traffic and production

Here's last week's Campaign piece. I had more fun writing this than anything I've done before because it's not the usual planning/brands nonsense, it's about the people in agencies who actually get things done.  (Who, I should have remembered like to call themselves 'Creative Services' these days.) And, of course, I got more feedback on this than anything I've written. ie I got some feedback rather than none. Because traffic people are lovely and gracious. Thanks everyone.

One day soon, when planners as rare as chimney sweeps, creatives are just avatars and advertising is a cottage industry again, we will still have bequeathed a lasting gift to the world. Our two greatest disciplines, the engines of our economy, will outlive our puny business and flourish in the outside world because they're the people who actually know how to get stuff done. I'm talking of course, of traffic and production.

If you haven't done it recently, spend some time with traffic. They experience the world in a deeper way than you and me. They exist in time and space, but also perceive dimensions of cost and practicality, of real time, pitch time and lunch-time. They negotiate tides of creative entropy, waves of management paranoia and the tsunamis of new business. An expert traffic person can weedle, cajole, threaten and condemn with the flick of an eyebrow. They know where all the bodies are buried and when to dig them up again. They know how long things should take, how long they will actually take and how long they should tell you they'll take. Watching a seasoned traffic person dragging work out of a gnarled old creative team is like watching that infamous imaginary fight between the bear and the shark. Except you know the bear will win, because deadlines must be met. Traffic makes ideas happen.

As a planner I've always regretted that I spent most of my career at the other end of the line to production. TV producers are unutterably glamorous creatures; the foreign correspondents of advertising, reeking of airport lounges, hotel bars and Soho. But if you're stuck in a desert needing a crate of Tizer, four jugglers and a helicopter they'll get on the phone and those things will arrive. And I love print producers because they represent our last connection to craft-skills and the actual physical world. If they say something can't be done it's not a conceptual thing (ie someone won't let you do it) it's a literal thing - you can't actually print that on that, you can't get those to stick on there. It's impossible. And then, of course, they find a way to do it. 

It's this commitment to getting things done that means these trades will probably outlive the rest of us. Every company you come across seems to call itself an idea business right now, we think it makes us special. But ideas are the easiest, fastest and cheapest things to have in the world. It's getting them made that's hard, and for that you need traffic and production. Ladies and Gentleman, we salute you.

Comments

[steve wyles]

hear hear

[beardyman]

I like the way that they tend to smell of beer in the afternoons. Time was when this was true of many of the most talented and productive folks in adland

[Charles Edward Frith]

This is a planning nugget for aspiring planners. Traffic are proper people. Astrid at BBDO Dusseldorf. You made things happen - Thank you. (what was that nutmeg vodka called again?) xx

[Chris]

It's like... when things get insane, creative services take over.

[Brett Macfarlane]

Great article. Without the "doers" the creative and all the thinking agencies are so proud of never gets done.

[NP]

Love this article and I've got to agree with Brett, there's so many unsung heroes without whom we'd fall apart.

[Mark McGuinness]

Anthony Trollope said the most influential person on his success as a novelist was the man he paid to wake him up and bring him coffee so he could start writing at 5.30am every morning.

Not a glamorous job, but essential to getting the books actually written. Even if he never got his name on the cover.

[Scamp]

"Just popping in to remind you that the deadline on this brief is 5pm tomorrow."

"Which brief? This one here that says... deadline 5pm tomorrow?"

"Yes, that one"

"Oh, okay. Thank you! Thank you very much"

[Cleaver]

Good traffic makes good suits in the way good fences make good neighbours.

[Nick Baker]

Planners & creatives probably like to think of the agency as an "ideas factory" that is supported by sensible creative services people. But a lot of clients probably think of their agencies as "creative services suppliers" supported by a bunch of rather impractical people who input the occasional good idea as part of the process.
Q: Does this matter?
Other Q: If so, can we change it?

[Catherine]

Love this clip. Known to me as uber traffic people, they've always been the glue that hold everything together no matter what the time, agency, client or project. There still are some places out there in which the traffic folks are viewed as nothing more than paper pushers, but MANY agencies are catching on that these people really DO makes things happen no matter what the challenges are! They indeed deserve the praise. Thanks