Imagine how much more mind-blowing creativity output, and life, could be if we stopped billing by hours and started billing by ideas. Want to know why you should care?
Bear with me; this will be worth it. Pretend it’s the end of the month. You go down to ask your finance team about the pay for your creative agency partner. They look at you like you just told them they had to work over the weekend. And pay you for the privilege. That’s because they won’t be able to answer because your agency won’t have been able to bill properly because they haven’t managed to do their timesheets.
Whatever, right? Why should you care about timesheets? This is their problem.
Well, yes. But it’s a much bigger problem for you. You might not know this, but the simple timesheet is killing your product and ruining your creative output.
Right now, most of the work you’ll see is born from an outdated system dreamt up by the bean counters. It might work for lawyers but it’s not doing creatives any favours and it’s definitely not letting them produce the work they are capable of for you. We’ve all seen work churned out that is little more than the advertising equivalent of painting by numbers, but just imagine if your agencies were getting paid for their ideas, not just the time they spend at their desks. If finance departments were focused on the work more than the money. All year round. For every job.
The best creative work, the stuff you see at awards ceremonies, will have been lovingly massaged and stroked like wagyu beef, which is far from the usual agency grind. Tended by people who care about ideas. They will have had a case for ‘investment’ made for them… and PR potential calculated. The rest of the output is governed by those who care about the margin. Very different gig, that is.
Charging by the hour makes a mockery of the work. It breeds inefficiency, chains creatives to their desks, makes them work weekends, and keeps them away from their families. It shifts the focus away from where it should be – their brilliant, game-changing ideas.
We all love ideas, right? It’s why we’re here. And it’s why everyone values award-winning work. Ideas should be respected, revered, and nurtured by everyone in the industry. But we can’t do that when we’re stuck filling out timesheets and working late nights.
If you’re all selling/buying ideas, you’re all going to be head over heels for them too. You’ll cherish them, nurture them, and know everything about them. Your businesses will revolve around ideas because that’s what you love. But if you’re all selling/byuing hours, that’s all you’ll think about. Big boardroom conversations will be all about billability and utilisation, and creativity won’t get a look in.
Yes, our industry is a bit of a tired old tart, but change is possible if we want it and know how to get it. If you’re stuck in an agency tied to timesheets, here’s what you can do – Find an agency that:
- Productises its offerings: Making its services output-based. Instead of just responding to briefs, creating products that lead to better, faster, and more creative solutions.
- Is specific about deliverables: Break down what you want them to be creating, be precise about it, and price those deliverables as units of cost. Trust me, we’ve all got enough experience to know what these things cost.
- Ditches the timesheets: They’re just a crutch for the bean counters. You don’t need them.
- That has already embraced this model. They’re out there, and they welcome creatives who want to work better.
The change is up to us. Let’s make our industry one where creativity is truly valued, where we get to do what we love, where success is about units sold, not beans counted… and where ideas are the real currency.
Be the first to comment on "Why charging by the hour makes a mockery of creativity"