I’ve written a lot about clients who go to agencies and then tell them what they need.
Or – as the brilliant George once said – go to the doctors and prescribe their own medicine.
Well recently I saw a photo from the MD of 72 Amsterdam – the brilliant, beardy and cat-loving, Nicolas Owen – that I think deals with the issue in the best way I’ve seen …
Now I appreciate that in the ‘real World’, most companies who offered this sort of pricing structure would cave in to the pressure of a potential paying client but the thing is, the moment they do, they’re not just losing cash, they’re literally devaluing themselves.
That might sound dramatic, but it’s true.
As many of you know, I’m doing some work with a rather famous rock band.
During the conversations, I asked their managers how they made so much money from consulting for other bands.
They said, “They’re not paying us for our time, they’re paying us for our 30 years of experience and knowledge”.
OK, so they truly are pioneers in their field … but that confidence in their abilities and value made such a big impression on me.
It shouldn’t as I’ve written about this a ton of times [like here and here for example] but when you look at how we – in the communication industry – handle ‘negotiations’, it seems our starting point is fear rather than confidence, which puts us behind before we’ve even started.
Of course, part of that might be because we know another agency would sell their grandmother to make a dollar, but then the question is why would we want a client who so obviously devalues what we do?
Now to be fair, our industry is great at undermining ourselves.
From scam at Cannes to charging more for process than creativity … so much of what we do sends a signal to clients that we are a servants rather than experts, which is why I like the image from Nicolas so much, because at least they seem to understand that if they’re going to get dictated to, they’re going to make more money from it. At least in theory.
There’s a reason Wieden, Droga etc charge a higher premium than most agencies, because they value the work.
Maybe it’s time the whole industry did that too …