David Rolfe of WPP
Where does ideation end and production begin?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 263: David Rolfe
Here's a question. Where does ideation end and production begin?
I'm Charles Day. I believe that leadership offers us the greatest opportunity of our lives to make a difference. I'm asked to help leaders discover what they're capable of and then to maximize their impact. Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This episode is part of a series of conversations I've been having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. Over the last few weeks, I've been focusing my study of leadership through a single lens, the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
This final interview is with David Rolfe, the Global Head of Production at WPP. Dave and I have known each other for more years than we care to acknowledge, and he is the most provocative and disruptive thinker about production that I know.
As the week at Cannes unfolded, it became clear that this series wouldn't be complete without a conversation about production.
So I asked Dave late in the week if he would sit down with me and talk about the impact of AI on production. As you may have heard in my interview with Adam Tucker, WPP has made a large investment in AI. That wasn't the reason I wanted to include Dave in this series, but it does, again, add a dimension to the conversation that helps to establish reference points as the industry navigates the disruption that AI is already bringing.
I started the conversation with Dave from a simple premise. Is production dead? As you'll hear, it is most definitely not, but it will look very, very different in a very short space of time, and that change has already begun. So if any part of your future thinking about production is based on how production looked and worked a year ago, you probably need to challenge that perspective to make sure that it stands the test of time, which in today's world, we can probably define as somewhere between 12 and 24 months, I suspect.
“I see fusion of production into ideation. I think once it leaves your imagination, it becomes a form of production, it becomes executional, because now, right out of ideation, we can be iterating. So I just think that the entire journey is probably a production journey.”
In the next episode, I'll sum up everything I've heard and seen since we started this series. In the meantime, thank you for listening. Here is David Rolfe.
Charles (02:37):
Dave, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
David Rolfe (02:39):
Charles, it's good to see you. It's so good to be on this show, a part of this. Thank you so much.
Charles (02:45):
What is your relationship with AI?
David Rolfe (02:49):
Oh, my. Explorative, ponderous, exciting, fearful. You know, wondrous, truly wondrous, I would say, though, and it's exciting, you know, that's it. Like the tools, I do think I, you know, they are more than tools, but I think it's a sort of some form of exciting hybridity that we're about to experience.
Charles (03:16):
Would you call it as much as a partner? Is it that yet, or will it be?
David Rolfe (03:19):
Oh, yes, much more. I think it's got to be integrational throughout, you know, everything from ideational to where we can take builds that we've made into the production side, into deployment, optimization of experiences. And then, you know, maybe it's not about making the old things better and differently. It's also got to be about making new things that we haven't seen. I think we're thinking about how it impacts the things that we've always made and thought of, when really the point is it's going to make new experiences. And of course, that mirrors that we have new product experiences, new brand experience, new frankly sort of consumer experiences. And, you know, we ride in the dovetails of that much in marketing.
Charles (04:06):
If you roll this out, pick an arbitrary number, three years. How much live production do you think that we'll be, by comparison to today? If we're at a hundred percent now, what percentage do you think three years from now will be live and--
David Rolfe (04:20):
Live in some sort of the capture mode of what we're doing? You know, I so volumetrically, sorry to use the word. I don't know, I think there'll be just as much, if not more, just because of the creater landscape. I just think that that media and creation is so, I mean, look at, we're doing, we are making media right here. We’re at a breakfast table (laugh), you know what I mean? And I hope you apply some AI based optimizations to my conversation, my speech. It would certainly help it. But I think there'll still be an abundance of naturalized content that I think will go into the augmentation, filtration, build, reuse systems that we know through AI. So I really, I do think there'll be just as much capture functions to how we create. I just think those would be quite different. And then remember, there is no such thing as sort of linear or analog, because everything is converted to ones and zeros anyway. So it really, once we’re sort of post imagination, we're in a form of iteration, and I think that can have real life functions and tactile functions as well as obviously the synthetic, but I think we're going to see creation all around.
Charles (05:31):
So, some people have said to me in passing this week, production is as we know, it is dead. Is that, , is it dead, but will be reborn in a different form?
