What are the benefits of having a location agency and location managers?

Over the past years, online providers have started offering locations to production companies for self-booking or directly arranging with owners. While it might seem appealing to avoid paying agency and location manager fees, it can turn into a real nightmare for the production company and the homeowner. How is our work different from those providers?

1.     The team at Spot Locations has worked side-by-side for many years with local and international production companies and with the complete trust of hundreds of homeowners. We know each location personally and have formed deep bonds with owners and third parties to help solve issues that arise quickly and effectively.

Online services don’t know either the homeowners or the production companies intimately. Production companies can find themselves working with unpredictably difficult owners and homeowners can find themselves accepting projects of a scale that becomes hard to handle.

2.     We send our clients tailormade location selections that comply with all of the requirements of their production. Differing from these online location archives, we advise our clients of potential logistical difficulties (can you park ten trucks outside of the location?) and permitting (how long does it take to get a space reservation?).

3.     We don’t consider a project closed until the property is completely restored to its original state and both parties are satisfied. In case of any issue, our agency stays involved as a neutral third party to avoid having a situation escalate into a “he said – she said” debacle. A middleman can serve as an effective referee – all the information is available to both sides and known by a third entity.

In the case that there are damages to the property, it’s best for homeowners to have someone at their side that can follow up with the production company. Many times, production teams are created ad hoc for each project. This means that it’s possible that after a job is finished, the homeowner’s point of contact in the production has moved on to other jobs at other production companies.

4.     Advertising projects are often on very tight deadlines. Communicating efficiently and fast is key to making each project a success. Using online location archive services makes communication unpredictable, as it requires for the homeowner to be attentive and responsive on their apps for communication from production companies. If you have an urgent enquire it might take some time for the owner to respond. A location agency can call the owner right away and might actually already know the answer to your question (e.g.: what direction does the property face?).

5.     Sending a location agency a briefing to receive a bespoke location selection is much more time efficient for a production company than having to go through online location archives themselves.

At Spot we don’t just offer locations but a complete location service – from the first contact until both parties part ways. This is our added value and our clients appreciate it.