Cynthia Heyd is vice-president, director of broadcast production at BBDO Toronto. She has been with BBDO for five years and comes with more than 15 years of both agency and film production experience. Heyd also chairs the Institute of Canadian Advertising’s Broadcast Committee.

What a year. Reflecting on the events of 2001 does not present a pretty picture. The recession/economic slowdown, or whatever you want to call it, is taking its toll on the advertising community.

Production houses are struggling and we’ve seen some fold, particularly south of the border – their issues being increased competition and tighter budget demands. Agencies as well have experienced their share of cutbacks as some clients trim their marketing budgets or take their accounts in-house as we’ve seen with Labatt and The Globe and Mail accounts. Add to this the horror of Sept. 11 and the picture is bleak indeed. Frankly, we’ve all read and analyzed this endlessly. I for one would like to move on and put this year behind us.

Yes, times are lean. Yes, the industry has had to scale back, but many of the challenges we faced during 2001 are not new. Commercial production was already down before Sept 11. It’s been shrinking due to many influences over the last two years since the demise of the dot-com.

There is, however, much learning we can take out of 2001. The past year clearly illustrates the importance of bolstering our own advertising production community. Just as the U.S. advertising community is looking inward and pushing to keep their production at home (for the time being), the events of 2001 insist that we look inward as well.

This leads to one of the most troubling issues in my mind to come out of 2001: an ongoing struggle to recruit and retain talented and passionate people and the challenge to train the next generation for Canadian advertising.

From an agency perspective this has proven problematic. From an agency production perspective, the problem is exacerbated by the freelance nature of the work. Agencies are not supporting full production departments anymore as the work is simply not there to justify the expense. Hence the training ground for agency producers is almost non-existent. Gone are the days whereby you could work your way up through a department learning from hands-on experience and the benefit of a mentoring relationship. Very few opportunities like this exist in the agency production world today.

To add to the dilemma, technology and smaller ad budgets have made the production job even more demanding. The old saying of producing spots cheap, good or fast – pick two, now translates to ‘I want all three – find a way to make it happen.’

We are turning work out faster and for less money. This requires some depth of experience and very often the process is grossly oversimplified. A creative idea runs a gauntlet of crafting, testing and approvals on many levels before finally being put out to bid. So how do we ensure that it is looked after? In the end, this business is all about ideas, and frankly, the execution of that idea is a huge responsibility. A good producer bears this responsibility.

Producers today need to be great problem solvers. They need to be completely in sync with their creative teams. They have to be creative thinkers and have the business smarts to solve the problems while managing all the expectations. A tall order and one that demands attention and hence training.

Herein lies the problem. The depth of the producers today is great. In fact, there is no shortage of experience and talent. That said, we are not fostering an environment for the juniors to learn. If they don’t hold a staff position (and many do not), where do they look for training? Who’s looking after the future of the producer?

We have many challenges still to come. We don’t know how interactive TV, the mass of digital channels, or the demand for content will affect the production community – hopefully it will create more opportunities for creative work. For now, exploration in these areas seems to be on the back burner due to the economic climate. But these issues will be back and they are areas that can directly affect the role of the producer.

We need some fresh thinking. We need to be looking now at developing producers into these new areas while training them to manage the job as it exists today.

We need these young minds. Members of the production community has to put their minds to nurturing their juniors. We need to protect the future of Canadian commercial production industry.

In the end, training and taking the time to develop young talent benefits everyone. It should be a mandate for 2002.

-www.bbdo.com