Responsive Web Design, Part 2 (2015)

Counting Stars: Creativity Over Predictability

Buying Creativity

If we accept that a brief should come after an agency has been hired, how can a client without a brief choose an agency to work with?

If your last received inquiry, request for proposal, or brief was anything like the one sent to me, it included a question about the likely cost of a project. But the purpose shouldn’t be to ask about price but to invite potential design partners to discuss a project.

Perhaps there’s a misconception about what commissioning design means. It’s not like buying a product; it’s buying creativity, expertise, and knowledge. More than that, it’s entering into a relationship.

How can a client decide on a designer to work with? In the 1960s, David Ogilvy offered advice on exactly that in his book Ogilvy On Advertising. In it, he wrote:

“Sir or Madam”

(He was formal like that.)

“If you have decided to hire a new agency, permit me to suggest a simple way to go about it. Don’t delegate the selection to a committee of pettifoggers. They usually get it wrong. Do it yourself.”

(If you’re interested, a pettifogger is an inferior legal practitioner who deals with petty cases or employs dubious practices. I’m sure I’ve met at least one.)

“Start by leafing through some magazines. Tear out the advertisements you envy, and find out which agencies did them. Watch television for three evenings, make a list of commercials you envy, and find out which agencies did them.”

(This was the Sixties, after all, but today clients can apply that general principle to websites.)

“You now have a list of agencies. Find out which are working for your competitors and thus are unavailable to you. By this time you have a short list.”

(And this is where his advice hits home.)

“Meet the head of each agency and his [or her, of course. This was the Sixties, remember] Creative Director. Make sure the chemistry between you is good. Happy marriages fructify, unhappy ones don’t. Ask to see each agency’s six best print ads and six best television commercials. Pick the agency whose campaigns interest you most.”

That advice may be fifty years old, but it’s still relevant because it respects the process and creative people by basing hiring decisions on personalities and past performance, not on how well someone is judged to have passed any challenges set by a request for proposal.