What It Actually Takes to Build a Hybrid Creative Production Company

ABF Pictures started with a few clients, a lot of energy, and some notes scribbled on the back of an envelope in a Costa Coffee. Here's what 16 years of building a hybrid creative production company actually looks like.

The conventional model for TV advertising has always had the same basic shape. A brand briefs a creative agency. The creative agency develops the idea and hands it to a production company. The production company hires a director. The director makes the ad.

At each stage, something passes between people who may or may not have spoken directly. Interpretation happens. Energy dissipates. Timelines extend. Costs accumulate.

ABF Pictures was built on a different idea: what if the creative director and the film director were the same person? What if the agency and the production company were the same company?

How it started

Before ABF, there was a stint at Channel M — Manchester's local channel, owned by the Manchester Evening News. The setup there was unusual: a sales team that could bring in clients, and a creative operation that had to make everything. Writing, directing, camera, edit — all in the same hands.

The clients didn't have big budgets. Carpet companies, local services, small businesses. But the work required the same thing any good advertising requires: a real brief, a real idea, and real execution. The constraint of no budget turned out to be an education.

That's where the conviction formed: that making ads well, at affordable prices, with absolute clarity about what success looked like for the client, was a viable business. And that doing the creative and the production under the same roof was the right way to do it.

The ABF model

ABF is a hybrid agency — which means it sits at the intersection of creative agency and production company. When you brief ABF, you're briefing the creative director who will also direct the finished ad. The communication that normally passes through multiple handoffs goes direct.

This matters in ways that are easy to underestimate. The person who writes the script hears your brief directly. The person who understands your brand's tone of voice is also the person making the shot decisions on the day. The feedback from a test campaign reaches the team that can act on it immediately.

We simplify the communication between the brand and the end ad. When you speak to the creative director, you're also speaking to the film director. That changes everything.

What gets built over 16 years

The portfolio that accumulates over 16 years in TV advertising is genuinely varied. Financial services and food, fashion and funeral services, delivery subscriptions and drink brands. Campaigns that started in one region and scaled nationally. First TV ads for brands that went on to become global names.

The HelloFresh story is a good illustration. ABF made the first UK TV ad for HelloFresh in a kitchen in Didsbury, on a snowy day, with a brand that was just launching food subscription boxes to a British audience. Nobody knew they'd become the global business they became. The second ad was made on a garlic farm on the Isle of Wight.

That's the nature of the work — you never quite know which of the small brands you're filming in a kitchen will turn into something significant. But the job is always the same: make the best ad you can, make it work, and make the client want to come back.

The 1% who actually love their job

There are people who tolerate their work, people who are reasonably satisfied by it, and — somewhere at the far end of the distribution — people who are genuinely, honestly, unreservedly glad to be doing what they do.

Making TV ads for a living. Writing scripts, coming up with straplines, planning shots, directing creative, working with brands across dozens of different sectors, and getting to care about every single one of them. It's ridiculous that this is a job. It's genuinely exciting that it is.

Even on the days when the brief is hard and the creative won't come. Especially on those days, actually — because when it finally does, the relief is part of the reward.

ABF Pictures has been at this for 16 years. It started in a Costa Coffee with some envelope scribblings. It's still here, still making ads, and still finding that the thing that makes it work is the same thing it's always been: genuine passion for the medium, and a determination to make advertising that actually works.