Farewell to Sliced Carrots

I have recently had an inspiring chat with my colleagues at umbrella.tv. We talked about how the changing media landscape and consumer behavior influences communications strategy, and how that drains down to creative and finally production. Quite a lot of brands have already embraced the idea of a new digital era and they are ready to focus their communication strategy on integrated efforts. But the closer we get to production itself the more we witness a need for old-school structures and fossil-like methodology. So we decided to start a conversation about this by saying goodbye to sliced carrots.



Traditional TV commercials used to have a great, simple and totally uniform production method but only a few giant brands need them today. Going through the film second by second, checking each and every detail in the background, setting the storyboard in stone before the actual shoot are impossible rules when it comes to providing video content to consumers of the 21st century.

Every film defines a certain production method. And the more different these films are becoming, the more flexible clients and agencies should be about how they are produced. One brand may need a documentary series, the other one a surreal short movie. Actually, these are the times when a production company can really make added value by tailoring the production method to always fit the given story that should be told.

It is true that you can't shoot all types of branded videos in a studio where a table holds a monitor, food and drinks so that marketing professionals can concentrate on how close the director can stay to the approved and pre-tested storyboard. But you can evaluate production companies much more accurately because you will experience real differences when producing video content with company A or B, not only regarding the freshness of the sliced carrots on the table, but also watching the production approach, the creativity of methodology that enables film artists to do more than a servile recreation of a script.

Of course, the question of control is not an easy one. What seems certain is that today it doesn't make sense to produce commercials the way it has been done for 50 years or so. If you agree with that, new methods and project management innovations can be discussed. As many have said, brands have less control nowadays over their communication, but I think it is getting more and more important which parts of the communication process is in the focus of the control. As I see now, long term communication strategy becomes much more important, exactly because you cannot control every word your consumers say about your brand but you can smoothly push the conversation to a direction that improves your brand's image.

So we concluded that losing the traditional commercial is not a big price at all for entering a new era of branded video production where exciting, unprecedented challenges appear day by day.