Canadian creative agency ignites debate about spec creative in thought-provoking web film
Ad agencies worldwide have been doing ‘spec creative’ in pitches since the Madmen era. But what happens when you ask people in other industries for spec work?
Toronto creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo decided to find out. From shopkeepers to professionals, participants had no idea what was about to be asked of them. The resulting film skewers the notion of pitch work while proposing to the ad industry: it’s time to do things differently.
Zulu is one of the few Canadian agencies that steadfastly refuses to do free ‘spec’ work for potential clients. The video was made and shared at Strategy’s Agency of The Year award show.
8 Comments
Maybe if agencies feel so strongly about it they should stop asking studios to do spec production and post!
Gutsy
This is great.
Do the clients realise that they end up supporting the costs to pitch on other clients? Doesn’t that annoy them?
If we all stopped doing it and clients stopped asking for it, we would be in a better position.
Maybe we all need to sign up to a “Quality Agencies Don’t Do Work on Spec Convention”.
What goes around comes around…
Agree with Speccy Git. Well put.
@Speccy Git, the difference between this video and production companies is agencies only ask for a treatment and costs from production companies on spec, never the finished product.
A treatment that, invariably, the production co doesn’t follow through on because although they agree they can finish the job for the fees they nominated, blah comes to blah and overages and lunch and the bosses Maserati (not to name names) and wolf wolf and baa baa and suddenly we’re 80k over and still don’t have the ‘vision’ we initially agreed upon together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY
VISIT CANBERRA PITCH.