LOGISTICS AND WORKFLOW
Workflow is where money is made and money is saved.
As the world changes, the traditional norms of creative agency versus internal creative service team need to be disrupted, broken down, and rebuilt. The hybrid agency model combines agency best practices with the intimate internal knowledge of brand and IP. Navigating corporate culture, moving business targets, and models plus the constant evolution of the creative content landscape is the easy part. Busterhouse has proven that new workflows that consolidate creative and branding in-house are the future of global brand management. We created the in-house agency workflow that powers the Sony Pictures Entertainment Global Creative Center, centralizing branding and creative content production on a studio lot for the first time.
A wise man once said that storytelling is the largest database in history. He's absolutely right, and his idea brings us to a place where we need to be honest about the world we work in. Emotionally compelling creative is thrilling, but data is the rough material of the magic we make in this business. The way data flows from corporate, through production, into creative teams and marketing, out toward consumer touch points is the treasure map to brand success. Brand is a living entity, now more than ever. Netflix has over 76,000 subscriber data driven brand variations moving under the umbrella of its core masthead. As any brand adds targeted/localized per-market campaign messaging fanned out across demographic flights, market-segmented launch/release/sustain windows, factoring in the many flavors of end-user consumption and bearing all of that in mind while tracking user engagement against the backdrop of the most competitive marketplace in the history of media-making....all of a sudden workflow becomes the sexiest part of the machine. Data is the machine.
Busterhouse has engineered bespoke production workflows for enterprise clients that are a hybrid of supply-chain and agile methodologies, making for dynamic workgroups that are made to accordion with the needs of a business. We are your launch partners and your transition agents. We guide teams to ramp up to a big debut. We streamline production and help evolve established teams to move to the next level. The Busterhouse methodology is to create a best-in-class, always fluid benchmark of consistently strong creative production, while vertically aligning internal dialogue with delivery. The idea is that executives and production stakeholders move together in benevolent understanding while leveraging the best aspects of everyone involved. We source the talent and we create an environment that fosters retention.
Team
We are in an age of information. With the rise to dominance of data, we have reached the end of the era of the svengali. Now nothing successful happens without a team. The more invested and engaged, the more hardcore and passionate creatives are groomed to be, the more powerful the work, the more nimble the adaptability of the overall endeavor. To provide a use case, all of the Sony work on this website was created by a lean team under one lead creative. That is three unique networks over six years, from launch through sustain through refresh. Additionally, all creatives were hired from the wild and retained during this period. In an industry famous for gig attrition and burnout, retention at this level is extraordinary. If the team was not invested none of this would have happened. There are many avenues to quantify and explore team building, from the prevalence of EQ as a now sought after qualia, to the importance of inclusiveness, to Patrick Lencioni and the emerging practice of managerial receptivity as lingua franca for organizational behavior. The best leaders give credit and take blame, sure, but more than that the best leaders cultivate talent and let pros be pros.
Tech
Tech is evolving so rapidly that whatever is captured here today will likely be outmoded tomorrow. We have moved so far past the Big Iron days of broadcast so quickly that Moore's Law may have gone from an industry benchmark to a sidebar. To stay competitive, we focus on workflow. Busterhouse specializes in workflows that combine agile and supply-chain methodologies yielding a hybrid, cost-effective production environment that can flex with the evolving needs of a brand or property. The key to success in this milieu is talent cultivation and ultimately talent retention blended with adaptation of both proven and emerging tech. The right combination of these key factors yields crew engagement and facilitates a spirit of adventure that supercharges the creative atmosphere of a workgroup. Put differently, the right structure and tools open up the space in a creative endeavor that makes inspiration possible. Inspiration brought to creative helps develop personal investment, which, when fostered, can lead to passion. Passion makes a brand resonant.
Workflow
Communication is data in motion, from ideation sessions, to strategic positioning, to creative execution, to delivery. How media moves across teams, from production, through creative and operations, to stakeholders, varies depending on studio, project and market. Often, in rapidly growing business environments, large-scale content deliveries are shaped by strategic factors that emerge fully formed from cultural or engagement shifts that happen in an instant. A nimble, informed, engaged team, empowered with a rapidly scalable workflow, can adapt to with these shifts and save management from surprises streaming out to the world. The right workflow keeps a project tight, on time and on budget. From communication that is formalized in creative brief formats, approval flow, subscriber data filtering, to review-and-approve protocols that leverage the best in work-at-home and hybrid cloud solutions, to project management that protects IP across all touchpoints, to delivery, Busterhouse has the expertise to make your team culture-current and adaptable. Every client has a unique culture, and Busterhouse will create an original production workflow for you, to create unique RPAs that streamline and make transparent the movement of ideas from strategy to creative and the efficient delivery of finished content back to stakeholders, air and archive. We help insure that what plays on the stream is the product of deep, successful collaboration.
Let us be your ultimate SME.
