In the first part of this blog post series we looked at the historically different approach to Head Office planning and the challenge to design effective Content Creation Studios. In this post we will look at how studios have grown organically instead of being designed with intent. In later posts we will look to the shape of Content Studios of the future.

We previously acknowledged that the templates, protocol and best practices which exist for Office and Head Office, aren’t established conventions in Content Creation Studios. There is a lot to discuss around some of the issues that have arisen from not being able to follow an existing and tested legacy for content creation. To launch in-house studios and enable content production many brands borrowed ideas from their warehouse and retail storage learnings, took some production line process and combined this with elements of commercial/editorial photography studio design.

In-house Content Creation is still a relatively new phenomenon and requires quite unique spaces, combining

• Production teams and batching

• Creative teams and Freelance talent

• Desk based Ops and Copy or Post roles

• Entry level manual labour positions

This mix can present a real challenge to spatial harmony and process design with some very different needs per group but also allowing for overlap in some tasks or responsibilities as well as ability to seamlessly tap into outsource flows.

But to continually produce truly engaging content, studio teams need to not just co-exist but thrive and truly feel valued. They must also be able to communicate effectively within shared software tools and work within product processes that have a daily spatial impact.

ORGANIC GROWTH SHAPES DESIGN

Organic growth is the first crucial part of a studio developing to serve the brands needs. In the e-com explosion organic growth was the dominant factor in studio design as brands rushed to get content online. As content demands grew at unexpected rates, there was little time to respond, plan and predict. For many traditional high-street retail brands that arrived late to e-com (and without established Digital teams) organic growth may still be the dominant factor in the studio.

This can cause problems, after organic growth explosion, strategic growth must kick in. It is strategic vision that is crucial in terms of planning and designing for process excellence that removes the need for reactive solutions and isolated local knowledge. It is also strategic planning that enables brands to create modular sets, assess workflow tools, apply suitable headcount and allow for growth and futureproofing.

ARE WE IN ORGANIC GROWTH STAGE ? : THE DOMINANT ROUTE FOR STUDIOS

Consider the studio you work in or with.

• Does it feel like a reactive hectic space, always trying to respond to new demands and changes?

• Does Product arrive unannounced and get caught in cycles of rejection and pushback?

• Does your current software workflow consist of a suite of in-house developed tools that belonged primarily to other teams ?

• Does Product cycle in batches through the physical studio space creating peaks, backlog and bottleneck?

• Do the org chart and reporting lines seem somehow ‘wrong’ for the dominant Studio Processes?

• Do elevated content streams get introduced and caught in cycles of rejection and creative pushback?

• Are new creative initiatives started and dropped without explanation?

• Are physical spaces ie the sets unsuited for current type of content creation, in size, design, economy of flow?

If you answered yes to some of the above perhaps you are part of a studio where the dominant design process is still Organic Growth. A further way of checking this is to ask yourself do you know at the start of each day what success looks like for you, or for your teams studio role? If the answer is at best vague or a clear no then you are likely not yet in a strategic growth stage.

If you have Process Maps for every possible studio outcome (physical and content creation), you have modular purposeful shooting sets, clearly defined job roles that fit your daily routine, and excellent up and downstream communicative process then you are probably in a Strategic Growth studio.

STUDIO AS ECOSYSTEM

Lets imagine the ideal Content Creation studio as a healthy, populated ecosystem, a forest perhaps with its many integrated organisms…

This studio forest can flourish in two very different states.

It can exist as

1. a planned and sustainable forest with clear logical route paths, controlled but seasonally managed growth, populated by groups of people that work in symbiotic harmonious existence…

   or it can be

2. a wild forest with chaotic organic growth, large areas of forgotten ground, the lower plants desperate to reach sunlight, populated by closed off tribes with unfamiliar customs that only those with localised knowledge can navigate…

Both forests may ultimately flourish, but the experience of navigating both will be very different.

Continued Success is one of the key challenges of organic growth. Studios that constantly deliver solutions to new content problems will find often that bad (reactive) process gets ‘baked in’. A quick short term fix implemented on the run soon becomes the Process. With organic growth localised specific knowledge becomes dominant, making the task of implementing wider process change daunting. Connected teams may have different ways of working, often to the same intended outcome. It takes visionary and disruptive leadership to halt band-aid solutions and search for real data based validity. But short term this can be expensive, time consuming and frustrating.

To avoid this studios must look to strategic growth, and must always be asking

• is this scalable ?

• do we know how to define success ?

• can we create standards others can follow ?

• what are the up/downstream impacts of new process ?

Crucially we must also create and design spaces that allow and encourage solutions and visual clues if something is breaking.

