JWTwo: From Facility to Funhouse
Pitch Perfect
So did the JetBlue clients. The spec spots were cheered. The pitch was wildly successful. And two of their efforts went on to win “best spots” in Adweek magazine — and Lamont-Havers and colleagues have since collaborated on many other components of many integrated pitches and campaigns.
“Bottom line, our Xsan has revolutionized the ways we work with colleagues across the agency,” says Vogelman. “I mean, if you want to get a Flame or an Inferno and do the highest-end special effects, well, more power to you. But what Apple offers is unfettered access to some of the very best user-friendly creative tools — Final Cut, Logic, After Effects. Tools that all work together very neatly and that enable us to work together just as easily with our creative department, where everyone is familiar with the Mac platform, doing all the things we love to do. Animation. Effects. Video. Interactive. Music composition and sound design. You name it.
“Essentially, using Apple allows us to forget about the interface,” continues Lamont-Havers. “We’re not constantly fiddling around with the technology; that becomes more of a subconscious effort. Instead, we’re spending our hours actually animating and editing. And having a constant dialogue about creative issues in the moment, as we’re making these things.”
In-House Becomes Bauhaus
Indeed, the new bond between JWT and JWTwo is growing closer all the time. “We’re in the process of restacking the agency, shuffling departments among various floors, and one major goal is to get the creative folks and our facility in closer physical proximity,” says Vogelman, who’s currently working with one of the executive creative directors to develop what they’re calling a “digital creative suite,” basically an extension of JWTwo in the physical space of the creative department.
“We’re embracing the Bauhaus philosophy of reuniting art and craft,” says Vogelman. “So everyone, no matter what their job title, feels free to take advantage of these tools — the Mac workstations for editing, animation, and compositing. Now that the doors are flung open, we aim to become a constant generator of ideas — whether they’re for existing clients, winning new clients, even creating branded content of our own devising.”
“In fact, we’ve already started to move in that direction,” says Lamont-Havers. “We’re consulting on things much earlier in the process. Say there’s an idea that a creative team loves but the client just despises in storyboard form. We’ll work together to make it move, and suddenly the client turns around and says, ‘I get it, this is great!’ And then, of course, everyone is saying, ‘Hey, I want my board animated, too!’”
The Return of Handicraft
“It’s ironic that all this very sophisticated technology has finally led us away from specialization to a more holistic approach to making things — the notion that your tools are as important as your ideas,” says Vogelman. “I mean, if you’re a painter and you have an idea for a painting, you don’t call in an assistant to operate the brushes and paints. In this day and age, the tools, the technology, are as much a part of the process as the ideas are. And keeping creative people’s hands on all aspects of that process, collaborating for as long as possible given our time constraints, can only benefit the work.”
