Production house vs creative agency: who do you need?
The gap between the two has narrowed. What you need depends on where the idea comes from.
Who does what
- Strategy
- Agency. Positioning, audience, channel plan and the campaign idea.
- Concept
- Usually agency, sometimes production. The single idea the film is built on.
- Script and boards
- Either. Increasingly the production company, working from the agency's platform.
- Production
- Production house. Crew, cast, locations, shoot.
- Post
- Production house, or a dedicated post facility.
- Media
- Agency or a specialist media buyer. Rarely the production company.
When you need an agency
When the strategy is genuinely unsettled. If you do not yet know who you are talking to, what you are claiming or why anyone should care, that is agency work, and no amount of good production will substitute for it.
Also when the campaign spans many channels with different logics, or when media planning and creative need to be developed together.
When you need production
When the idea exists and needs making well. You have a platform, a message and a clear sense of the film. What you need is craft, scheduling and delivery.
Going straight to a production house here is usually faster and cheaper, because you are not paying for strategic work you have already done.
When one partner works
A growing middle ground: brands who have their strategy sorted internally, need the creative idea and the execution, and do not want to manage two suppliers and the gap between them.
That gap is where campaigns lose time. An idea developed without production input arrives unshootable at the budget. A production company brought in at the end inherits decisions it would have made differently.
When one team develops the idea and shoots it, the concept is shaped by what is actually achievable, and there is nobody to blame at handover because there is no handover.
Ask any prospective partner which parts they do in-house and which they subcontract. The honest answer tells you where the seams will be.
Not sure what you need? Send us the brief and we will tell you how we would scope it, and where we would bring in someone else.
Start a Project