Free Pitching, it’s like choosing your partner in a beauty pageant.

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We attended a lively and interesting Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) talk featuring lawyer Chris Finn of Finn Roache last night.

The talk touched on that ugly elephant in the design studio, free/spec pitching in the context of the global recession – loosely defined as the act of doing significant free work (strategy, ideation or actual design) to win a tender or proposal process. It was refreshing to hear outright condemnation of this terrible business practice from the floor, although Chris’ legal “solution” worried me.

But first I’ll explain the beauty pageant thing.

There are many reasons why asking for and doing free pitch work is a Very Bad Idea. I know it feels like we’re getting great value when we get things for free. But free and value are rarely bedfellows.

Sure, I can understand the temptation to ask for free ideas and designs. As a client it seems like a great way to filter the creative agencies from the lambs, to mix my metaphors a tad. It also feels like a great big free idea haul, and you’ll certainly get a wad of random ideas that may or may not be useful in the project. But to then choose an agency based on those ideas is akin to choosing the person you will marry at a beauty pageant; it might start so but it ain’t going to end pretty.

Frankly, the agencies simply won’t have had the time to immerse, research, understand context and deliver a proper response to a brief in the day or so they can give to a free pitch. Unless they are desperate or mad or both, they’ll commit only enough time for a superficial response.

An agency’s portfolio should give a client all the examples needed to decide if they cut the mustard strategically and creatively. Almost as importantly their approach and process should feel right for the client and the project. That’s it. Oh, and their proximity to good cafes and Surry Hills,of course.

Another thing to consider: Clients, being ethical people, will want to throw out and forget all the losing ideas and designs. In reality, though, this is hard to do; a clever idea has a way of weaseling its way back from obscurity. Like it or not, it’s very hard not to bring those other ideas to the table when the project commences. We all know that’s unfair, even unethical – but it happens. So paying for pitch work is a great way to avoid putting people in this difficult ethical position. I would like to see companies proudly stating they don’t ask for free pitch work for ethical reasons alone and making this a part of their sustainability reporting.

And it’s also bad for the project …Really bad, because as i mentioned earlier the design team has not had time to understand the client’s project (not to mention their business!) and therefore they cannot possibly have an idea that has the necessary contextual understanding, strategic insight or empathy behind it. It’s the opposite of the design approach we take here at Digital Eskimo, which we call Considered Design. Free pitch work is Ill-Considered Design. And who wants that?

“That’s OK, we’ll just toss that idea out and start again once we’ve chosen the agency” is often the response to this point. That makes perfect sense, actually – and I think this happens sometimes. But then why put all those people through hours of free work to just toss even the winning idea out and start again? Politics and people being what they are, though, there’s a good chance that someone – quite likely a few of the decision makers – are in love with that beauty pageant winner and have a vested interest in keeping that idea and design alive.

I can’t think of a better way to stifle creativity and innovation!

OK, so there’s also a swag of really obvious reasons why it’s a bad idea for the agencies themselves but I wont go into it here. It’s a sign of desperation and I reckon it’s a pretty laughable scenario to profess to be proud of your work if you so readily give it away for free. Nuff said.

Like I said earlier, there are much better alternative methods for agency selection that benefit everyone – especially the client, who in the end just wants a great relationship with a top agency and the best result for their project.

Let’s just get off the cat walk

Finally, while I applaud Mr Finn for his position on free pitching generally, I disagree with his view that free pitching is going to happen anyway, so agencies should accept it and protect their free work with a legal letter or such (he’s drafting one for AGDA at the moment). Sort of like a pre-nup before the beauty pageant.

While I know he and AGDA mean well, I think this is another Bad Idea. First, this just perpetuates the idea of Free Pitching with clients. Every request for a free pitch should be dealt with by every agency the same way. ADGA could perhaps spend our membership fees preparing a very clear, well communicated explanation that agencies can send on to clients. Then I’d suggest the agency head explains in a meeting why the approach should be altered and why the agencies who do offer to do work for you are not following our industry guidelines on this (and who knows what other evil things they do, right?).

Suggest a credentials presentation approach, rather than this crazy, good-for-nothing free pitch thing. Or if they really really want to do the pageant, then ask them nicely to pay for it – it will be money well spent. It’s amazing how much better the pitches are when they’ve been done by senior staff during work hours rather than late at night after the paying work is done. Having said that, it’s still a beauty pageant; the hair and makeup is just a bit more tasteful.

And let’s face it: Legal letters are only useful if you can back it up with legal action. Now as I (perhaps rudely!) stated on the night – the only people to win out of this approach are the lawyers. Chris argues this is how they do it in the legal profession, and contracts from law firms work rather well, I imagine – who wants to get in a legal tussle with a law firm? Anyone? No, thought not.

However. most design agencies are simply not going to have the capacity (or headspace!) to go after (possibly difficult to prove) copyright infringement from free pitch work. It just won’t happen, and people on the client side aren’t stupid – they know that. So why treat them like idiots? That’s no way to start a relationship.

I call on AGDA to scrap the legal letter and stand firm with a formal policy and strong recommendation that free pitching breaks our code of practice. While we can’t legally stop our members donning the leotards, applying the thick gloss lippy, shaving the three day growth and strutting their stuff on the cat walk, we can perhaps make it uncool to do so. And no designer wants to be uncool, right?