Bitching about Pitching!

OK, so, I'm in the mood to have a good bitch about that odious of all practices that some of our so called 'design profession' seem to indulge in with varying degrees of vigour. Yes, I'm referring to Free Pitching.

Why now? Well it seems as though everyone's doing it according to one of our clients that I was in conversation with a couple of weeks ago. I was reliably informed by him that even a top London agency - I'll name no names - were quite happy to part with upwards £5k worth of work in the hope of securing a contract.

I do think it's peculiar to certain disciplines. We started life as a product design consultancy and only moved into 'graphic, branding and packaging design' about eight years ago. I can honestly say that non of the clients we provide a 'product design' service to would dream of asking us to undertake work on a speculative basis.

What does this say about our profession? Do we really have such little self belief and confidence in our ability to create significant returns on investment for our clients? Or is it just our inability to convince them of the fact? We are in the communications business aren't we?

We don't Free Pitch, never have, never intend to. Why? Well read on...

Reasons not to free pitch

No guarantee
In essence, design professionals sell two things -- ideas and time. Speculative presentations, by definition, require a designer to invest both of these with no guarantee of compensation.

Unprofessional
Any professional design company worth it's salt won’t participate in speculative presentations since they take away time, a non-renewal asset, and resources away from bona fide projects with guaranteed revenue. The result is designers who participate in spec presentations are typically less experienced.

Lack of professional research
Successful design requires an investment in time to appropriately research the client company, its competitive landscape and the audience for the project. Since many speculative projects are run on a compressed schedule, adequate research cannot be done, resulting in designs that are more “pretty pictures,” rather than strategic design backed up with facts.

Needs of the client not met
Speculative requests are often a result of “I’ll know it when I see it,” thinking on the part of the client. The problem here is that it’s self-centered point-of-view rather than a position serving the needs and wants of the audience.

Myopic

Spec projects are often myopic. They tend to be “one-off” pieces that don’t fit and may erode a company’s overall branding efforts.

Reduces value
Speculative projects reduce the value of the client/designer relationship. In point of fact, there is no relationship. The process becomes a competitive environment that often hinders a designer from doing their best.

Undermines consultive benefits

Pitch requests tend to reduce the potential of design down to a commodity. Professional Design consultants provide highly specific services which typically build upon each other to solidify a brand. Speculative requests undermine the consultive benefits of the client/designer relationship.

Undervalues the profession

Designers who participate in speculative work are undervaluing their profession. These are often designers or design groups that are just starting out and/or have been around a while but don't have the experience or body of work to prove their capabilities. They are lured in by the “dangling carrot” of more work down the road or payment if the client likes what they’ve done. Often that additional work never materialises and payment is well below industry averages.

Red flags
Designers approached to undertake speculative work should ask themselves why a client is making the request. Is it due to a lack of understanding of the industry? Perhaps there isn’t enough money in the budget? Is the client fuzzy about their goals and objectives? Any of these should throw up a red flag.

The lack of a contract does not a professional make
Speculative work is often done without contracts, thus removing any clear representation of “rights” to the artwork between the client and the designer. The result is that clients may feel they can pick and choose from the ideas the designer has presented and either do the project themselves, or take the ideas to another, cheaper designer — either option being a violation of the law. However, despite being a violation, the lack of a contract will make it difficult for the designer to prove their case, resulting in either an outright loss for the designer or a long, drawn out legal battle that is good for neither the designer nor the client.

Finally, any company considering asking a designer to undertake speculative work should ask themselves why a professional level designer would take on a speculative work. Are they in fact professional level? Do they have the experience and abilities to do justice to the project and help it reach its goals? Is their heart and mind going to be committed to the project? If they have so much time on their hands that they’re willing to work on for free, why?

Labels: Free Pitching