Madrid, 19 July 2022 – After almost two years of work, the Association of Transformative Creativity Agencies (ACT), the Spanish Association of Advertisers (aea), and the Association of Advertising Film Producers (APCP) have reached an Agreement of Best Practices on the advertising production process.
For the first time, a consensus has been reached on three key documents: the Briefing, the Report and the Production Contract which, together with a series of Basic Principles, make up the Good Practice Agreement.
These documents attempt to gather the main concerns and needs of the audiovisual advertising production ecosystem, and the three associations are firmly committed to implementing this first agreement with new ones, that favour modernisation, efficiency and transparency in the sector.
The Basic Principles form a decalogue through which, among other aspects, it is recommended that the creative proposals presented are realistic in terms of costs and execution times, the production companies are informed from the briefing about the estimated investment in the production of the projects, the briefing template is a binding document for every part, those tenders are called with – at most – three guests, or the economic negotiations do not put in risk the quality of the execution of the project, or break the coherence of the previous work process.
The Briefing consists of 14 sections in which, in detail, all the necessary aspects that describe the assignment that advertisers and agencies make to the production companies are covered, providing information about the advertiser and the agency, the payment conditions, the versions and formats, the terms of rights of use to be considered, the casting, the technical requirements of the filming, the locations, the post-production, the trips and accommodation, the insurance to be contracted, the documentation to be submitted by the contestants…
Likewise, the Production Report, which is a mirror image of the Briefing, includes a range of different contents, and it is now up to the production company to specify its proposal: economic valuation and payment schedule, locations and shooting days, materials, artistic/technical teams, models, fictitious, transport, shooting photographs, art direction, props, costumes, music, subtitles, making of, audiovisual media, graphics, post-production, images, animation, rights, and a long etcetera of chapters.
The Standard Contract has 21 stipulations and aims to simplify the relationship between the different parties involved in the production, with a simple and didactic wording that favours agreement between the parts, as well as guaranteeing the essential confidentiality of the entire production operation. It also includes four annexes: the Budget, the Production Report, the Estimated Calendar and the Approved Script or Scripts.
In the words of Jesús Becedas (BBVA), as coordinator of the Audiovisual Production Commission of the AEA, “the Good Practices Agreement that we have reached between Advertisers, Agencies and Production Companies is an exceptional opportunity to give the production processes greater clarity, transparency and balance. In short, to optimise the use of resources and to produce more efficiently”.
For Santiago Sánchez-Lozano, representative of the ACT, “having a consensus between advertisers, creative agencies and audiovisual production companies on the different aspects of audiovisual production will make everyone’s work much easier. It will also help companies working on audiovisual production projects for the first time to have a standard and a clear guide on how to act. It will be easier to do a better creative job in an increasingly efficient way.
According to Albert Soler Cuyas, president of APCP, “for our association this has been one of the major goal for years and we are very excited to be able to present it. Without a doubt, this is going to be a tool that will help our complex process of creating an advert, which involves advertisers, agencies and production companies, to be much more orderly and transparent. And in turn, we can be more efficient and just concentrate on producing the best ad possible.
