Re: UKNM: Search Engines digression

[Felix Velarde]

On 1/10/98 I read:

>> How should we charge, by individual discipline, or the 

>>combination?

>> My feeling is that if we were under pressure financially, we would

>> not be relaxed enough to be able to come up with our solutions.

>

>While it's perfectly fine to charge high fees, especially for

>specialist expertise and demonstrable good results, this is a

>downright silly justification for it.  I hope (well, actually I know)

>that Felix has sufficient confidence in the value of his company's

>skills not to use reasoning like that!


You're right, relaxed may be an inappropriate word. But a company, 

especially a creative company, is a company of people. People who 

synthesize, that is to say people who take a large amount of 

information and draw conclusions from it, tend to work best under 

pressure. I'd include myself in that category, and it applies to exam 

situations at school, for instance.


However, people who are creative, who rely on inspiration, tend to 

work best without pressure, which is why an ad agency will employ 

several teams of creatives on a single account and maybe use only one 

idea from each a year. Head New Media is a creative agency, with a 

strong capability in strategic solutions. So while I understand that 

to some this attitude may be disconcerting, it seems to have been 

highly successful so far, and our clients seem to understand, and 

concur with, our working philosophy. Anyone who can show me a way to 

do my bit of it in a more relaxed way will be my hero forever.


>> If I had my druthers, I'd be getting a commission on every sale my

>> client makes, on top of payment for the basic cost of each 

>>individual

>> discipline. But not many clients are set up that way, and the

>> majority of those that are don't understand the principle of an

>> equitable arrangement based on shared risk, or are interested only 

>>in

>> joint ventures, which we aren't interested in (we already 

>>specialise).

>

>I like this kind of venture too, but it isn't always necessary to

>insist on a payment for the costs of the disciplines.  Did you mean

>that you like to be paid for the entire cost of the individual items

>as well as take a commission?  That sounds like you're skewing the

>risk too much in the other direction - after all, why should the

>client pay you a commission if they're taking all the risk of the


>up front investment too?

>

>Unless you meant that the client would pay for the cost of

>subcontracting the technical aspects, and you would be rewarded for

>your strategic and marketing input on a commission basis.  That would

>be reasonable.


That's pretty much it - substitute 'employing' for 'subcontracting' 

though. As I said, it's about the combination.


>> it's around a tenner - your choice.

>

>Did it _really_ take you a whole hour to compose this email?


For a tenner? I wish! I've been thinking about ways to make my life 

easier for years, so the tenner's got to cover that too ;)

  Felix


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