Girl & Bear is a new content production offering from VCCP Group, which promises to deliver production services and technology to its clients around the world.
With 250 “makers” already on board, the launch of Girl & Bear (named after VCCP’s logo) is essentially a way to consolidate and clarify of an existing offering, and presumably make more money in this increasingly lucrative area. Already, the new studio counts Domino’s, O2 and White Claw among its clients.
Girl & Bear will be led by managing director, Claire Young, along with executive head of production, Anthony Austin (on the right in the picture) and global head of operations, Dan Montalbano. Young and Montalbano have been at VCCP for a while, and Austin — a founder of BBH’s Black Sheep Studios — also previously worked at Mother.
The studio’s capabilities will include film, audio, design, print, photographic and digital production, although they will continue to work with outside partners when necessary. As well as servicing VCCP’s network across London, Madrid, Prague, San Francisco, New York, Singapore, Sydney and Shanghai, Girl & Bear is promising additional production at scale in every region of the world hubs in the Czech Republic, South Africa and Asia Pacific.
Most of the big networks are introducing similar offerings, often with great success: a year ago, Publicis Production, along with MediaMonks, won Mondelez International’s global content production and management business. Adam&eveDDB relaunched Cain & Abel earlier this year by merging it with DDB’s Gutenberg Global.
Adrian Coleman, founding partner and group CEO at VCCP, said: “Content creation and production is something we have always offered to our clients and as the making arm of VCCP, Girl & Bear now elevates our production offering globally, bringing further cohesion to our group, and a challenger proposition to other networks. All brought to the market by an extremely talented leadership team who all bring different skills to the table, working towards one common goal to bring fresh thinking and new ideas to how we make.”
Claire Young said: “For us ‘how’ we make things is just as important as ‘what’ we make for clients. I’ve always wanted to reimagine production and creating Girl & Bear has enabled us to supercharge our making offering and evolve the industry model. We know that creativity is a business multiplier and we believe that great production doesn’t need to be a choice between pace, scale and craft – we’re in the business of ‘and’. World class integration is something that VCCP is famous for, and with Girl & Bear we are now in an even stronger position than ever to deliver on that promise.”
