Restaurant Marketing, Avocado Toast, Buffalo NY, & Cop Who Won’t Let Us Double Park
May 11, 2014
Three Things Creatives Do During the Holidays—Plus Holiday Marketing Tips
December 21, 2016
Spec Work – Free Marketing!
Free marketing, YAY! Yup, it’s the time of year for free marketing. It’s time for renewal of contracts, RFPs, and companies sneaking around looking for new agencies. What does this mean for us? Well, let’s see. Hours of nonsense wheel spinning. Counteroffers on project estimates (really, just wtf). Tons of ridiculous requests. Just your basic everyone-has-lost-their-damn-minds and they-can-do-this-marketing-stuff-themselves kinda season. After all, they read an article on marketing, so they can handle this stuff, and if they can’t, their brother’s kid can do it. He’s a pro; he can email and stuff.
Let’s have a look at an actual potential client pitch meeting I was part of last week.
We stood waiting in a warehouse for twenty minutes past the scheduled meeting time for the head cheese to arrive. This is someone who asked us for the meeting and is twenty minutes late—yeah, twenty minutes late. You think that’s crazy? I can probably count on one hand the times this year we didn’t have to wait twenty to thirty minutes for a meeting. Apparently this is perfectly acceptable. Finally, he shows and spends fifteen minutes telling us how awesome he is (not his business, him). Another fifteen minutes into this mind-shattering meeting, this is what goes down:
Potential Insane Client: “This all sounds great, but I’m going to need your ideas sent to me to see if I can move forward.”
Momentum: “You’re saying you would like a strategic plan?”
Potential Insane Client: “Yes, that‘s it exactly, a plan that lays out what you can do for me and how it’s done.”
Momentum: (We saw where this was going the minute you opened your mouth.) “Yeah, strategic plans start at $**** and take a considerable amount of work. We will need to set up a discovery session to start.”
Potential Insane Client: “I’m not paying for anything. I need to know if your ideas are good before I even consider you!”
Momentum: “So you want us to work for you for free?”
Potential Insane Client: “No, I just want you to come up with ideas and how to execute them for my business.”
Momentum: “So you want us to work for you for free?”
Potential Insane Client: “No, they are just ideas and plans. I won’t share them with anyone; I just need to see if they are good before I consider paying for them.”
(In my head screaming horrible things and flipping the table over)
Momentum: “Right, yeah, we’ll get back to you.” Have a great holiday rotting in hell. Say hi to everyone on the karma bus. Oh, also, can I try all your stuff before I even think about paying for it? Wait, your stuff sucks. Later, jerk! (We didn’t say that. Well, I kinda did; I screamed it in my head while shaking his hand good-bye.).
Why is it people think it’s perfectly normal to ask advertising and marketing agencies to work for free? We work our asses off for little to nothing. We can’t pay our bills, and you want us to work for you for free or at a discount because you’re special? Special? What the hell is special? Can I pay my mortgage with it? Can I pay you with it? Do you pay for things with it? Where the hell is this special, and how do I get it? I’m special too!
One phrase comes to mind:
FIRST YOU PAY, THEN YOU EAT!
Check out the video below from ZULU ALPHA KILO, a Toronto-based creative company. It really sums up the double standard we face every day. People cut our budgets and ask us to work for free but then complain and are surprised by lower sales. We scramble around, can’t pay our bills, live without necessities, and run to find the next insane client.
