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JANUARY 2010

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says Damon Webster, an executive producer at bi-coastal Bullet (www.bullet.tv) who heads the production shop's LA office. Web- ster is a veteran adver tising man. As a for- mer head of production at Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles, he oversaw the Toyota account for many years, and prior to joining Bullet, he was a freelance producer with a number of top West Coast agencies. "With all of the hunger for content on so many different fronts," Webster says, "and with the budgets getting diminished and the [budget] dollar getting fractured over a vari- ety of screens — just the physical time to do all these things in a very polished form [is prohibitive]. Conversely, the ability to create a good piece of video has been democra- tized. I think that's excellent. As everybody in advertising has found out, people don't want to be talked to. There's a lot of different ways people can communicate, but it's still about a conversation." A notable Bullet production that went viral — so viral that CNN investigative re- por ter Anderson Cooper pinched some footage for his news program as if it were news — comprises their World's Fastest Nudist clips for Zappos Clothing. The videos — which are nothing if not authentic-look- ing — promote the online footwear re- tailer's move into clothing. In a memorable misdirect, New York-based agency Agent 16's Dave Pachence and Chris Lenox show us a man wearing only sneakers, a fanny pack (two, actually) and a headband as he earnestly braves the traffic and public curios- ity of Manhattan — kind of a '70s-style streak with occasional dialogue and a snack from a street vendor. The point is to estab- lish a memorable character — and, in the ul- timate video, lure him into a Zappos van from which he emerges happily clothed in Zappos' haberdashery. A true believer in communicating the right way with a given audience, Webster has been making his own videos for www.photoinduced.com, a site for serious photographers like himself. What he's brought back to the office from that exer- cise is, "there are different ways for finishing videos depending on what screen it's [meant for], who your audience is, and using whatever budget you may have." On the big-budget side, Webster has pro- duced many campaigns for major automak- ers. But even for a client like Land Rover, the terrain may be shifting. One such campaign for the SUV company "had to be, by nature, fairly minimalist and had to be very authen- tic," Webster says. He was freelancing with Y&R at the time about 18 months ago. "We shot it all with a VariCam, looking at our dailies on-site through an HD monitor."The location was a flood-stricken area in Missouri. "We brought a Land Rover to this flooded location and ran it through this flooded area. The water came just about to the hood of the car. For real. It was one of the most au- thentic demos and I've been working in auto- motive for many years." In one shot the car passes a street sign and the floodwater al- most reaches the bottom of the sign. There were only two agency people and four crew on this shoot. "The viability of the commercials came from the authenticity of that situation,"Webster says.The Land Rover campaign was called "The Odds" and the client's outlay was "minimal, for a ver y au- thentic spot. We did subsequently shoot some additional spots where we re-created [the adverse driving conditions] and they were much more expensive." Webster says, "The whole idea of adver- tising is to cut through the clutter." For Zap- pos and their "nudist" videos, the aim was to create what looked, for all intents and pur- poses, like user-generated content, or UGC. Whether a spot's look is big-budget or UGC, Webster and Bullet often get an edi- tor involved early on a project — and their NY office is housed within spot editing shop Now (www.thenowcorporation.com). Web- ster likes to access the editor's thoughts "and see what is possible. That's a huge ad- vantage for us and for our clients — to have the resources and the speed to get a project done for the right dollar." T H E M A RT I N AG E N C Y The Richmond, VA-based Mar tin Agency has a long, envy-inspiring client list that belies its location in a smaller city. Besides Geico, Mar tin (www.mar tinagency.com) serves BF Goodrich, the Discover Card, Hanes, Ping, UPS, Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut, to name just a few. Steve Humble, with the agency for 10 years, is right in the middle of things as head of both broadcast production and a Mar tin division called BrandFirst Entertainment. "Connecting with the audience has never been more impor tant than now," Humble says. "Consumers have more choices now than they've ever had before to hear a mes- sage — between the fragmented TV indus- tr y with all the cable networks, DVRs and computers, information is coming at them all the time and it's incumbent upon us to cre- ate and craft messages that they want to hear and are engaging to them. In the Mar tin Agency's recent Sun Life Financial campaign, shot in HD, the Cana- dian financial-ser vices company wants to get its name out there as well as emphasize its proud, bailout-free histor y of success. Here the concept involves two young em- ployees, full of company valor and not a lit- tle naivete, attempting to convince well- known institutions such as the State of Florida to rebrand themselves. They urge a tourism executive that the Sunshine State consider a change to "The Sun Life State." KC and the Sunshine Band are urged to become "KC and the Sun Life Band." "We shot commercials, Web video, we also did banners on the Website," Humble says, "We did everything." Humble is another proponent of shooting digital."There's the flexibility; you can just con- tinue to roll; there's more opportunity to get [desirable takes]; there's the price; you don't have to take a day for processing; and getting it to the editor — we're editing more and more literally right on set. It's much faster and it's a big advantage." Humble's editors use ei- www.postmagazine.com January 2010 • Post 35 continued on page 44 From ad agency to full-service facility M ONTVILLE, NJ — SGW Integrated Marketing Communi- cations (www.sgw.com) began migrating from an adver- tising agency into a full-service firm in 1986.Video production became an integral in-house service in 1995, due to a mega-auto dealer client that needed to promote multiple manufacture lines. SGW produced a local half-hour primetime cable show entitled The Car Buyer's Review to present product comparisons.The show was then promoted with local/regional newspapers and rotary billboards. The business evolved into producing commercials; cable TV shows; industrial product demos; training videos; trade show presentations and corporate talking-heads.Video has always been an important component of SGW's overall full-service of- ferings, but never as important as it is today.To maintain clients' brand integrity and amortize costs, SGW re-purposes creative and PR content, then distributes this video content on their Websites, blogs, v-mails, as well as many social networks includ- ing You Tube and Facebook and other similar sites. Dave Scelba, chairman/CEO notes,"In-house video produc- tion capabilities allow us to address clients' immediate communi- cation needs, maintain higher quality and offer services at ex- tremely competitive rates.We shoot in HD, use a greenscreen for layering after effects, provide teleprompters, and edit on both Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.We have a creative group that both shoot and edit.This combination provides back-up, production continuity and allows clients with limited budgets to still use video." The group's director, Leo Montes de Oca, is responsible for spearheading the overall direction of the group from initial client interviews to final post production distribution. Cesar Cruz works closely with Leo and is primarily involved in the produc- tion of a weekly outdoor television series called The Rule, airing on The Sportsman Network.

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