BUT HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Many brands started with a small studio shooting simple content like Mannequin or Basic Model shots. In the early days of e-commerce this was often enough to convert sales and grow the brand. At this stage, led by phenomenal organic growth, many basic process flows were designed, and crucially org charts with distinct lines of reporting were created. Strategic mistakes could easily be missed because growth was present, the impetus was to hit time-to-online SLA and content creation was a relatively simple process. Add to this that teams were small, often in the same room and in constant communication.

Over time, with continued growth many of these org charts no longer fit the needs of the Content Creation Goals. Reporting lines become obstructions to success over large teams, complexity of roles or huge footprint spaces. Org charts also often have a huge impact on decision making for the design process even for fundamental basics such as Model Set design and in-set workflows.

Changing org charts can be disruptive, complex and highly challenging, even when it is clearly the correct next step. Taking into account the knock-on impacts of Budget, Ownership, Headcount etc and the power struggles that can emerge many brands decide not to rock the boat. But we owe it to studios to look at org charts and teams with a desire to challenge and examine as well as with the goals of engagement, growth and retention.

WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT?

As brands grow in the digital space the expectation of customer experience has changed and the requirements of content have developed.  Yet many brands exist in the same original studio spaces, just adding more floorspace or sets. Perhaps they have made some small changes to set design, layout or on-set lighting or switched headcount and added in a Digitech or an Art Director. But this is often built off the back of utilising existing process flows with added bolt on solutions. A large amount of brand studios find themselves battling with this legacy of organic growth process whilst they try to achieve more elevated content creation goals. Goals, we should remember that are hugely different from when the studio launched.

THE BURDEN OF HISTORICAL LEGACY

A further challenge brands face is the historic burden of the evolution of their content creation.  For example if the original content studio was a converted office obtained by a land grab from another team, then almost every new change can be seen as an upgrade. Just moving into a non-shared basement space may seem a major win even if that space is low ceilinged, cramped and totally unsuited to content creation.

A backwards looking mindset can persist within a brand for years. Nostalgia is a human instinct, but constant comparison with a studio space of the past impacts strategic content growth. Creative decisions elevating brand story will make increasing demands of a studio, but to succeed the brand must try and meet the studios increasing spatial and resource demands. Approaching the project of change with only minimal focus on what has come before will bring results more suited to purpose.

Without proper strategic planning of studio needs, solutions will be budgeted and designed that can create real long term problems, and a familiar cycle of disappointment in the studio content begins again, followed by low engagement and high team turnover.  

THE HISTORIC BURDEN OF OUTSOURCE CONTENT

An additional factor can come into play when a brand used to outsource content creation to a third party and then decided to bring it in-house. Comparison with third party content is a fairly redundant process. Third party studios can pivot more quickly, can deal with complexity and they will charge a premium for this. Crucially they don’t exist as part of a large integrated structure, they aren’t reliant on the same delivery chains, they have dedicated Workflow tools and rely on freelancers (who will want to be booked again) producing the content. But a brand will often have in mind the third party creative output, and expect the same results from an under resourced in-house team.

Regardless of the reasons for moving away from a third party provider it is important to look at the desired goals and long term objectives of making the switch and not just compare visual content deliverables.

These scenarios we discuss really bring us back to the major point that after organic growth it is strategic growth that must kick in and planning is key. Studios should be designed and fit for purpose, for achieving scale and future deliverables. Strong decisions must be taken to introduce strategy over reactive decision making and ad-hoc spatial planning.

SUCCESS HIDES LONGER TERM PROBLEMS

An organic growth studio that is functioning and delivering content can be concealing a lot of long term issues that affect the ultimate cost of content. Team engagement, relationships with internal customers, the ability to integrate new process and the studio ability to add increasing content complexity can all be impacted by a lack of coherent studio design and leadership.

Summary

Content creation will continue to become more diverse, the PDP experience will blur continuing to embrace more user content, video, VR and AR, multi-channel shopping and the ultimate test which is live engagement.

Content Creation studios must help build a fully formed experiential customer interaction. To achieve this seamless elevated flows, both in-house, and out-house will become the norm, not the exception, studios will need to be able to meet increasing diversification in models/creators/UGC through intuitive and increasingly similar (from brand to brand) process.

Brands will increasingly need to think of Studios as dynamic fluid and open responsive spaces, who put the customer and core community at the heart of the story. Localised tribal knowledge in teams will need to move into extremely user friendly totally intuitive app based use.

To achieve this, as an industry we need to continue to establish solid baselines and process foundations and share our learnings - creating great content studios that can become interconnected can lead to success for others.