The Advertising Producers Association – APA - is the trade body for commercials production companies in the UK. See a-p-a.net.
Our objective is to create the best possible business environment for our members.
We are part of the Advertising Association and support their submissions.
Commercials production comprises production, post, editing, music and sound design companies making commercials. It is a very London centric and specifically Soho centric business.
We have around 250 member companies - any company in the business, certainly in any significant way, is a member.
We provide members with advice, contracts, suggested crew terms, training and promotion.
We are part of the UK advertising industry but distinct from it, in terms of the way we operate and our skills.
We are a critical part of what is known as the UK film industry, as well as of the advertising industry - one report into the UK film industry found it comprised 40% commercials production, 30% film and 30% TV. All three components are critical to the whole - in sustaining the quality and variety of equipment, studios, cast and skilled crew at levels that enable us to have a film industry in the UK and in terms of discovering and nurturing directing and production talent.
UK production has prospered in spite of overseas competition getting better by London thriving as the creative and production hub, drawing in talent from around the world and shooting in whichever country can offer the best cost (as a prerequisite, it also needs appropriate equipment, skills and locations).
We can demonstrate the success of UK production by looking at the Film and Film Craft Awards in the Cannes Lions, which are the global advertising awards.
Britain has consistently won more prizes than any country other than the USA (and more than the USA pro rata) including the Grand Prix for Best Film in the World in Film or Film Craft in 11 of the past 12 years, for example.
We have enjoyed the support of Government for international trade events we have organised, taking UK commercials production companies to potential new markets/markets with potential that has not yet been fully developed. So for example we have taken delegations to Japan, China, Korea and India and helped them get new work from there.
This is a valuable function for our members because while they are entrepreneurial and capable of getting new work for themselves, they are very small (typically, 5-15 employees) because they maintain the lowest possible fixed cost base and scale up for projects - and thus don’t have the resources to explore potential new country markets themselves.
It is critical to the commercials production business that we continue to have access to international talent. That is particularly the case with the visual effects part of the business, where the companies are significantly larger eg MPC, The Mill and Framestore and who have a large proportion of their talent, typically 45% in creative roles being from overseas.
It is also a young mobile talent, drawn to London because it has the best work in commercials and film - for example The Jungle Book (2016) was made in London by MPC. The whole film (except for the character of Mowgli) was computer generated.
Those people will be drawn to somewhere else in the world if it becomes harder to come to London and London will be overtaken as a centre by Los Angeles or New York or Amsterdam or Montreal.
It is also important that it is easy for them to come - at the moment from Europe they can just come to London, stay with a friend and look for a job. They would not find applying remotely and for a specific job before they arrive so appealing.
Training in the UK is ok. Of course it could be better, in terms of numbers but it would be a mistake to think that the UK could turn out the best talent by training.
The best talent is bound to be from across the world and to continue to be the world centre we need it.
To use an analogy, Premiership football teams spend millions on training talent but it is impossible for them to make British footballers the best 1,000 in the world as a result and if they want to compete internationally they have to import talent from around the world in addition.
11 September 2017