How do animated commercials get made? That’s the question we were curious about. AWN decided to interview three top advertising agency creative directors to find out how they make the decision to go animated over live-action. In addition, we asked the important questions about how they pick who will create the animation for them and how they seek out new talent. In an animation industry that seems to be recycling ideas instead of inventing new ones, it is interesting to hear what these advertising execs have to say about creativity and originality.

Peter Crosby can be an animated person. Photo courtesy of Peter Crosby.

Peter Crosby, Odiorne Wilde Narraway + Partners/San Francisco
Crosby attended the University of Dayton, Ohio, graduating with a B.A. in Commercial Design with concentrations in Marketing and Philosophy. After working as a junior art director in Rochester, New York, he took a job at Montgomery Zukerman Davis where he wrote and art directed several bad TV commercials. Despite this, he was promoted to senior art director. Later he moved to little-known agency Paradigm Communications as senior art director where he was later promoted to group head on the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning account. There he won numerous local, regional Addy awards and the occasional national award. He then moved to The Zimmerman Agency, but after six months, he returned to GSD&M/Austin where he eventually became senior writer/co-acd.

After moving to Miami with his wife, he took the senior copywriter post at Turkel Schwartz and Partners/Miami where he only stayed six weeks before being lured to McFarland & Drier/Miami. However, even in his short reign at TS&P, his Joe’s Stone Crab campaign for TS&P took Best of Show at the Addys. For his year at McFarland & Drier/Miami, he worked on South Florida Ford Dealers, Domino’s Pizza and the Florida Lottery spots, while he taught “Concept & Copywriting” at the Miami Ad School. From there he was offered a copywriter post at his current home, OWNP. During his seven-year tenure, he was promoted to senior copywriter, then associate creative director. He’s done work for Electronic Arts, Burger King, Lucky Brand jeans and has been repeatedly asked to judge award shows across the country. His work has appeared in Adweek, Communication Arts, the One Show, the New York Festival and on his parents’ refrigerator.

The decision whether to go with animation or live-action all starts will the concept. That dictates the approach, generally. If, however, the concept doesn’t demand a specific type of approach, we go looking for new or unexpected ways to execute the concept.

We don’t usually have to convince clients to use animation. With the level of technology available today, our clients now see the advantages of using it over more costly, sometimes less controllable live-action shoots.

When determining which talent or production house to use, excellence is the price of admission. There are lots of great animators out there. They have to be great to even get considered. We’ve told our client what the spot, or effect, will look like and the animation has to live up to that expectation. If we’re not convinced someone can pull off what we want, we’ll look elsewhere. Appropriateness matters the most. The best animators won’t necessarily have the right style for the job. It’s all about making our vision for the spot come across in the commercial.