With the specter of a worldwide recession looming, those attempting to persuade advertisers to experiment with new marketing messaging could be considered in a spectacularly unenviable position. But on that issue, like so many others in advertising, it depends whom you ask. Many argue if not now, when?

So while many production companies struggle to remain alive, many also look for ways to expand their relevance in a world of new ad formats. Sam Walsh, former GM of one of those production companies, Propaganda, is looking into new content models, new revenue models and new pathways of opportunity through his New Nomads venture. Says Walsh on the role of the production company within this changing landscape: "I think it's less obvious how they are going to fit in their traditional structure than it is the other entities involved in the process. I think production companies traditionally come into the process after a tremendous amount of research and creative development and budget planning has been done. They come in and take a pretty sizeable chunk of the budget available to execute the idea in order to accomplish their part. And they definitely add value - that's why you hire a great director in the first place. But then they are out of the loop while distribution companies, networks, etc. work with media planners to manage the rest of the life of that project." And, according to Walsh, and to most everyone else, the amount of available revenue within the production shop sphere of influence is not getting any bigger. "Every pressure, from technological advancements to the state of the economy to the competition resulting from how many production companies and directors there are all constricting that pool of money, or are not helping in any way to expand it," says Walsh. "So, as a production company, do you keep competing for a potentially diminishing slice of a static sized pie or do you try and see if there are other ways where you can develop other cash flows?"

Walsh describes his New Nomads venture, in its boiled down essence, as "born of the desire to figure out where the next opportunities are going to be with regard to how content is created, who does it, who owns it and to see if any of the new opportunities in terms of new technology and new media are valid now, which of them will be valid eventually, not as alternative so much as additional ways of distributing content to an audience." Armed with significant agency acumen, Walsh says he is certainly a pragmatist when it comes to the agency world, but he also sees agencies as "enormous repositories of information on a fundamental level about consumers." Follow that information and insight and it leads to strategic media planning, an area Walsh says could provide an important piece of the content puzzle. "If you look at the entity that's out there now that's controlling a significant portion of the money, it's the people who are planning the media. So if there is a way for the production community to be able to provide some kind of added value to that planning process, as in helping to develop non-traditional uses of what it is they execute - in addition to the traditional ones - then perhaps they get into a position of developing and creating." And in terms of a traditional content production for TV, those who develop the property stand to benefit in the back end of any profits generated by the property. The production company needs an affiliation with creators and then at the same time they could develop relationships with the people who are making these media plans and then perhaps be in a place to start supporting some of these new methods or these new media programs."

Agency network WPP has put what participants say is significant funding behind exploring such media/production possibilities. The house of Martin Sorrell has joined with Shine Entertainment, a UK-based production entity run by Elisabeth Murdoch, previously managing director of father Rupert Murdoch's BskyB, and Lord Waheed Ali in creating Shine:M. The new venture is intended to leverage the production talent and resources of Shine and the media might of WPP's MindShare and The Media Edge, and create TV programming and other content for clients in the WPP network. WPP has a 50 per cent stake in the new venture.

David Pemsel, formerly a managing partner at London agency St. Luke's will act as managing director of Shine:M. Fellow St. Luke's alum Andrew Hill will act as planning director and Andy Auerbach, a former executive producer at production company Planet 24 steps in as Shine:M's creative director. Pemsel says the core team will also include a rights manager.

"Shine started out as, and still is, a pure production company," says Pemsel. "We then did the deal with WPP, which basically allowed us to talk to their clients globally about the way in which they could use content as part of a communications tool alongside advertising and other conventional things." Key to Shine:M's approach, says Pemsel, is the agency chops of the principals and the resultant ability to make content propositions relevant to advertisers. "It means we can use client language so they can understand why a production might be right for them. Like advertising, there is a kind of strategic leap necessary to be able to understand the benefits of a certain idea. So what Shine:M has become is almost like an advertising agency and our output is programming."

We'll talk to a client and take their problem or objective and evolve it into a content brief which is given to all of the producers who work within Shine across all genres and they create content to that brief."

The WPP deal allows Shine to tap directly into the media operations which, as Walsh asserted, act at a key juncture where dollars meet distribution. "We felt the best access point into WPP was probably MindShare because they deal in the commodity of space. Their whole agreement is to try and get maximum value for any space they buy." Within the WPP framework Pemsel is also dealing with individual agencies, including, thus far O&M and clients.

Within today's economic constraints, Pemsel says programming could make even more sense to clients and broadcasters. "I think as there are talks of recession and clients' budgets are reduced and the less they spend the less broadcasters have to spend on programming. It's an interesting way to say you the client and you the broadcaster are chasing the same thing, which is an audience. So it's interesting timing. But it's a big thing to sell. A lot of them are interested, it's just a matter of whether they'll commit."