projects.
How can I learn more?
MikeTeevee has specialized in Decoupled Production for over a decade. We operate with a global network and boast multinational corporations both in Europe and the US.
No other Decoupled Production studio has the depth of experience in this arena. Client satisfaction and long term relationships are the hallmark of what we do.
We would be happy to talk to you about how you can use Decoupled Production to save money, produce better quality content, all while maintaining the integrity of your brand. Get in touch….