This article is more about your opinion than advice. There no are clear-cut answers to the questions or suggestions that I’m talking about here, so feel free to post a comment and tell me what you think.
Advertising works in three parts: what’s said, how it’s said and where it’s said. As Creative Director, I fall into the “how it’s said” category.
The strategy, “what’s said,” and the media buy, “where it’s said,” are a lot more tangible and objective than the “how it’s said.” My creative team and I sell ideas and concepts. Sure, we physically manifest multi-layered design files and text documents chock-full of copy, but that’s not where the value is. The value is in the idea.
When the creative is part of a campaign with strategy and media, it’s easy to bill clients because creative is just a part of the process. Even in situations where you have one of the two other components, strategy or media, it’s easy to charge. A strategic plan comes with a creative brief that consolidates the plan into consumable messages. If someone asks to place a print ad, producing the ad is the norm.
The challenge comes when ideas are left on their own.
At my shop, Absolute Marketing Group, we pride ourselves on delivering only the services clients ask for. That means we can be asked to solely develop a creative idea. Maybe the client already has a strategic planner or a designer on staff. They come to us looking for a boost in the concept.
That’s just one scenario. Spec ads figure into this equation somewhere too, but that’s a debate for another day.
The question is, how do you charge for ideas?
Our team loves coming up with crazy, cool concepts. We’re creative by nature. But this is business. I propose three different ways of billing for idea generation. Some of these are implemented by other companies, some might not be. What do you think is fair?
Billing Method #1: The Creative Conclave Brainstorm
How it works: I can’t say everyone does it like this, but it seems like the most common approach. The client asks for a predetermined number of creatives to host a brainstorming session for a predetermined amount of time and is billed at the rate of (number of employees) x (time) x (hourly rate).
Pros:
* There’s a fixed budget.
* There are multiple creatives to assist in the collaboration.
Cons:
* As a creative, you never know where and when inspiration will strike. In this situation, you hope it strikes within the window of time. If it doesn’t, you can end up with a product that could have become something better.
Billing Method #2: PPI (Pay Per Idea)
How it works: In this method, each idea is given a fixed monetary value. Let’s say, each idea is worth $50 and your client has a $500 budget. The client would receive 10 ideas. It’s then up to the agency to decide a.) How talent is assembled to come up with the ideas and b). How the pricing is developed.
Pros:
* The ideas can be developed naturally instead of in a pressure-cooker brainstorming session.
* You can still budget for the process.
* You will have a hub of well-planned ideas to pull from.
Cons:
* Ideas have the same value, good or bad. It’s like a pack of Star Wars cards; you could draw a Boba Fett or you could get a wad of Jar-Jars.
* If the 3rd idea is the best of the bunch, you’re still going to get inferior ideas until the prearranged price is met.
Billing Method #3: The Ta-Da
How it works: The creative team gets the information, has X amount of time to come up with something and returns with a single idea.
Pros:
* You get one, highly polished idea. It’s the agency’s best foot forward.
* You pay for quality instead of a stockpile of concepts that will most likely go unused.
Cons:
* You roll the dice with one, subjective idea. We might love it. You might not.
* You won’t see any of the discarded concepts. There may be “gold in the garbage” that will never surface.
The fourth option is, of course, to not offer idea generation as a service at all. I know some firms do this. For us, that would be a tragedy. The fun of this job is to take two seemingly unrelated things and correlate them with your brand message.
Like I said at the top of this article, this is a topic we’ve been kicking around the office and we’d like your feedback. If you’re an agency that has something in place that you find works, well, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re a business, what would you like to see?