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PANEL SYNOPSIS

How Much Is Too Much? Strategic Production

PANELLISTS

Dave Rolfe, WPP and Hogarth’s global head of production, has been a leader in the production industry for over twenty years. Having put down roots as an independent producer in the Pacific Northwest in the ‘90s, leadership roles followed with top-tier global creative agencies, and with Facebook, where he worked as head of production for global business marketing. 

 

Prior to Facebook, Dave was global EVP, director of integrated production at BBDO for eight years. He played a central role in BBDO’s creative success ranging from social and innovation, to branded content and Super Bowl spots. Before that he was partner and global director of integrated production at CP+B for 12 years, helping them win Agency of the Decade in 2010.

 

Over his tenure at BBDO, CP+B, Facebook and WPP agencies, Rolfe has won numerous industry awards and Cannes Lions’ Grand Prix, Titanium & Gold lions for brands such as AT&T, Facebook, Burger King, GE, Mars, Bacardi, Lowe’s, Fed Ex, Microsoft, Anheuser-Bush, Domino's, Pepsi, VW, Ikea, Coke, MINI, as well as Monica Lewinsky cyber bullying effort and Sandy Hook Promise.

 

Dave has served on numerous juries, including the ‘24 Chair on the Film Craft Jury at Clios, the Moving Image Craft jury for The One Show and the Immortal Awards lead jury. Dave served on the Cannes Lions Festival twice including the inaugural Entertainment jury in 2016. He’s also been a speaker at Cannes on several occasions, as well as other global media and marketing forums.

 

Now in his current role, Dave is responsible for executing production strategies and partnerships to elevate creative and making excellence across WPP, its agencies and clients. A core function is attracting and nurturing the best production talent from across the industry to build a best-in-class production community that offers integrated and innovative solutions for clients.

Claire Young, CEO, Girl&Bear

Claire has over 20 years of experience working in production roles at some of the UK’s most renowned agencies including Exposure, Mother and JWT to name a few. In 2016, Claire joined VCCP as head of production and creative services, transforming the departments to enable much more integration across the creative teams and producers, making for a much smoother process from both an agency and client point of view. Claire launched VCCP’s global content creation studio Girl&Bear in 2021, born from a huge desire to create a dedicated home for the makers of VCCP. Girl&Bear focuses on ‘Craft without Compromise’ to eliminate the tradeoff clients are asked to make;- choosing between craft and scale. Girl&Bear has over 200+ makers across the world, expanding its presence in Prague at the beginning of 2024. They like to think of themselves as the ‘Makers of Everything’.

Zak Tucker, CEO and president, Harbor 

Sergio Lopez, CEO, Omnicom Production

Matt Blitz, EVP, Executive Director of Agency Production, FCB

Matt Blitz is EVP, Executive Director of Agency Production of FCB Chicago, overseeing all agency producers and the Broadcast Business team at FCB’s largest office, working in collaboration with all of FCB’s creative leaders to elevate the creative craft across over 50 brands. Matt is also responsible for growing FCB Chicago’s relationship with the major production houses and driving the office’s collaboration and connectivity with 456 Studios, FCB’s fully integrated global in-house content creation studio, to create multichannel content and deliver best-in-class brand experiences.

Matt joined FCB from DDB Chicago where he was Head of Production, responsible for leading the entire production department with 30+ direct reports including all producers, business affairs teams, and traffic. He took on this role following four years as SVP/Executive Producer, where he led production efforts for DDB Chicago’s key clients and built teams to execute work at the highest level across the board. His future thinking mentality and strong recruiting efforts gave him the framework to restructure the department to allow the agency to execute client work at the highest level across all platforms, making the DDB production department more capable and diverse then it had ever been before.

Prior to DDB, Matt spent 15 years at Leo Burnett, where he quickly flourished while working on multiple Fortune-500 brands, overseeing day-to-day production efforts, and managing producers across all disciplines to execute work across multiple platforms.  

Throughout his career, Matt and his teams have picked up over 400 creative awards across the board at Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, Clios, London International Awards, and the Art Directors Club, for some of the world’s largest brands including Mars, Samsung, Esurance, United Healthcare, Miller Lite and Coors Lite. Of this award-winning work, Matt is particularly proud his work on the Skittles “Broadway the Rainbow” campaign, and Samsung “Ostrich”, which is now a DePaul University case study to help teach students about how to benchmark creative.

As well as executing production to an incredibly high standard, Matt also excels as a “creative” producer, leveraging his years of experience in Hollywood. After graduating from Columbia College in Chicago with a B.A. in Marketing, Matt packed up and headed west to California. In Los Angeles, he found a place for himself as a Production Assistant on a HBO film, and quickly rose to the rank of 2nd Assistant Director, then working as an Assistant Director on several films and multiple TV series, giving him a sense of production not often found in the advertising industry. After six years in LA, Matt decided to head back to his roots in Chicago and pursue a career in advertising, which is when he took a position as a producer at Leo Burnett, ushering in the beginning of his stellar production career.

Matt is passionate about working closely with his creative teams and producers to accomplish the best work possible, and enjoys mentoring and growing young talent to help them become future industry leaders. It’s this mentoring that Matt believes is one of the most satisfying aspects of his career, and he attributes a large part of his success to the producers he has helped become some of the most respected in the industry.