Life's a pitch
Imagine a world where you head into work and put in a seven hour day, heck, let's make it a twelve hour day, trying to make some artwork or design so freaking kick-ass that it'll melt the brains of anyone checking it out. Now imagine not getting paid for it.
Welcome to the world of the unpaid pitch.
Pitches are a fact of life for most creatives. No-one likes them. After all, we're all fairly confident that we have enough design chops to tackle any brief we're handed. But if you put yourself in the client's rather comfy shoes, then theoretically pitching becomes a democratising force, ignoring everything but the core concept and demonstrating how that idea might be executed. Companies are chosen based on raw talent and nothing else. At least, that's how it should be in principle.
But pitches can become grubby affairs, where the motivation of the commissioning agency is sketchy at best. I once worked for a company that continually pitched for a potential client without ever getting the job, even though we had really strong ideas. Turns out, they always gave the job to a mate who ran a small design company out of his bedroom, but needed to keep up the pretence of pitching to keep the bosses upstairs happy.
In another far murkier instance we found elements of our unsuccessful pitch incorporated into the final product without our knowledge or permission. It seemed the client assumed that everything presented immediately became their intellectual property, despite the lack of any prior agreements stating that fact.
Everyone has their own pitch horror story to tell, and we can all nod glumly in agreement because doubtless something similar has happened to us. But the most insidious aspect of pitching is without doubt the Free Pitch.
Let’s make no bones about it, free pitching is morally wrong. It's right up there with drowning puppies and setting badgers on old people. The only people who benefit are the clients who get this amazing brain dump of ideas and concepts at no cost to them. Clearly they have no interest in rocking the boat; why should they? It's a vicious circle: design agencies need the work and in order to get the work they have to pitch. Usually the only game in town is a free pitch. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.
It should be noted that some enlightened clients do have a policy of paid pitches. And when one of those comes in, even if it's a nominal fee, folks at design agencies wander around stunned, as if it was the second coming and Jesus just gave them a Chinese burn.
The good news is that The Design Business Association and the Chartered Society of Designers are up in arms about the whole notion of free pitching. Design Week is reporting that the DBA is urging government agencies to take the lead in abolishing unpaid pitches and wants to showcase examples of best practice on the DBA’s website. The hope is that this filters across to other industries and become the norm, as it is in some other countries.
It's a very meek, very British approach, almost certainly guaranteed to make no difference whatsoever. If I had my way, I'd take the captains of industry and force them to watch re-runs of Trisha while giving them excruciating wedgies and flipping them with wet towels until they agreed unanimously to ban free pitches.
Seriously, it's time this unfair practice stopped and we need something stronger than damp recommendations to make it happen. Join the Computer Arts forum and tell us your suggestions.
By Jason Arber of Wyld Stallyons. This article first appeared in Computer Arts Magazine, http://www.computerarts.co.uk, September 2008. BIG thanks both Jason Arber and Computer Arts for their permission to reproduce this article.
