2025 in Production: Lessons, Trends, and What's Next for Creative Teams
Every December, I sit down to write something reflective. And every December, I'm struck by how different this year felt from the last. 2025 wasn't subtle. It was a year that demanded producers stop running on autopilot and start paying attention to where the industry is actually heading.
After twenty years in this business, from my first job as a film school receptionist at an LA color house to founding The Aux Co, I've learned to read the signals. What follows isn't a listicle of hot takes or a victory lap. It's what I saw, what I learned, and what I think we all need to carry into 2026.
The Trends That Actually Mattered
AI Became a Tool, Not a Threat
Let's start with the elephant in every creative room. By mid-2025, the panic around AI replacing creative jobs had largely settled into something more productive: figuring out how to use it well. Nearly 98% of agencies reported using AI tools in some capacity, according to industry surveys, but most were barely scratching the surface. Content drafts, mood boards, basic automation. The agencies that pulled ahead were the ones using AI to accelerate the grunt work so their humans could focus on the thinking that machines still can't replicate.
One creative director I work with put it well: AI gives him time to wander. He finishes the mechanical tasks faster, which frees his mind to actually think about the work. That's the shift. Not replacement, but redistribution of energy toward the parts of the job that require genuine human instinct.
The Return to Substance Over Flash
Cannes 2025 made something abundantly clear: the era of throwing money at flashy, extravagant campaigns is fading. APAC marketers in particular were vocal about wanting ideas that work within real-world constraints and deliver measurable impact. ROI came roaring back into the conversation, and not in the hollow, metric-obsessed way we've seen before. Brands started asking harder questions about what their creative investments were actually returning.
This shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention. An estimated 60% of advertising budgets continue to be wasted, and 56% of ad impressions are never even seen by consumers. The saturation point for mediocre content has been reached. The work that cuts through now is the work with a genuine point of view, created by teams who understand that bold doesn't mean expensive.
Long-Form Content Made a Comeback
For years, everything got shorter. Fifteen-second spots, six-second pre-rolls, content designed for attention spans measured in fractions. In 2025, the pendulum started swinging back. YouTube now dominates living rooms more than Netflix in terms of time spent. Branded documentaries and series that we were producing ten years ago are suddenly relevant again. There's room to tell longer stories if you have something worth saying and know how to hold attention without relying on quick cuts and dopamine hits.
Hard-Won Lessons in Client Management
Every year teaches me something new about working with clients, even after two decades. This year's biggest lesson was about timing and trust.
The best client relationships I saw in 2025 were the ones where production was brought in during creative development, not after the idea was already sold. Too often, agencies perfect-package their concepts before involving the people who will actually make them. This is a mistake. You lose the chance to make the idea bigger, execute smarter, and save money where it actually counts.
Freelancers will execute your bad ideas without a word. That's not what strong production partners do. The value is in the pushback, in having someone in the room who will tell you the five different ways to achieve what you're after and which one actually makes sense for your budget and timeline. The clients who trusted that process this year got better work. Every time.
I also saw a marked improvement in clients who finally understood that the brand isn't always the hero of the story. We still occasionally encounter the company that thinks their product is the second coming and can't understand why no one cares about their feature list. But increasingly, brands are recognizing that authentic storytelling, the kind that connects with actual humans, requires stepping back from the corporate megaphone.
The Challenges We Faced (And How We Got Through Them)
The producer's job has always been about problem-solving under pressure. This year brought a few challenges that required new thinking.
Budget compression continued to intensify. Clients wanted more deliverables for less money, which isn't new, but the gap between expectations and resources widened. The producers who thrived were the ones who got creative about scope without sacrificing quality. One campaign we worked on this year used real customers as cast, local crews in each market, and a modular content approach that filled an entire year's content calendar while staying within cost limitations. The brand felt authentic because it was authentic. Big budgets can actually work against you when they invite too many opinions, too many meetings, and projects that collapse under the weight of their own Slack threads.
Team burnout remained a persistent issue. The pace of content production hasn't slowed, and in-house teams at agencies are stretched thin. I saw a lot of talented people hitting walls this year. The answer isn't to work harder. It's to work smarter, which often means bringing in specialized support for specific projects rather than grinding your core team into dust.
Rethinking Team Structures and Agency Models
When I founded The Aux Co in 2017, nobody was using the term fractional. I had to explain over and over again that we weren't a production company and we weren't freelancers. We were an auxiliary unit that could be absorbed by a team and bring in whatever expertise they needed while allowing them to stay lean.
Eight years later, fractional has become part of the vocabulary. Agencies finally understand that you don't need a $150K strategist on payroll year-round when you only need their genius for six weeks. You bring them in when it matters, let them transform your approach, execute brilliantly, and move on.
One operational mistake I continue to see creative shops repeat is using the same people for everything. The same editors, the same directors, the same approaches. You don't realize you're doing it until you've pitched the same director for three different brand campaigns and they all look eerily similar. Every brief should start with a clean slate. Look at the specific challenge and find the exact right people for that vision, not just whoever is available or familiar.
The bigger agencies continue to merge in order to support the weight of their overhead. I know what 40% to 50% overhead on every hour billed looks like because I ran those departments for years. Those agencies can't pitch the bold, risky ideas anymore. They're too busy justifying their existence. The smaller, nimble agencies that can operate without that bloat are the ones winning the interesting work.
What I'm Taking Into 2026
Based on everything I saw this year, here's the strategic advice I'm carrying forward:
Own your edge. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Figure out what you do better than anyone else and charge accordingly. The agencies and producers who tried to compete on everything competed on nothing.
Build your bench now. Don't wait for the next crisis to start identifying the specialists you'd want on your team. Develop real partnerships with exceptional talent so you can activate them quickly when opportunities arise.
Get involved earlier. Whether you're on the production side or the agency side, push for a seat at the table during ideation, not after the concept is locked. The best work happens when every discipline is informing the others from the start.
Let AI do the boring work. Use the tools to handle the mechanical tasks so you can invest your human energy in the parts of the job that actually require judgment, creativity, and intuition. Don't fear the technology; redirect it.
Protect your people. The talent shortage is real and getting worse. Teams that burn out don't recover quickly. Build structures that are sustainable, not just profitable.
Looking Ahead
2025 was a year of recalibration. The old models are dying, and the new ones are still taking shape. That's uncomfortable if you've built your career on how things used to work. It's exciting if you're willing to build something different.
I've spent twenty years figuring out how to bring creative ideas to life. What I know for certain is that the producers and agencies who will thrive in 2026 are the ones paying attention now, not just to what's happening, but to what it means.
The work is still the work. Make it good. Make it matter. Everything else is noise.