Julia Simons's List: Appeal for Action Essay Research

• Free pitching is a term used to describe the supply of design services without payment.

   

    Free pitching may be initiated by a customer who requests the provision of free services, or it may be initiated by a designer who provides free services in the hopes of later payment.

   

    Free pitching is condemned by professional design organisations around the world.

   

    Free pitching undermines the value of design services and destroys the professional standing of designers.
• In general a professional designer should avoid providing their skills for free except in genuine cases of charity or in competitions where there is no intent to avoid the purchase of professional services.
• Young designers trying to carve a niche in a market with well established players face strong temptations to free pitch. The best advice is to think clearly about the extent to which you are undermining your ability to sell your services in future dealings with the customer and the degree to which you are destroying your professional credibility. Spending the same time and resources on an existing client relationship or the broad search for clients prepared to engage you on the strength of your folio is likely to yield more certain returns.

• Professional designers lead by example

   

    The onus is on experienced designers to lead by example. They have the folios and commercial experience to avoid free pitching. They are more likely to be in a position to explain to a customer why they don’t provide services for free and why it is likely to result in a poor commercial outcome for the project.

• DIA Policy on Pitching

   
   
  •   It is the DIA’s firm policy to all its members that they should strongly reject all offers or inducements to participate in any competitive design process held largely or solely for the purpose of future commercial gain.
   
  •   It is the DIA’s firm policy to all its members that they should clearly reject all offers or inducements to provide any or all of their services at below their normal rates.
   
  •   It is the DIA’s policy that the provision of design services through any competitive process, at whatever the rate, is damaging for the professional reputation and long term business viability of the individual(s) concerned, and for the design profession as a whole.
   
  •   It is the DIA’s policy to publicise its stance on pitching by various means, including DIA Member Practice Notes, the DIA website, appropriate public and professional forums and selected media opportunities as and when they may arise.
• A pitch is commonly defined as: ‘to try to sell or promote something such as a product, personal viewpoint or potential business venture, often in an aggressive way.’ Interestingly, (for those who disapprove of pitching), pitch is also defined as: ‘to fall or stumble, especially headfirst.’

• In the context of the design world, a pitch is most often a situation where a designer or design business is ‘invited’ by a potential client to deliver a design concept or strategy at little or no cost, in competition with one or more other designers.

   

    The client then ‘assesses’ the efforts of each designer, with the ‘winner’ usually being awarded the client’s business – at least until the next pitch.

• The DIA therefore defines pitching as:

   

    Pitching is any practice that involves the speculative or competitive provision of design services (including concepts) for a commercial client that results in the designer receiving or charging less than their normal professional rates for work that is intended or likely to be commercially realised or in an attempt to win new business.

• For

   
   
  •   Pitching is a legitimate competitive expression of a free market capitalist system.
   
  •   Pitching is a ‘meritocracy’, where designers and design businesses are regularly assessed according to their creative abilities.
   
  •   Pitching allows designers to demonstrate their credentials in a manner that minimises the risk of clients employing an inappropriate or incompetent designer for the task required.
   
  •   Pitching allows a designer to demonstrate their ‘flexibility’ and ‘sensitivity’ to a client’s needs and requirements.
   
  •   Pitching allows new, inexperienced designers an opportunity to gain valuable experience in the real world, a ‘real’ addition to their portfolio, and the opportunity to measure themselves against their peers.
   
  •   Pitching is a necessary, unavoidable cost of obtaining new business, and in the winner’s case, is recompensed by the addition of that new business.
   
  •   Pitching is a widespread and long accepted feature in all creative industries.
   
  •   ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it.’ / ‘If you don’t do it somebody else will.’ / ‘Your competitors are all doing it, why aren’t you?’

• Against:

   
   
  •   Pitching usually delivers work designed to please, rather than what actually works.
   
  •   Pitching dramatically undercuts the financial viability of a design business, both in the short and long term.
   
  •   Pitching aggressively devalues the critical intellectual component inherent in all design.
   
  •   By devaluing individual designers or their businesses, pitching denigrates the design industry as a whole and makes it significantly harder for all designers to obtain a financially viable living.
   
  •   Pitching is almost entirely designed to deliver short term financial benefit to the client, at the direct expense of the designer.
   
  •   Pitching almost always involves superficial, poorly conceived design briefs that are virtually useless as ‘real’ design practice for inexperienced designers.
   
