COMMERCIALS 30


Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Brazil


Wall’s Garage


Nationwide Carousel


Lurpak Kitchen Odyssey


Orange Popcorn


NikeWrite the Future


when turnover was £7.6m. The amount of jobs each company is taking on has increased slightly (refl ecting a general feeling that volume was slightly up, if not budgets) to 69 from last year’s fi gure of 64 (the fi gure was 60 in 2009). The average budget for a 30-second ad is now


£171k compared to last year’s fi gure of £167k but that stat could be down to a few big budget ads pumping up the average as 43% of respondents felt budgets had dropped with 33% feeling they had stayed roughly the same.


THE NO RISK OPTION But back to creativity, the lifeblood of the commercials production sector. As mentioned before, there are few who would argue that 2011 has been a classic year creatively. Uncertain economic times mean smaller budgets and clients that are less willing to be persuaded to go out on a creative limb, and less willing to be persuaded that doing something creatively arresting can help them grab market share. Uncertain economic times also lead to nervous agencies, more inclined to meekly agree with their clients through fear of losing them than to push them and cajole them into taking risks Advertising right now is “dominated by


procurement and a tendency to make risk averse ads, honed by research and focus groups to create an expected result for a known audience rather than


“We want to stay focused on how brands engage with their consumers. The trend is less through traditional TV advertising...branded content will probably dominate in the future” Blink Productions


fi nding and exciting the audience,” says Bare Films. New start up 15 Badgers argues that fears over the global economy have led “clients and agencies to continue a cautious and frugal outlook.” And all that means that, as Another Film Co says: “the really exciting creative scripts are few and far between.”


MONEY’S TOO TIGHT But producers are certainly having to use their creative muscles to bring in a job on budget when those budgets are now so incredibly tight. Producers, who live and die on their creative reputation, can’t deliver substandard work just because the budgets are substandard, and that means being cleverer with the way they make spots but also taking a hit on profi t. It’s about “balancing delivering outstanding creative work with budgets that are challenged,” says Independent and “retaining the quality of our output in an environment dedicated to reducing schedules and budgets,” says Studio AKA. But risk averse advertisers don’t just drop their


budgets, they demand more assurance that they’re going to get exactly the ad they want, and that means more competitive and protracted pitching, which hurts animation producers more than most. “Pitching standards are exceptionally high,” says Picasso. “Seemingly clients would like to see fi nished commercials before they decide to make them.”


November 2011 | www.televisual.com C05


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