David Rolfe (05:41):
I think that's perfectly fair. I think that's perfectly fair. I suppose it's not intentionally macabre to say that it's dead. We're just trying to make a big point. And I think as big a points we want to make about production are perfectly adequate and fair. There's no question. So I would say yes, production, production as we know it is excitedly much different from here, in ways that are predictive or predictable that we can be working on now, and then also in ways that we just don't know, that we can't really envisage because, you know, the creation tools are so abundant to us. And again, it's happening inside of culture. It's happening for those of us that are trying to react and build with culture. So, you know, it's permeating at every fund. It's happening with an 11-year-old. It's happening with a 55-year-old.
Charles (06:32):
You and I have had a lot of conversations over the years about production, how to put production companies together, how to build better production companies. We partnered together in building out production capabilities. If you were starting a production company today in whatever form that takes you, how would you do that? What would you do?
David Rolfe (06:51):
I remember when Smuggler started in early 2000, and it was a creative community. It was a singular culture amongst a variety of talent. Smuggler has, still is that, but they're much bigger in other things and they also build experiences, as well. But they're a talent company. So speaking in terms of production company, I just think they need to be creative sourcing environments, where you've got thinkers that definitely build and sort of the synthetic definitely otherwise build out experience or that come from creators, understand acutely, and I put it in quotes, “post-production workflow,” like how creation is manifest ongoingly rather than just at a capture phase, and then it goes to this sort of linear creation product like editing and things like this. There needs to be experience creation within that. And so much of that has got to be embraced and driven by technology. I think many companies are looking to adapt to that. I mean, five plus years ago, Kirsten at PRETTYBIRD, had a creative technologist as a key lead. I don't think we knew how to use that. She knew how to use it, and how it'd be appropriate. I'm not sure it worked. But I do know we, she knows that her culture is so critical to think in terms of people that are creating the technology and people that really are based upon building experiences more than assets.
Charles (08:10):
You work for an agency that I would argue is among the most progressive in terms of its commitment to an investment in AI. WPP Open is a $250 million investment. I had Adam Tucker on the show the other day talking about the competitive advantage that that represents, the work that you guys can do. And I think people who listen to the show know that I try to apply a great deal of objectivity. And so having Adam come on the show as in response to an email that he wrote, specifically highlighting work that his group had done, your agency had done, which produced case studies in which AI was a fundamental part of the work and it won Grand Prix at Cannes. I think it's important to highlight where people are making a difference and investing and making a difference and so on. How do you use that capability from a production perspective? Are you using that capability from a production perspective?
David Rolfe (08:58):
Well, I mean, I see fusion of production into ideation. I think once it leaves your imagination, it becomes a form of production. It becomes executional because now, right out of ideation, we can be iterating. So I just think that the entire journey is probably a production journey. You know, I look at the fusion of creativity and production or execution is creation now. I think that production goes so far upstream in terms of its fusion with, we can think and make at once, and that's not just mumbo jumbo. That's really a true function of things. And then of course, we can be, a lot of people are using the word curational in terms of what that creative build is, given the tools that we have to iterate so quickly. I think that's true, but I think it's more than that. I think it's just a form of creative engineering, and in ways we've always done that, whether we were carving out stencils and things like that. There's always functions of an engineering, what we're doing. This has just got the extraordinary power of technology and machinery to fulfill that now.
Charles (10:02):
So your point is, production now starts at the instant you start to think about making something, ideating something? It's inextricable anymore.
David Rolfe (10:11):
Which is kind of funny because the best creatives that I've worked with in my time think executionally. You know, for producers, sometimes that can be frustrating, for anyone that can actually be frustrating, because sort of racing ahead. But on the other hand, I find that it delivers the best outcomes, and those are great with it. I think great thinkers, you know, creative thinkers are always thinking executionally anyway. Now the tools are abundantly available for it. That's how I see production now. And that's why, you know, it really sort of powers the generative functions of thinking.
Charles (10:44):
You and I grew up in a world, worked in a world in which there were very clear role definitions. You had a copywriter, an art director, and a producer. What will that look like from here going forward? How will people know what job to apply for?
David Rolfe (10:59):
Yeah, I don't know exactly. And then remember that I think it was fair to say that there was a writer or art director and maybe there was a technologist. I mean, I think our best places would have put that within that function. But now I don't even know if it requires that… Well, I think, I think all of us have to become technologists. I mean, I think maybe that's what it is.
