The new ‘prolific never precious’ production model
22 Jan 2025
Brands & agencies need to adapt to the ‘prolific never precious’ production model.
VP of Creative at Liquid Death Andy Pearson described Liquid Death as “really just an amalgamation of all things that we find interesting - heavy metal, satire, art, absurdist humour, health, and environmental issues, sketch comedy - all thrown in a bag and shaken up”
“They don’t believe in pre-testing but practices active, engaged listening, using data from each release to inform the next thing. Since you never know what will succeed, it’s a smart strategy. If something doesn’t work, that’s OK since they’re so prolific and never precious.”
Extract from Ana Andjelic ‘Hitmakers’ book (worth a read).
It’s moving from simply communicating your brand identity and values to creating a string of moments that are relevant to the world around us. It’s how you then organise the production into telling the story of the brand played out across many different micro moments.
From creators, merch, events, collabs, partnerships, in-store to the product, fans, short-form, long-form, OOH, TVC. Every mechanism of influence that brands have available now.
Once the vision and strategy is set.
It’s organising a team & partners around a nimble production model mixed with smart project management. Tweaking, adapting, adjusting. With a constant feedback loop directly plugged into your audience.
This is about an org and mindset shift. It’s a shift from slow ‘full service’ to a roster of specific skilled partners. They understand your brand, they work upstream and they enable quality work, at speed, that doesn’t suck all your prod budgets.
As the media landscape continues to fragment. Brands are now more than ever a sort of rhythm. Instead of tent pole moments x4 times a year littered with sponsorships and activations. It’s pushed along by a rhythm that beats to cultural, communities and moments. Amplifying the work that works and learning from what doesn't.
It gets back to what our industry should be doing, which is creating. That is what creativity is about. It’s the fuel of our industry.
Brands have and will always be living breathing things that are ever changing. Our setups/production/systems/processes should recognise this.