Animatics

Research slowly changed all that. A few years later, in addition to giving production companies a storyboard to bid on, ad agencies began to produce crude animations of the proposed commercial, called animatics. If you were an art director, copywriter, creative director, producer, or director, you hated animatics. Their only purpose was to second-guess your creativity!

Advertising agencies are split into two units that often conflict ”the creative department and account management. Account executives are generally MBAs who have known the clients since college. Their job is to do market research, crunch numbers , and hold the clients' hands. The account executives used to use animatics, which they showed to focus groups, as a way of reigning in the crazies in the creative department. That's why we hated animatics!