Former film producer John Garland convinced ad agency JWT to build out its own production facilities and eventually start producing its own content without advertisers involved.

Garland, JWT’s Chief Operating Officer, was one of the presenters at the first Ad Club Meetup last July.

‘What would happen if I took my production business background and attached it to this place?’ Garland argued. ‘Why couldn’t we create a production environment that was not third choice but was up there competing with first choice?’

Apple provided the digital editing equipment and 122 Terabyte data center. Initially JWT used the infrastructure for post-production and animatics. Now JWTwo Entertainment and The Nursery also produce original content like the Billy Collins Action Poetry series, Love Bites and Flex ‘N’ Zephyr.

The move from ads to content came gradually. ‘You have to make that kind of rather boring journey to get to the interesting part,’ says Garland, who had no problems selling his strategy internally. ‘I just went ahead and did it. I’m a great believer in doing things and apologizing later.’

The Ad Club has another meetup this Monday, the day before the Web2NewYork networking party. One of the speakers is Andrew Boer of Associated Content who also presented at Web2NewYork in July.

More from the John Garland interview appeared in the September 6th issue of leading Dutch ad industry weekly Adformatie.