Interview by Angel Guerrero
Words by Rome Jorge
Just about every agency has been establishing or acquiring its own production company. Just about every agency has been producing its own content—many short films in their own right—for its clients. And just about every agency worth mentioning has garnered dozens of trophies from creative industry awards such as Cannes Lions and D&AD for such video content. But only a rare few advertising agencies have won acclaimed cinematic awards such as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards. At the 70th BAFTAs held on February 12, 2017 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Home, a 20-minute film produced by Black Sheep Studio—BBH in-house production unit—won Best Short Film for its moving depiction of the refugee crisis through a role reversal of a British family, all for its client, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It’s been years since “content creation” became the buzzword among agencies adapting to the new norm where consumers eschewed both traditional television and the conventional advertisements that cane with it. In this new digital landscape, agencies sought to create online content themselves that pushed their client’s brands in more authentic ways native to the content. Even as tech companies and brands themselves put up their own in-house creative studios, agencies established their own in-house production companies. Such is the herd mentality in the creative industry.
Black Sheep Studios is different. True to both the idiomatic meaning of its name and to the slogan of its parent agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty: “When the world zigs, zag.” In a world filled with agencies masking marketing as viral videos like wolves in sheep’s clothing, Black Sheep Studio is crafting authentic short films and music videos that compete not just with the work of other agencies but with those of the world’s best filmmakers.
At the recent 2017 Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity where Home won a Gold Lion here in Cannes in the Entertainment Lions category, adobo magazine publisher, president and editor-in-chief Angel Guerrero wan invited to the BBH yacht and conversed with Pelle Sjoenell, BBH Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, and Anthony Austin, Black Sheep Studios and BBH London Deputy Executive Creative Director.
Zig Zaggers
Austin who founded the Black Sheep Studios production company within BBH in 2015, explains, “The desire was actually to create quality at low cost—what we call agile productions—essentially trying to make content for our clients, for brands, that was more cost effective and not in the traditional model.” Black Sheep Studios is best exemplified by its award-winning works. Austin recalls how Home came about: “Black Sheep Studios were about 6 months in when the script came in and lands on my desk—it was a wonderful thing. It was a fantastic script, a brilliant idea by winning director and writer in Daniel Mulloy, had some funding from the UN and the USA. For us, it was a great opportunity to get into one of the great issues of our time, the refugee crisis, and we wanted to take the opportunity to do something and join the conversation. So we were pitching against some other production companies and and I had great early chat about the idea and I think that he recognized a very good hand and creatively we connected over the script and so he felt I was the right partner to work with on this.” To adobo magazine, he also reveals, “Across the network, we’ve got a lot of things going on. In London, we’ve got a couple of features, one documentary feature…it’s about Boko Haram [the Nigerian terror group opposed to education and infamous for abducting hundred of school girls]. We are working with a journalist who is going out there and telling the girls’ stories. It’s in early development, working with a Canadian production company.”
Black Sheep Studios work isn’t confined to short films on humanitarian issues. “There’s The Last Shadow Puppets which is a band with Alex Turner [vocalist for the Arctic Monkeys] and Miles Kane [guitarist/vocalist for The Rascals] that is a super group. They’re like crazy. We made a series of three videos there and we’ve got a couple of music videos in production right
now which are very fun,” Austin notes. Music videos for The Last Shadow Puppets by Black Sheep Studios include those for the songs “Aviation,” “Everything You’ve Come To Expect,” and “Miracle Aligner.” Austin notes, “We do lots of different types of outputs and so in terms of entertainment, Black Sheep Studios now become the global.” Sjoenell elaborates, “Black Sheep Studios in London is production. We have content distribution and creation in Singapore and
consulting for brands and then you have IP [intellectual property] generation in LA and production in London in Black Sheep Studios. But Black Sheep Studios also sits in Singapore. And we have one in China.”
Viva Hollywood
Sjoenell also notes recent stellar additions to Black Sheep Studios’ constellation of talents: “Tim Lindley who’s an absolute star from Red Bull.” Beside the founding of Black Sheep Studios, which began as BBH London’s in-house production unit, and the appointment of former Red Bull head of owned media and communications for Asia Tim Lindley as managing partner, the rise of Pelle Sjoenell—founder of BBH Los Angeles—to Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, a position previously held only those originating from Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s London office, signal’s BBH’s transformation from a Londoncentric advertising agency to content creator based at the heart of the world’s entertainment industry, Los Angeles.
“We were talking about generating IP joint venture for Scooter Braun, who is Kanye West’s manager, as well as Justin Bieber’s and Ariana Grande’s. This is the interesting part; We generate a lot of ideas and funny, Sofia [Coppola, Oscar Award-winning director and wife to Thomas Mars, vocalist of acclaimed French rock band Phoenix] and Scooter say that these things are salable. Out of 200 ideas, we get three or four ideas that we know that audiences might be interested,” shares Sjoenell. “We’re about a thousand people across the world and an incredibly amount of experts on ‘BBHy’ things,” notes Sjoenell, adding, “I think there are more opportunities than ever if you have great stories.” Mentioning the book Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age by Michael Wolff, Sjoenell predicts, “ I think that TV is going to be primarily live. I think that’s the things that are going really well. It’s a moment that you cannot miss. Otherwise you cannot see it another time. That’s where the ad dollars are going that’s where the focus on the line.” He explains, “We thought that we could grow brands on the internet using the web. But as it turns out, we more or less serve the customers you have, meaning that I can follow something. I can support something and I can watch ads because I’m found by an algorithm that knows it’s the same ones that we had whereas big prod communication is not made on the web. And the way to find new customers is find your growth is not to target ones you have. So you have to have the combination of the two. Another interesting fact is that an e-commerce sites such as Amazon won with Manchester by the Sea. And they don’t have their brand in it. Because they’re using that to make consumers come to their store.” With their hands on the camera and their eye on the prize, the black sheep of Bartle Bogle Hegarty such as Pelle Sjoenell and Anthony Austin continue to zig as others zag.
HOME | Trailer from Black Sheep Studios – London on Vimeo.
THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS | Aviation (Official Video) from Black Sheep Studios – London on Vimeo.
