At the heart of the operation is an in-house production studio built to meet a fast-changing reality: brands no longer make "one big ad" and call it done. They build omni-channel campaigns that need to travel across platforms, formats, audiences and markets, with speed and consistency — and quality of course, says the company.

"Production is evolving at speed and technology is completely changing our world, but in the most exciting way. We're sitting at the sharp, pointy end of the future of communications," says Katherine Jones, Senior VP: Production Practice at Publicis Groupe Africa.

From Master Assets to Content at Scale

Publicis Production South Africa's global role is motivated by its aim to deliver large-scale and sophisticated work for international brands across multiple markets. The studio says its mandate is to create master assets, then build the volume and variation needed for modern marketing.

That means aiming to create content at scale for global brands, delivering thousands of assets across multiple markets and formats as campaigns expand across geographies, channels and audience touchpoints, says the company.

The model is simple in theory, yet complex in execution. But scale alone risks no longer being enough. Increasingly, the work is about making content more relevant to specific audiences, more responsive to how and where people engage and more considered in how it appears across channels. "The focus is on producing work that is better tailored to the people it is intended to reach."

"Our role is defined by our ability to originate and adapt world-class creative work at scale, combining production efficiency with a strong standard of craft. The emphasis is not only on volume, but on producing large quantities of work without losing the integrity, consistency and quality that global brands require. That standard is enabled by specialist production craft and an end-to-end production model built to support both excellence and scale," says Jones.

A Full-Service Production Engine — Power of One

Publicis Production South Africa services the group's creative agencies through the "Power of One" philosophy: integrated teams assembled across capabilities and geographies with the aim to deliver the best solution for the client. In practice, this means Publicis Production says it works across the entire network locally and collaborates with global partners, including creative teams in Europe, while also aiming to maintain direct client relationships where relevant.

To meet rising demand, Publicis has driven a deliberate shift toward internalisation. As Jones notes, the old assumption that internal production functions are there merely to support execution no longer holds true in businesses built for the demands of modern content delivery.

Publicis Production South Africa today operates as a full-service production engine, with the aim to support end-to-end delivery across a wide range of content requirements. The strength of the model aims to lie in the ability to create, adapt, manage and deliver a variety of content at scale, while remaining closely aligned to the quality and consistency global clients expect, adds the company.

Tech That Moves at the Speed of Modern Marketing

The studio says it is also investing heavily in technology that aims to accelerate scale without compromising quality. For Jones, this is one of the most exciting aspects of the current moment in production.

Publicis Production South Africa says it has been built for the ongoing demands of modern content supply chains. In that context, South Africa's Centre of Excellence status aims to reflect an operating model designed to help brands move faster across channels, platforms and geographies, but to do so with content that is more audience-relevant and more thoughtfully adapted to the environments in which it appears.

Publicis Production South Africa concludes that rhe significance of the South African operation lies not simply in how much it produces, but in how intelligently it does so, combining technology, craft and audience understanding to deliver content that works harder in a fragmented communications landscape.

For more information, visit www.publicisproduction.com. You can also follow Publicis Production South Africa on LinkedIn.

*Image courtesy of contributor