I don't know what the team, what the pod the future would really be. I think the important thing is to think with a form of sort of longevity. I think that the best way to think of, it's the things we make are not finite. They're not as disparately sort of, it's a build and then it stops. I think we have to think about the experiences and the component assets that are around that as having some form of evergreen nature no matter what, because they can always be sort of re-plugged in, you know, building upon itself, and we just have so power to be able to do that now, that I really do think that there is a constant interactive, sort of a prompt based creative experience now. That we can take it and then we take information and then we can take a time out and then we can go to the cafe and talk about the sort of 10 or 10,000 thoughts that were just iterated to us through our AI builds, and then rethink how we want to approach it and then rebundle it and re-prompt really, is where we can go. And then sure, that will ultimately manifest into a capture phase, into going to a shoot and making a production, and then also bringing on an incredible talent that knows how to bring these things to real life, but at the same time, aware of the kind of tools available to us.
Charles (12:37):
Could you imagine a future in which one person can do all of those things and can own the entire process?
David Rolfe (12:45):
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know, I don't know if that's necessary. You know, an Insta creator can sit at this breakfast table, create a piece of content, make the coffee disappear, do all these tricks, and then blow up the table and then return, you know, all in one sort of creative experience. I do think there's a new form of generalists, there's no question. And again, as we know, that'll be thinking and making it once, in one way or another. But again, I still think there'll be team-based dependency, and there'll still be skills within that, I would assume. I suppose we can build that out through technology and through AI, those skillsets. So one person can sort of technologically auteur their way through something. But there's forms of sort of editing and builds upon things that are always going to be important, and I think that's why I mentioned hybridity before, you know, which is frankly a technology term, really.
Charles (13:37):
It’s interesting, isn't it, because all the possibilities that AI offers and all the dynamic changes that it clearly represents, you can conceive for the first time, in our experience, a situation in which one person could have a concept, put it together, find the right way to express it, create finished output, whatever that means, and publish it to millions of people, right?
David Rolfe (14:02):
Absolutely. Or less than millions. Or to a community that's hundreds or a hundred thousand, you know, or millions and millions. So it's shared experience or communal experience. But that's what I'm saying, that's why I mentioned in Instagram or like that's where that was harvested out of. That's built for, builds on or is built for, you know, or creates an audience around that that is appreciative of that type of communications.
That's why we're seeing AI builds now in motion and, you know, videos, feature films, that obviously are clumsy. Somebody's got four fingers or the product is messed up, but there actually is probably tolerance for the quote unquote “imperfections,” to the point where I'm not sure we would even need to call them imperfections given that we come from a legacy concept of pixel perfection. But I think pixel perfection, you know, we started voyaging away from that a little over 10 years ago.
Charles (14:50):
I guess I raised the question or highlight the possibility because agencies back in the day were traditionally regarded as the guardian of the brand. And that relationship has changed to some extent, and it's not in all cases, but in some cases. I guess what I see as a possibility is the idea that one person could own the entire process and the distribution, that person could have a position inside an agency of trust, of intimate knowledge.
And so we have so many, we have had until now, so many guardrails, so many moments, the whole process of making something had checks and balances built into it. There was costs involved, there was time involved, there was expertise involved. There was no way, literally no way that somebody could take something that could look like a Super Bowl spot and put it out there into the world with the brand attached to it. That's now possible. Let's combine the two worlds. You or I could make a Super Bowl commercial with nobody else involved. Maybe not today, but within six months probably this is going to be the case. Attach a logo and stick it out in the world, and how would people know that this was not actually represented?
David Rolfe (15:58):
And I would argue that's happening now. It might not be happening at least that we're aware of in a Super Bowl context, but we do know the immediacy of media creation can be distributed, like, that's happening now, what you just said, it's just maybe not as large of a context of a Super Bowl. And you're absolutely right. The point you're making is something that we considered to have the immense functions of workflow and time and can be envisaged and built that quickly and that simply.
The only thing I would say is that I think that we have to make sure that there's new forms of differentiation. But I sense that maybe there's some sort of form of like experience watermarking of things that are made with a little bit more organic side of things. I don't know, I don't think we're in charge of it either. I do think actual, like, people talk about new talent today, I think there'll be new talent. One of my favorite filmmakers that works in in my circle, you know, refuses to shoot on anything other than VHS tape now, which is, but you know, at that, that's still getting converted into ones and zeros. But I do think there's going to be sort of organic pushes, as well, in terms of how things are built.
