Diego De La Maza on Advertising’s Age of the Producer

​Diego De La Maza feels production has finally moved from the margins to the centre of the advertising ecosystem.

Newly appointed chief production officer, west at Omnicom Production, Diego now oversees craft output across the holding company’s West Coast agencies – Deutsch, where he spent the past seven years leading production, alongside Goodby Silverstein & Partners, TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, 180 LA, and MullenLowe LA.

Asked what the expanded role represents, both personally and for the industry, Diego doesn’t dress it up. “Personally?,” he ponders. “It feels like someone finally gave production the keys to the front door instead of asking us to sneak in through the loading dock.”

The line reflects both Diego’s own trajectory and a wider shift in how production is positioned inside many agencies – no longer something relied upon once the idea is set, but a discipline shaping how ideas are conceived and delivered from the outset.

“For the industry, it’s a recognition that production is no longer an afterthought, but a critical piece of upfront planning,” says Diego. “This role exists because the way ideas get made, distributed, and experienced has fundamentally changed. Someone has to have a seat at the table and say, ‘OK, how does this actually come to life in the real world?’ That’s what I do.”

Being CPO for multiple iconic West Coast agencies is, according to Diego, about coherence: balancing consistency while operating at speed across an increasingly fragmented media landscape. “We’re building systems that let great ideas travel faster, scale smarter, and hit culture harder without losing their soul,” he says. “That’s the job now.”

That responsibility becomes more complex when it spans agencies with distinct creative identities, from Deutsch to Goodby to Chiat. “The fastest way to kill great creative is to standardise it,” he says.

“My job isn’t to make Deutsch, Goodby, Chiat, or any agency’s work look the same. It’s to give them a shared engine that lets each one be more themselves. We build common systems around talent, technology, and operations so the creative cultures can go even wilder.”

He likens it to a touring band. “Everyone rides the same bus, but what happens on stage should feel totally different every night,” he says. “And I want to build a badass bus.”

Within Omnicom Production, that shift has also prompted a rethink of how production is defined – increasingly framed around ‘content experiences’ rather than individual deliverables. A commercial, says Diego, is something you watch, whereas a ‘content experience’ is something you live with.

“Brands don’t show up in one 30-second moment anymore,” he adds. “They exist across feeds, platforms, fandoms, and timelines. Production has to design for that reality. We’re not just delivering assets; we’re architecting how a story unfolds across culture.”

For Diego and Omnicom Production, that means thinking upstream about formats, speed, data, and how a piece of work mutates once it hits the wild. “For brands, it’s a massive unlock,” he says. “When production is involved early, we can help shape ideas that are built to travel, not just launch.

“In other words,” he adds, “we’re not just polishing the thing, we’re helping design the ecosystem around it.”

Quick to stress that scale, by itself, isn’t the sole objective, Diego argues the real value lies in how it’s applied. “Efficiency is table stakes. If that’s all you’re offering, you’re basically a very polite spreadsheet.”

The real opportunity, he stresses, is using scale to unlock better creativity. “When you have shared talent pools, smarter systems, and connected studios, you can prototype faster, test braver ideas, and take more creative risks… because you’re not draining your resources to reinvent the wheel every time.”

Scale, systems, and speed all bring technology into sharper focus. And while he believes there will always be a need for human instinct – “the gut, the emotion, the imperfect moments that make stories actually land” – the goal is to use the tools available to work smarter and stay closer to the work that matters.

“No algorithm gets goosebumps. People do,” says Diego. “That said, the goal isn’t to resist this mind-melting technology, it’s to use it to become the most focused, creative, and present versions of ourselves.”

Diego admits that he has personally let AI take over chunks of the “boring, time-sucking parts” of his job and it’s given back something he deems much more valuable: time and mental space. “Time to think. Time to collaborate. Time to actually care about the work.

“So yes,” he adds, “AI is going to reshape what we make and how we make it, but right now, it’s one of the best tools we have for being smarter, faster, and spending more of our time on the craft that actually matters.”

Beyond his agency role, Diego was recently elected as a governor of the Television Academy’s Commercial Peer Group. It’s an opportunity he’s keen to use to bring together creative communities that are more intertwined than the industry often acknowledges.

“The same directors, writers, editors, and creatives who are building episodic series are also shaping brand stories through integrated advertising,” he says. “The talent pool overlaps way more than people realise and as a governor, there’s enormous value in getting people into the same room.

“The Academy gives us a real platform to elevate that exchange: to protect craft, push ethical standards, and create a community where commercial and entertainment creators are seen as part of the same storytelling ecosystem.”

Looking ahead, Diego believes production is entering a defining period. “We’re in the middle of an industry that’s changing at incredible velocity… and let’s be honest, that’s exciting and uncomfortable,” he says. “A lot of people are being asked to rethink how they work, what they make, and where they add value.”

When the dust settles, however, Diego is optimistic about where production is heading.

“I genuinely believe we’re entering the age of the producer,” he says.

“Success is when production is no longer the department that shows up at the end, but the partner that helps define what’s possible at the beginning. It’s when the how we make things is just as important as what we make.

“It’s when teams move at incredible speed without burning out. When technology and craft work together instead of fighting for control. And when producers are recognised not just as great executors, but as creative, strategic leaders with real agency over the future of this business.

“That’s the era we’re building.”

Read more interviews with production leaders here.

​Read more from Addison Capper here.