To my mind, it’s fair to think this way if we as agencies publish our costs in a rate card and bill transparently for time – against this card… like the hairdresser names his price.

When we don’t, the bartering begins – which generally stems from a lack of information and the resulting wish to barter (and to ‘win’ on costs). This I understand totally – it’s human nature… to conquer the unknown (I do it with my suppliers).

If agencies want to get paid what they want to get paid then they need to publish their fees consistently. We do this – we have a single (open) fee structure for everyone here – and we never really get pulled into horse trading.

Every time I suggested making this a formally binding contract (eg if we work for free now, you guarantee to commit to us and pay us later) or sharing in the profit of the business, or giving us shares in the business, they all started to moan. “Oh, we have to have flexibility to choose our suppliers, etc”.

In short, we were being asked to shoulder all the risk, without any kind of commensurate reward for taking on that risk. In every case I told them – politely – to try elsewhere. Strangely enough, I don’ think any of those businesses are talked to then are around now – I wonder why.

Working for free is the ultimate concession – and any concession loses its value almost immediately – and a concession that has no value in the first place has nowhere further to fall – the client will therefore view the “service” provided as virtually worthless from the start.

Giving away free trials when you are selling a product is fine. However, whilst goods are consumed, services are experienced.

May I therefore recommend the following Harlan Ellison video on the subject of working for free:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

“They wouldn’t go 5 seconds without being paid”