Will someone please charge for our creativity?

Why is it that digital creative agencies often only get paid for their implementation, and provide their creativity free? Unpaid-for work creates financial risk, resulting in rushed work when it’s most important.

I’ve worked for several companies where the money comes in only when production is complete. All speculative brain-storming and project-definition is paid for by the cost of the implementation stage.

Problem #1: brain-storming/project specification isn’t an expense; it’s vital, hard work, required to think up the best product we can. As such, it requires time and skill. If it’s not paid for in its own right, then it is always under pressure to cut costs – by lessening the time spent on it, and/or by putting cheaper resources on the job (when this is precisely the point at which more experienced people are most effective).

Problem #2: if we’ve thought and spec’d up the most wonderful product in the history of the web, but the client changes their minds, all that work hits our profitability. If we only charge for implementation, the time spent thinking up fabulous ideas is money lost unless the project goes all the way through production.

Problem #3: development frequently takes longer than estimated – whether it overruns the schedule or stays within the buffers put into the estimate. If all the up-front creativity is to be paid for by the profit from development, then guess what – we’re making less than we planned to.

Problem #4: because it’s not paid for, the cost of it is frequently covered by the account, which means that the account managers do the work, rather than pulling IAs, art directors, senior developers off paid-for implementation work (after all, they’re expensive). The result is those with least experience define the project.

The most important part of the project is in the definition of the work to be done. That, then, is where we should spend a sizeable part of our time, discovering/brain-storming, defining/specifying, and planning. Given that we are creative agencies, then we should charge for our creativity. It’s bleeding obvious when you read it, isn’t it?

The solution: charge for our creativity. Agree with the client that they will pay a certain amount for us to think up and define a project. Getting paid for the work means we no longer need to skimp or cut corners on it (problem #1). Getting paid means we’ve not lost anything if the client decides not to go ahead with the implementation (#2), or if they choose to take the work elsewhere. Getting paid means that we don’t need to fund that part of the work from somewhere else(#3). Getting paid means that the right people can be on the job(#4).

Bleedin’ obvious, innit?