And then one would look like, why wouldn't you make the Super Bowl spot as efficiently as what you just evoked? Particularly if it works and what have you. But I do think there's sort of larger experiences tied to how we built. I think we're in a post efficient world. I think it's really about performance, the things that we build can be effective in a variety of ways and can have their sort of contextual terrain tied to them as well.
And I just think we have to understand that, we talk about how things are made, but it's also how they're experienced. And I think people understand how something was made. Everything from an imagination standpoint to a constructive standpoint. I think there is appreciation or a sensitive, contextual sensitivity around those things. I'm not trying to say people want to view a Super Bowl ad and say, were there enough crew people on that set? But I am saying that I just don't think it's going to be a bunch of sort of singular makers that are sort of renegade solo, something like that. I don't quite see that. But I also think, it's like, to me, I think in terms of configuration now more than anything. I remember that one of the most expensive things that we ever did is making dynamic car configurators, where you could build everything but try to build a creative experience within that, subservient chicken, something I produced almost 20 years ago now. And that's a configurator dynamic. That's something that had happened at a capture phase. It a small team that was plugged into an algorithm and then of course users build upon the experience.
I think that even sort of media experience will have some sort of configurative nature because of personalization. I just think there's a sort of co-creation element, and I don't just mean that into the creator community or things like that. I literally mean with audiences because they're going to be equipped with the tools to see it's a little bit of the build your own story type thing or what have you. I think that audiences will be, wittingly understand how things are built. And I think sometimes obviously there'll be acute appreciation for a core auteur, but otherwise, I think there'll also be other functions of how we appreciate media and things we see. So that's why I don't think it's just going to be this sort of maverick singular thinker with a machine plugged into his or her or their, you know, foreheads.
Charles (19:29):
There been a move, I mean, actually, for as long as you and I have known each other well, there's been a move towards consolidation of production within the agency infrastructure and ecosystem. You and I partnered on one of those initiatives very early on.
Obviously you are responsible for a consolidated production entity within WPP. What do you think the future of that looks like? Obviously lots of agencies either have that or are moving towards that, right? Bringing stuff inside. I was talking to somebody who was thinking about building a real-world production facility, and I wondered why that was the thing to do now. Would you do that?
David Rolfe (20:03):
Well, I'm sure that comes with debate, if that's happening or, and that would be a smart thing to debate. I mean, to start off with--
Charles (20:11):
Why would that be a smart thing to debate?
David Rolfe (20:13):
Because I think, well, from a standpoint of, of builds within a network like mine, I would, I'm hardly on pause. We are aggressively looking to what the best solutions are and what the best sort of contained and, by extension, partnership builds we can do to bring the most value and creative value to what we're making. But I would be hesitant about the sort of tactile sort of studio configurations that we make and about what we're doing now. I feel like I'm going to know much more in eight months about things. I think things are moving so quickly. I mean, this is a profound experience in Cannes this year. I mean, like, we've had new trends so commonly every couple years, you know. But this is a real deal.
Somebody just asked me, isn't one person going to be able to make a Super Bowl spot? Which I had not thought of, am fine thinking of, but frankly, that's where the fear comes in, you know?
So I just think there's a lot to understand, in terms of how we build out capture. I think virtual production is a key thing, but I think AI impacts virtual production a great deal.
I just did a Super Bowl shoot where it was entirely dependent on a studio space that was entirely predicated on a variety of green screen sets. And many of the CGI builds that became those backgrounds probably had AI tools to help build them. But I'm not sure what I need in terms of a background build, you know, given what AI can bring me. I visited virtual production stages, which I still know will have intense relevance, and obviously are adoptive of AI media in terms of how they function.
But I just don't know what I need in terms of a concrete space. From a standpoint of consolidation, I look at it much more as centralization over consolidation. Consolidation is too rigor. And like I said, consolidation I think resists where I think we're going, where I see production in the future needing to be much more open source. So we have our own contained systems of making, but it's underpinned by strategy. The number one consolidated function is consolidated strategy, is wittingly understanding how things should be approached and made, doing it at the strategic phase and at the ideational phase. And that can allow us to move at scale, and it can allow us to move at speed. It can allow us to be tiny as well as, again, building out gigantic campaign level experiences. And just understanding that sourcing methodology is a value build for our clients is the number one most important thing.
