Making It

IHALC’s in-person series covers every aspect of production in-house, from ensuring you have the right structure and roles in place, to understanding what talent you need and how to find the right balance between permanent and freelance, defining the right external partners for your IHA and how to work with them, planning and executing your delivery strategy and how to get the best out of offshoring, DCO and automation.

Workshop your production strategy, stage-by-stage, guided by WDC partner Nicky Russell and expert contributors. Benchmark against your fellow leaders at in-house agencies and share your challenges. Make better creative work!

Attend all three sessions, or pick the ones that most suit your needs.

Partners: Makers, WeAreAmnet

Who should attend?

In-House Agency Directors of Production, Creative Directors, Operations Directors, Heads of Agency and equivalent. Sessions are offered individually and as a package of four.

Please note: this event series is exclusively for in-house agencies. Please do not book if you do not work in an in-house agency.

Making It: Preparing & Creating

5 July, 08.30-11.30, Fora, Clerkenwell, London EC1

Building the right production strategy for your brand. How to bring your marketing strategy, creative ambition and commercial realities into an aligned approach to production for the year ahead.

Remit: Ensuring your production strategy aligns with your in-house agency’s remit and ambition.
Budget: Securing the budget you need to deliver your strategy. Tracking time and costs. Dealing with ad hoc requests.
Tiers: Understanding the value of tiering your IHA’s work and establishing effective tiers for your business.
Partner Strategy, long and short-term: Who do you plug in and why? What expertise do you need in order to fulfil your strategy?

The role of production in ideation and raising the quality of your IHA’s creative work

Understanding, elevating and maximising the role of production in the creative process – and convincing colleagues why this leads to better work.
Elevating production to be present at the ideation phase, opening up creative routes that might never otherwise have been conceived.
Defining the right mix of fixed versus flexible production talent. Understanding the difference between project management and integrated production and ensuring your IHA has the 360 production skills needed to deliver 360 work. Accessing the right freelance talent when you need it.
Casting: getting the right production experts on the right briefs at the right time

Format: Presentation on the creative role of production from Nicky Russell of WDC/IHALC, followed by Q&A session with draftLine Europe Head of Production Jimena Seoane and case studies from Nicky and Sophie-Chapman Andrews of Makers. Plus workshopping of key challenges, each led by facilitator, sharing and learning from peers

Making It: Making

27 September, 6-9pm, Fora, Clerkenwell, London EC1

Understanding how to make great work, and what gets in the way.

Ambition versus budget: where dreams meet reality
Partners: Understanding the evolving production landscape.
Bidding and contracts: Best practice, how to build great relationships with production partners. What do IHAs get wrong? What do IHAs need from production partners?
Collaboration: Do IHAs understand their role in the production process? Managing stakeholders, feedback and approvals.
Sustainability: Strategies for reducing your productions’ carbon footprint

Format: Group discussion led by Nicky Russell of WDC/IHALC and Sophie-Chapman Andrews of Makers. Followed by group wash-up session: attendees are invited to present a previous project, discussing successes, challenges and key lessons learned.

Q&A with Mali Okoi-Obuli, Global Senior Manager / Exec Producer, Creative Shoot & Production, adidas

Q&A with Jo Fenn of AdGreen and David Akeredolu, Global Lead – Creative Production, Diageo, on how to measure and reduce your advertising production emissions

Followed by group session: attendees are invited to present a previous project, discussing successes, challenges and key lessons learned. Selected attendees will also present their production strategy, informed by the previous session.

Making It: Delivering

7 November. Fora, 8.30-11am, Clerkenwell, London EC1

The final stage in the process: Deploying DCO, automation, offshoring and transcreation to achieve maximum efficiency and deliver the right assets, in the right markets at the right time.

Offshoring/onshoring/rightshoring: understanding what your IHA needs and how to implement it
Automation: tools, tech and strategy
Media and its role in delivery

Format: panel discussion with Nicky Russell of WDC/IHALC, with production experts from WeAreAmnet followed by workshopping in groups exploring delivery challenges and solutions