Agency invites brands to pay for creative with beer or nappies instead of money
A creative agency believes asking brands for money in exchange for creative services is increasingly problematic. As a solution, it is offering brands the opportunity to pay for creative solutions via contra.
“Are you a brand that sells beer? Why not pay in beer? Do you make nappies? Transact in nappies. If you sell flights and hotel rooms, why not buy creative with them? That’s right. Creative for contra,” the company’s proposition says.
The agency is inviting brands to submit their briefs
Common Ventures is behind the Creative for Contra initiative and is inviting brands to submit their briefs here.
The idea, the company said, stemmed from the constant stream of industry news about marketing budgets shrinking, swelling or getting “put somewhere else entirely”.
“Whatever the case – the issue is ultimately money,” a statement from Common Ventures explained.
“These pressures trickle down to creative companies like us. Spending cold hard cash on creative thinking has become harder and harder for clients to justify. It’s an odd dynamic, as businesses certainly value creative problem solving within their own organisation, but justifying budget for external creative input is tricky business.”
The company said despite creative agencies claiming they’re “different now” – cheaper, more efficient and faster – they’re “still asking for money”.
“And maybe that’s the problem,” the statement said.
If creative companies are indeed creative, the company explained, then they should be finding innovative ways to receive payment for the work they do.
The Common Ventures founders in 2012
“It’s an interesting proposition,” Common Ventures said, encouraging all creatives to adopt the approach. “Brands can get around their budget constraints by simply ignoring them, creative companies get something of value for their creative expertise, and (most importantly) get the chance to prove they are worth spending money with on a permanent basis.”
Common Ventures said it currently works with “some of Australia’s most exciting challenger brands” and is seeking “bold companies with problems to fix”.
The company was established in 2012 after four senior staff – Jane Burhop, James Crawley, Brian Merrifield and Damian Damjanovski – from Ogilvy left to set up the agency which was described as “part technology incubator and part advertising agency”.
In April, Damjanovski departed Common Ventures, with Merrifield stepping in as managing director.
Yes, because my bank will accept mortgage payment in the form of beer. A dreadful idea that totally devalues creative.
Not sure what I’d do with a room full of beer or nappies, but buying equity in a business in exchange for creative services would be a consideration.
Why on earth scream out to clients you’re desperate.
And why devalue your services.
And why devalue the industry.
All for a few column inches.
Oh no!
Is common ventures this desperate for clients? Who are their existing clients?
What the Daffy Duck is a “Challenger brand”? More nonsense words and phrases…
A few US agencies have been doing this for a little while I believe. Could encourage agencies to be a little more results focussed?
As the tax man who pays the GST?
It’s a race to the bottom . There’s a headline there. Ready steady…..GO
Not a new idea, and not a bad idea either.
Astus AU (www.astusaustralia.com) has been doing this for media since 2011, back when Group M took a 51% stake in them.
Well worth asking brands the question I reckon…
Yeah because if you’re a nappy or beer company you can give away nappies and beer because it doesn’t cost anything.
Please come back later and tell us how you convinced your staff they’ll be paid with beer and nappies.
Yet another agency devalues themselves.
Why not just create good work? Would you expect to pay the supermarket for food with creative work? Or a mortgage with an advertising script?
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
It sounds like CommonVentures were tongue in cheek and trying to be funny. But it just comes off as lame.
You must be joking – have you ever dealt with procurement..? That’s where “creative value” has started and stopped for the last 10+ yrs.
Any sort of compensation can be turned into cash to pay the bills. It’s been that way since forever. I’ve come from media and seen IPG’s Orion, WPP’s Astus (as mentioned above) and Bartercard do it well. I assume Havas have something similar.
Has any indie mob tried it for creative in Sydney? No idea. Do the holding co’s offer something similar for creative? Probably. Will procurement tell them to piss off? No idea.
Would a 3-4 mth legit follow-up story be interesting? Absolutely!
Common needs to get their heads out of their arses. April Fool’s is three months away. And Get Stuffed I Need To Get Paid Day is every other day.
Yes, this is the largest gaping flaw of all in this story.
I hardly think that a stunt like this is the main cause of the “devaluing” of creative services.
What you’ll probably find is the root cause of marketers devaluing creative thinking is the fact that the legacy agency model has been to give it away from free, or at a discount, to get a shot at production $$$ (and before that, when creative and media were combined, to sell media to make dosh from the partnership deals they had). The situation now, is that agencies are scrambling to show the value of their thinking as it is getting harder for them to make their money on production with production companies, influencers, publishers and one-man-bands proving cheaper and more agile.
What Common are doing is trying to get themselves an opportunity to show the value of their thinking to marketers. Whether the strategy is sound or will be effective is unknown as of yet. Personally I’m a bit more skeptical than optimistic, but it seems a risk worth taking for an indie agency looking for an opportunity to strut their stuff. However, it will all fall apart if they do get a chance to show what they can do and then don’t find a way of proving their value to senior clients.
I agree with ‘grow up’. A follow up in 6-12 months could make for an interesting read.
“…and (most importantly) get the chance to prove they are worth spending money with on a permanent basis.”
So, it is about money.
Using Creative as a loss-leader strategy to get a foot in the door ain’t anything new, guys. It’s what every young upstart thinks they thought of first. ?
I agree, follow up in 6 months and let’s see how this is working out and how many nappies and beers have been converted into actual $$ 😉
Why is filming a hard cost?
3. Doesn’t cover any hard costs – i.e. filming, printing etc.
They must be kidding themselves. Worst story (and idea) ever. When you offer contra, you are basically valuing your product/service at $0. Moving forward, why would anyone ever pay you? A $0 revenue stream is good for taxes, but not for any business.