Spec Creative - Cost of (Not) Doing Business
By Dan Dooley on Monday, April 23rd, 2007The past few months, both the trade pubs and blogerati have been ripe over the issue of free, or spec, creative during the agency review process. Agencies, and the AAAAs, are squawking about clients who ask for creative during the review, but don’t pay, or pay little, stipend. Well, I’ve been on both sides, and can tell you the chirping needs to end.
Over the past 10 months I’ve been an integral client side decision maker in two large, multi disciplined, consultant driven service pitches (and over a dozen more on both sides prior), and can say without blushing that what the agency may be giving up in creative or “idea-izational” services, they completely win back for not having to effectively practice what they preach and invest in their own brands.
The fact that many large scale pitches require consultants and a stage heavy orientation process - often involving speculative creative - is more than partly the fault of agencies themselves, large and small, doing such a poor job of, well, BRANDING and marketing their brand’s unique differentiators and “reasons to believe.” Marketers wouldn’t need spec heavy presentations if the agencies did a better job at what they will tell the client their brands will eventually need – brand-focused, media-agnostic, integrated interpretation and conversation with the potential consumer.
Question: of the top 10 global agencies, can you rattle off what their particular brand represents? As a client, when was the last time a potential partner marketed to you as a potential consumer (prior to an RFP)? I think we here at Spun do a better job than most at pivoting our brand around our key offering: user experience and behavioral understanding. But we can also get better.
The common response is that the work an agency does for its clients speaks for its brand and product offering. My response to that argument: then show the failures as well as the successes, the coal with the diamonds, and try not to be so self consumed to assume that your clients themselves don’t power the best of your work (you’ll say this in public, but rarely in private).
Until agencies do a better job of building and positioning their brands, Spec creative is the cost and capital for not having a deep marketing department of your own. Your thoughts are welcome (but I’m not paying a dime).
Dan - I agree with you that spec creative is sometimes asked for because there is a lack of understanding of the agencies capabilities. Through better branding and positioning this can easily be avoided, but what I think needs to be addressed is segmentation within this industry. Currently there are just too many similar service offerings within agencies and with this standardization comes confusion. Currently creative talent, available bandwidth and industry knowledge are become the deciding factors in making very large marketing decisions.
We all have fallen into the new business trap of a prominent brand’s RFP landing on your desk and instantly envisioning how great it would be to develop and launch the proposed project. As agencies it is up to us to realize our own strengths and present those to the client for review. If creative thought and ideation is the core, then the response should fit.
Will breaking apart from the presentation mold change how clients make their decisions… Yes! We all know that creative ideas can be bought and sold, but what about solutions that truly fit to the business, the industry, the need and their philosophy. It is as important to understand their brand as it is to understand your own.
We are still within a young industry that is still in its awkward tween years. With time, we will all become better buyers and sellers of great interactive… until then, just put a social media spin on everything and a nice gloss effect and ta-da. ; )
- Wade Forst
I think Dan and Wade bring up valid points. Not only do firms that practice spec firm indicate they don’t have a solid brand or portfolio it also shows a complete lack of respect for the process of understanding the potential client’s needs, users, and your own firm’s talent.
In the end, it’s the industry that will set the standard. Respect your work and talent by not responding to spec work, especially creative. I fear that too many firms are often too desperate for work to heed this call.