Production Consulting

Time, money and creativity: driving the highest value from every production.

At APR, we work across all media, from TV to print to digital, optimizing every step of the production process. Our focus allows us to preserve your creative idea while guiding you to the best possible cost and timeline efficiencies.

1. Disciplined production process.  We design, manage and instill discipline throughout your production process. This ensures maximum savings and effectiveness while delivering the ideal creative output.
    
2. Digital expertise.  Our digital experts have years of firsthand experience in production, design, social media, mobile, software development; and use it to bring order, transparency and efficiency to the evolving world of digital production.
    
3. Cost and risk management.  We outline potential costs before they occur. And we guide you on timely decisions that balance cost and risk with your goals and benchmarks.
    
4. Leverage creative assets and content.  We save money and time by identifying and coordinating the re-use of existing creative content across multiple media platforms and agencies.
    
5. Talent and music rights. We help you navigate the intricacies of talent and music licensing, from simple audits to complicated negotiations.

Innovation

We save money inside your productions by working outside of them.

We leverage our industry experience and our continuous innovation to instill best practices, develop new approaches and create exponential savings for you. This is how we impact your entire production culture—not just individual productions, but the collective systems and processes that feed into every one of them.

1. Production audits.  Our in-depth audits of historical production processes, financial expenditures and talent arrangements help you optimize all aspects of production.
    
2. Marketing supply chain management.  We identify synergies and savings throughout marketing operations and production-related activities across brands, divisions or even external agencies.
    
3. Preferred vendor programs. We leverage your economies of scale to help you consolidate production vendors and external partners—ensuring optimal quality and transparency while negotiating far lower prices.
    
4. Digital asset management.  From simple stock images to complex marketing asset libraries, we offer unbiased views to identify the best solutions. What’s more, we can also spearhead the practical implementation of these solutions. 
    
5. Process and workflow improvements.  We review every element of the production process—from communication to financial controls—to help you work smarter and more efficiently.

Reporting

We turn productions into data. Which we then turn into better productions.

Every production is a source of valuable business intelligence. We provide you the tools to measure them, and the systems to turn those metrics into insights.

We collect hundreds of datapoints from every aspect of every production. We mine that data using our proprietary reporting system to obtain a far deeper understanding of your productions, which we apply to drive significant savings and process improvements.

1. Proprietary data systems. We mine data from each of the thousands of jobs we execute every year. This intelligence helps us optimize individual client processes—and uncover industry-wide intelligence that benefits all of our clients.
    
2. Progress and summary reports. We deliver timely status updates during production jobs. And our quarterly and annual reports showcase all the savings, initiatives and outcomes we helped you achieve.
    
3. Budget tracking, invoice review and job reconciliation.  We manage your budget as if it were our own, offering you an understanding of the value of your investment as well as an in-depth portrait of where your money is going.
    
4. Analysis, benchmarks and future job forecasts. We provide data comparisons and industry benchmarks across numerous variables (including cost per spot, cost by agency, cost by production vendor, cost drivers and many others) to uncover synergy opportunities.  What’s more, we utilize our database to help you budget future jobs with greater accuracy.

Coaching

Optimizing the most important part of your process: your people.

No system or technology can drive results better than a well-trained group of people working in concert with each other. We keep your people performing at the top of their abilities.

We help all the people involved in your production processes improve their capabilities—which makes every single production run smoother, and more efficiently.

1. Seminars and training. We train advertisers, agencies and procurement professionals on a comprehensive host of topics. We’re the official instructor of ad production seminars for the Association of National Advertisers.
    
2. Guidelines and customized playbooks. Combining the latest industry knowledge with our cross-client experience, we develop production best practices and customized playbooks that synchronize and streamline your productions.
    
3. Agency transition services. We coordinate the exchange of assets, contracts, processes and vendor relationships to rapidly bring your new partners into the fold.