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What's it Worth? All the news from our latest event

How do you value your creativity? Judging by the responses from both the panel and the audience at our latest panel event at the Innovation Centre on 1st December, it’s an issue that provokes strong feelings among the creative community here in Bath.

Our top-notch panel provided a variety of thoughts and insights from a variety of perspectives.

Mark Wood, who has recently joined Future Publishing as CEO from a background in broadcasting at ITN and Reuters, concentrated on way Future is unlocking value generated via its magazines in other areas - for example, through iPad apps (including a rather stunning Guitar World app) and events, such as the Golden Joysticks.

As Creative Director of The Real Adventure marketing company, it’s no surprise Adam Haywood had a dazzling presentation up his sleeve. He had asked Creative Bath members for their stories and lessons learned. One designer had fallen foul of IP law by not knowing her rights when designing a beautiful lamp for a department store. Another was advocating cutting out the middleman and raising sponsorship directly from consumers.

Creative Consultant, Liz Brewer, sounded deceptively mild-mannered, before encouraging us to shoot whoever originally suggested pitching for free! Her key lesson was not to undervalue your creativity: if a client won’t pay you for your time, ideas and brainstorming, then don’t do the job. Liz had a lot of interesting thoughts on the subject. You can download her talk here.   

Finally, IP expert Andy Braithwaite from sponsors, Thring Townsend Lee & Pembertons, talked about how copyright automatically subsists in something that has been created. He also stressed that creativity is at least as much about the thinking and planning as it is about what is created for clients.

Andy’s top tips to protect your creative idea can be downloaded here.

The interesting ideas didn’t stop there. The Q&A session discussed the thorny issue of free pitching and how professionals and agencies can compete with ‘boys in bedrooms’, whose frequently tantalizingly cheap web/writing/design services undermine the pricing structures of the more more serious players in the market.

On the subject of free pitching, the views were strong and mixed. Some insisted they don't & won't pitch for free; others said it's just a sad part of business. And everyone felt clients get too much benefit from it. One member of the audience mooted agencies uniting against free pitching - possibly via Creative Bath – which would lead to more value for all. But the consensus was that although this might appear attractive at first glance, it would ultimately have a detrimental effect.

An upfront fee to pitch was proposed, which would be redeemable if the work were won. Again this would work better if it were supported via Creative Bath, but did not generate overwhelming support.

The debate went on to discuss other pricing options. Perhaps there needs to be a differentiated approach to pitching, using a scale of gold, silver and bronze. Potentially the bronze could be free, silver charged and gold only subsequently offered if the work is agreed in principle. Or maybe individual agency members could be charged out at their relevant rates. Again, this failed to excite the audience, who feared clients would too often seek to choose the cheapest while expecting the benefit of the most expensive or creative.

Creative Bath regular, Dave Kelly from Storm, suggested that we were approaching the issue of cost from the wrong end of the equation. Rather than base your costs on the value of your creativity, you should approach pricing from the point of view of the customer and how much value your services bring to them. Time spent getting to know and understand your client’s business and values will be well spent in enabling you to pitch a tailor-made service to them. Read more about Dave’s thoughts on the subject via his blog.

Finally, we discussed the role of technology: much as it enables great design and the sharing of ideas, is it also a threat at the margin to creativity? After all, virtually everyone can write, do rudimentary design, knock up a blog, etc, so some companies do not value professional creativity highly enough. The response? Work harder to educate your clients of the benefit of what you offer. Sell yourself better (and let us help you by putting on a Pitching for Creatives course – watch this space!). But ultimately, our panel and audience concluded technology is a greater stimulus to creativity than a threat, and provides new routes to market, new models and new ways of creating great content and ideas.

After almost an hour and a half of heated debate, many of our audience commented that they felt more confident in what they do creatively, and that the issue was now about translating that new-found confidence into business and persuading clients and customers to invest in their creative talents. It was good to see so many of our audience taking away useful tips and ideas from the debate and we hope to return to this subject for future events in the new year.
 

Posted by:

Emma Chappel

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Adam_Haywood, Andy_Braithwaite, Creative_Bath, Creativity, events, IP, Liz_Brewer, Mark_Wood, TTLP