Leverage Production Teams to Drive Company Culture

These days, every company seems to boast an excellent workplace culture. From cool workspaces, perks, and core values to shared goals, team collaboration, and a flexible work environment, the list of great culture characteristics goes on. I for one have worked at a few shops that claimed to have a great culture—even some that have won awards for it—and I’ve learned that touting “culture” can be used as a ploy to attract top candidates and fill the talent pipeline. So how can you ensure you are walking the walk to prove your culture is a real, valued pillar of your company? One way we do it is by leveraging our production team's unique abilities.

Resident dot-connectors

A great culture is made up of the sum of all its parts, not just from the words of a select few that appear as a few lines on the company website.  Not unlike that of a great video, the production of a standout culture has many moving parts that must align seamlessly in order to execute in a meaningful way. And production teams hold a unique ability to facilitate this. As resident dot-connectors, producers serve in many ways as the liaison between the “talk” and the “walk,” ensuring a seamless execution of the follow-through. We can take an authentic culture and activate it—turning its many moving parts into a great story that moves people to action. 

We recently produced a storytelling video series to showcase our culture that we hope inspires the belief in its viewers that we are committed to walking the walk when it comes to redpepper’s culture. And as we do with every project, we leveraged various tools that we have in our belts as producers to ensure that the standards of our culture were upheld throughout the series’ entire production.

As resident dot connectors, producers serve in many ways as the liaison between the “talk” and the “walk,” ensuring a seamless execution of the follow-through.

One such tool is our ability to source a team of talent that brings varied perspectives to the table. Not just the talent who will appear in a video, but also those who will help shape and execute the vision of the project. And having this level of influence on the project comes with a responsibility to ensure we are building a team of diverse experiences, strengths, and passions that will cultivate a feeling of inclusion and belonging along the way—which in turn pushes the work to be better. 

When we produced our culture video series, we started with a small, diverse group of collaborative thinkers, ensuring we had multiple perspectives from all levels within the agency. We then gathered integrated perspective (or IP as we call it) to ensure that no stone was left unturned—and no idea unconsidered. From there, we narrowed our topics further and reviewed them with a larger team to ensure we were telling a complete story of our culture.

Keepers of process

Another valuable tool production teams have in influencing a company’s culture is our role as keepers and enforcers of process. In order for projects big or small to run seamlessly, producers know that teams need clarity around where priorities, responsibilities, lines of authority, and timelines stand. And that requires process. 

At its core, the existence of process creates order—a clear path toward a solution that is meant to be followed and respected by everyone (with company higher-ups being no exception). When everyone adheres to a process facilitated by a well-oiled production team, the division of power among teammates is set at equilibrium, removing opportunities for some teammates to hold unfair amounts of power while others’ voices are silenced.

Our producer, Riley, describes her role as responsible for “putting the team in the right position to bring their creative vision to life in the best way possible.” And that comes through in her commitment to holding teams accountable to robust production processes. To use our culture video series as an example again, Riley and team knew that capturing the authentic experience of a redpepper was going to require wrangling a lot of people. Holding everyone involved to a clear process for exactly when, where, and how shoot days would run created a shared sense of transparency regarding who was responsible for what—the result? A collaborative working environment conducive to inclusion and belonging.

My job is putting the team in the right position to bring their creative vision to life in the best way possible.

Finally, production teams have the unique ability to have a hands-on relationship with projects from beginning to end. Throughout a project’s life cycle, it is touched by different teams during different stages—from account planning to creative and more. Producers, however, serve as end-to-end overseers of their projects, giving them a bird’s eye view of an environment’s health that can be managed and nurtured throughout.

Curious to learn more about our culture at redpepper now? Here’s a look at the storytelling video series we brought to life to show our commitment to the “walk" through the lens of our three core values: Own Your Growth, Give a Damn, and Be Collaborative.

Own Your Growth

Give a Damn

Be Collaborative