By Izzy Watts and Sara Pethybridge

The content industry is obsessed with the ‘what’. Nobody is talking about the ‘how’. 

Everyone has an opinion on AI, always-on strategies and culturally responsive campaigns. But somewhere between the brief and the published post, there is a producer quietly holding the whole thing together. Reactively solving problems as they surface. Figuring it out as they go. Hoping nothing goes catastrophically wrong. 

More than 78 percent of Australian brands now produce content in-house. Marketing teams are effectively running small production studios, often without the production infrastructure or embedded expertise that traditionally sits within dedicated production environments. We are asking people to lead complex content operations using skills they picked up by watching someone else. And when something goes wrong, as it inevitably does, that person is left to figure it out alone. 

In an industry changing this fast, we have to ask: who is training the producers? And, honestly, have we ever? 

The international gap 

Every market is feeling the shift but not every market is doing something about it and Australia is behind. In the UK, the Advertising Producers Association (APA) provides rigorous standardised certifications that serve as an industry ‘source of truth’. In the US, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) guidelines act as a universal language for bidding and compliance. These markets don’t just ‘do’ production; they teach it. The result is a more established benchmark for what ‘good’ looks like and a consistent pipeline of producers trained to manage complexity rather than simply react to it.

In-housing isn’t the enemy 

The shift to in-house production is not the problem. The proximity of a production team to the brand allows for agility and cultural consistency that the traditional external model struggles to match. When it works, in-housing is a powerhouse. 

The ‘enemy’ is the assumption that production is a soft skill. Open access to the title of producer does not mean open access to the skillset. There is no central source of truth for producers in Australia. No professional benchmark. No formal pathway. Just instinct and borrowed experience. 

AI has accelerated this pressure rather than relieved it. It is a powerful tool in the hands of someone who already understands production fundamentals. In the hands of someone without that foundation, it simply speeds up the chaos. 

What producers should actually be learning 

The list is endless, but if we had to sum it up: it is the difference between knowing the rules and knowing what to do when they are tested. A budget is not just a spreadsheet. It is a set of decisions made under pressure, about hidden costs and contingencies. Safety compliance is not a box to tick before the shoot. It is a live responsibility. When something goes wrong on set, the question is not whether someone had read the policy; it’s whether they knew how to act. 

Get this right, and compliance risks get managed before they become costly problems. Budgets are scoped accurately. Timelines are realistic. Producers lead with confidence rather than survive on instinct. 

Get it wrong, and brands pay a chaos tax: invisible costs sunk into inefficient workflows, talent renegotiations and fixing preventable mistakes in post. The mistakes were always preventable. That is the point. 

The solution 

The industry needs structured, practical training pathways built specifically for producers. Not repurposed marketing courses or generic project management frameworks, but a curriculum designed around the real complexity of production work. Budget fluency, risk management, stakeholder communication and the kind of decision-making that holds up under pressure on a live shoot.

Mentorship has always been the backbone of great production culture. But informal knowledge transfer cannot scale fast enough. The industry needs a structured version: experienced producers actively teaching, not hoping knowledge travels by osmosis. 

The good news is that this is already beginning to happen. A quiet movement of production educators, practitioners and industry advocates is building what the industry should have had decades ago. The producers are ready to learn. The knowledge exists. The only question left is whether the industry will commit to closing the gap with the same urgency it took to create it.

Izzy Watts and Sara Pethybridge are co-founders of MettleLab

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