And I believe that's a centralization function more than obviously consolidation function. Post-production becomes, I think it becomes very, very upstream. You could argue post-production is fused with capture production, there's no differentiation. It becomes one work stream that's far less linear than what we're seeing. So I think we can look at how we're doing that, and in ways that we can make that more readily available. And then other ways where we need to go into the talent market, which is incredibly important, how readily we make our partners available to move quickly to help at the ideational stage. I do think it's much more about centralization and from a strategic standpoint, and then having, you know, structures within, connective structures, and then how we need to go into the open world for our making and thinking.
Charles (23:33):
So you and I are short on time today. We were just talking offline about having people come back on the show. So what I'd like to ask you one last question for today, and then I'd like to get you to come back on in three months. Let's see where, what we think today, where we are in terms of, because it is moving that quickly. Back in February, I certainly had not had any conscious thought about AI this week. There hasn't been a conversation where it hasn't been, to your point, central.
So my last question for today is this. You talked about the talent marketplace. You and I, again, grew up in a production world in which was very clear delineation of where that stood, and the limitation on agencies building really robust, meaningful production capabilities was in fact the ability to acquire and retain world class talent. World class talent didn't want to work inside agencies. That was a fundamental truth. You and I grappled with that in lots of different ways. But at the end of the day, world class directors, world class editors, they wanted to work in places where they had access to all the best work.
Today, based on everything you've said and everything I've seen, the infrastructure required to support world class talent is much more likely to reside, it's going to reside inside a large entity, large financial entity, like a holding company. It could be other things, as well. Feels to me anyway, like a competitive advantage to go and attract world class talent, who we can't even name what roles they play, but they need the technology. They don't need, anybody can share--
David Rolfe (24:59):
That’s why I use the term open source, because of building the tools that a variety of different creators can make. They're on the outside, they're on the inside, they're embedded in terms of a creative strategist or things like that. There's so many these things that we are trying to build to equip what it means to be creative and creational within our framework for our clients.
Charles (25:17):
But that's going to be true, right? That that large companies who can afford to put the infrastructure in place--
David Rolfe (25:23):
That has been our investment. It has not been overtly sort of executional talent, as it would, it has not been that. That doesn't need to be the priority. And, by the way, when we talk about talent, I'm not like, internalized talent or high-level talent and the management thereof over us. Like, talent that needs to do that within an internal structure needs to have a direct affinity for being tied to ideation. That's a talent. Other talent prefers to be in the world at large and to have a variety of sort of stimulus. I think it's important that if there is in-house talent within our framework, they are emboldened to create broadly and in culture. But I still think you must have an acute appreciation for what we're doing. It's the same idea as like if you're a creative that moves in-house at a brand, you've got to really love the brand. You know what I mean? And they do. And it's very effective. I think it's the same thing with talent. You've got to really love being so wedded to the ideational side of things, and be in that sort of development phase more than anything. From a standpoint of pure form execution, there's obviously an abundant market for that. And that's how I would, maybe a good way of looking about talent externalize and open market versus that which might come internal.
Charles (26:33):
So I'm going to leave us both with this benchmark. Back in February, I think it was, Tyler Perry saw, as we all did, the launch of the Sora video, which has become legendary. And on that day, cancelled an $850 million investment in a physical studio. So I want to leave us with that benchmark and we'll come back to this in a couple of months through the lens of, was that a good decision, a prescient decision, now based on what we know, would you do a version of that?
I want to thank you so much for getting up this morning and coming and doing this, and I am really excited to pick this back up somewhere later in the year where we see how much of what we heard and felt and experienced and thought this week is actually moving in the same directions we thought it would.
David Rolfe (27:14):
Thank you. It's so good to be, to joining you on this. I I've always wanted to be on the Fearless thing. You and I have known each other, but I feel like I'm a tiny founder of Fearless. So I finally made it, and my first time with you and I'm so glad to have been and it's worked out. It's been great. But you're amazing, Charles. Thank you very much.
Charles (27:31):
Likewise. Thanks, Dave.
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