Actually, we're in business just for the cheap thrills

About two years ago, we presented a client/friend with four (or more) concepts for an image ad. They picked one. The one I liked best, actually.

Then, this past February, they got in touch with a sort of “Hey you know those ads you proposed to us that we didn’t pick? We think one of them is just perfect for an ad in a golf tournament program. How much to just whip up the artwork for us?” We explained as we had originally that the unchosen concepts were still our intellectual property, and the ideas they didn’t pick on the first go-round weren’t theirs to use unless they paid us for them, but that just to be good guys, we said we’d go ahead and do the production art and let them use the concept that one time.

That. One. Time.

So last week, they called about another one of the concepts. This time, they said that if it was going to be too much for us to do the artwork, they could just go ahead and find some freelancer to do it. Hello?

Well, there is little we can do or want to do, really, to stop them. We know they would no more pay us for the use of our concept than they would give away one of their luxury condos. So we’re not going to try. On one level, it’s not that big of a deal.

But on another it is. In my mind at least. Because the one thing we have of value to sell is not our ability to produce camera-ready art (to use a dated term), but to come up with the freaking idea in the first place. That’s what separates every agency from every other agency.

(It’s funny how often people think you should be so flattered that they like more than one idea you have presented that you ought to let them have both for the price of one. “Hey, I really, really like the Benz and the Beamer. How about a little two-for-one action here, what do you say?” would get you laughed out of the dealership.)

But clients have been conditioned to believe that agencies will give away their ideas in the hope of producing them. And ad agencies have been a instrumental in creating this perception. Especially those who do spec. That may have been the model back when the 15% commission and expense markups ruled, but not anymore.

Agencies do not (or certainly should not) make their money on production, media commissions or markups of outside expenses. It’s not fair to us. And it’s certainly not fair to clients to expect them to compensate their agency based strictly on the time it takes them to do their work, the size of the media budget, the cost of the photographer, illustrator or printing and so on. As opposed to, I don’t know, the value of the thinking perhaps?

We shouldn’t give away our valuable ideas in order to make a few pennies on production.

And, apparently, neither should we leave boards behind for any length of time.