Lookinglass designed an in-house post production business for a leading agency to successfully compete head-to-head with the industry’s best vendors.
Issue
A leading mid-size agency was frustrated by its inability to establish a profitable and creatively competitive in-house post production business.
The company had made a significant investment in post production technology. But the agency’s producers and creative teams did not trust the group with broadcast quality projects, and the agency recognized it was leaving potentially millions of dollars of profit on the table.
The Lookinglass Consultancy was hired to design a business model that would allow the agency to confidently retain a significant percentage of post production revenue across each of its offices, and support its creative department’s growing production needs.
Challenge
The Lookinglass team’s challenge was to create a business-within-a-business, one capable of competing immediately with third party vendors that already had existing relationships with the agency’s producers and creative teams.
Structurally, the new business would need to immediately service multiple offices, and be capable of easily supporting the agency’s expansion to new cities.
Approach
Lookinglass conducted a thorough discovery process which evaluated the agency’s in-house capabilities and practices against the post production industry’s own standards.
We then developed a comprehensive operational and financial model that would support the existing needs within each office, while also attracting broadcast quality talent and projects.
The model incorporated a specific set of recommendations including:
- A projection of the business’s capital requirements and P&L over the next 3 years
- Position by position staffing plans and reporting hierarchy
- Talent recruitment, compensation and retention strategies
- Multi-office information systems and management practices
- Office by office sales and marketing strategy
- Technology and room layout requirements
- An implementation roadmap to maximize the effectiveness of each step
Current Situation
The plan was approved and funded. The Lookinglass Consultancy was then hired to support the initial implementation of the plan which to date has achieved the following:
- Buy-in from key agency creative and production department stakeholders
- Implementation of a customized multi-office job management system, including agency staff training in each office
- Integration of the job management system with the agency’s finance and accounting departments
- Design and construction of eight new spaces across three offices integrated within the agency’s creative department
- Purchase and installation of post-production technology, networked across all offices
- Restructuring of the post-production group’s management hierarchy with clear definition of responsibilities and accountability, including job descriptions
- Development of multi-office job management practices including media management protocols
- Creation of a clear talent hierarchy and appropriate changes to the existing staff
- Hiring of outside talent based on a multi-office compensation philosophy
- Identification of, introduction to, and negotiation with an independent name-brand supplier to provide high-level creative talent for year 1, in order to dramatically accelerate creative and technical expertise, and to lift the agency’s post-production capabilities above agency and industry expectations
- An increase in the performance, measurability and creative capability for the agency’s existing needs
- Increased revenue and profitability ahead of projection