  •   Pitches are often ‘assessed’ by the client according to highly subjective guidelines that may bear no relation to realistic design principles whatever.
   
  •   Pitching emphasises the 'creative' aspect of design and suggests a poor understanding of the technical, commercial and marketing related values that designers bring to projects.
   
  •   By its very nature, pitching often attracts inexperienced, less qualified designers to the process, resulting in a higher likelihood of substandard work and a poor image of the design profession.
   
  •   There is no such thing in any business as a free lunch – the unavoidable costs to the designer of pitching must inevitably be paid by clients somehow, sometime – either ‘factored in’ to other design work or ‘retrieved’ in some other area of the design job.
   
  •   Pitching sets up an exploitative business and working relationship between the designer and client from the very start, which is bound to cause further difficulties and result in poor design outcomes.
• However this neatly overlooked the fact that traditional advertising agencies could better afford the many costs of pitching, as they made a substantial portion of their income from additional media commissions. Design studios have no likelihood of gaining media commissions and cannot afford the costs of pitching – even aside from the philosophical issues involved.
• If designers wish to be thought of as professionals, with the economic benefits that entails, then professionalism must cover every aspect of their business and design skills, not just some of them. You can’t be half pregnant: either you are a professional or you’re not.
• Professionals in other professions never pitch at all, regardless of how much they’re paid or how the pitch is structured.
• Some professional designers may occasionally choose to provide design work or services for free on a pro bono basis. However pro bono work differs from pitching in that pro bono work should not be provided as part of a competitive process designed to win new business or extra publicity, nor on products or projects ultimately intended for commercial gain.

• One of the major problems facing designers is that they are still often perceived as an industry rather than a profession.

   

    Professionals from nearly every other business field – with appropriate qualifications, expertise and a suitable professional body behind them – have a public and business credibility that shields them from the necessity of demeaning activities like pitching.

   

    Have you ever heard of a dentist offering to fix your fillings on the basis that if you like his work afterwards, you might pay for it? How about a doctor? Or an accountant? A mechanic? A plumber? Even the trades don’t do it.

• Professional credibility is crucial to achieving long term financial viability for all qualified designers – but will be quickly undermined if professional designers break ranks and indulge in activities like pitching.

   

    The proliferation of unskilled, unqualified, unprofessional ‘designers’ in an unregulated sector means that these individuals will almost certainly continue with pitching as one of the few competitive ‘advantages’ they have.

   

    However for professional, qualified designers to fall into the trap of descending to their level and pitching when times are tough, is simply disastrous. If a designer simply gives away their expertise, or publicly seeks to undermine their colleagues, what possible reason can there be for their work to be valued in the future?

   

    Whether you provide creative ideas, concepts, strategies, visuals, renders, thumbnail sketches, rough mockups, whether you do it ‘out of hours’ or ‘when there’s nothing else on’, whether you get your junior to do the work or not, it doesn’t matter – you’re still pitching.

• All designers obviously need to constantly seek new work, and to sell their expertise to potential new clients. That’s why you have a portfolio, and client testimonials, and a website, and a capability statement, and well honed presentation skills.

   

    That’s why you are a professional.
• As such, you want to work with professional clients; like minded individuals who recognise expertise when they see it, and value it accordingly. Leave the other types of client to the other types of designer.
• The key to surviving in such an environment can only be differentiation – creating a difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ in knowledge, expertise, qualifications, creativity and professionalism.
• Refusing to pitch is another, key method of differentiation available to professional designers. Combined with the necessary personal qualifications and expertise, and reinforced by continuing publicity and support from professional bodies like the DIA, refusing to pitch becomes a badge of honour – a declaration of professional status.
• Amateurs pitch – professionals do not, not under any circumstances. It sounds harsh, but when all is said and done, if you’re not good enough to get business without pitching, the only thing you’re really good at is discounting.

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• Independent graphic designers and commercial photographers, as well as small companies within the industry, feel threatened by a flood of low-cost images, often produced by amateurs, available online.
• In any industry where technology has enabled passionate amateurs to try their hands, businesses face new competitors who may not be motivated by profit [BusinessWeek.com, 6/6/07].
• Richard Grefe, director of design association AIGA, says such services miss the point that professional design encompasses more than crafting visuals. "What you're getting is a superficial mark," he says.
• So how much do the new Web offerings really hurt these pros? Defenders argue they've created a new market at a lower price range for customers who never would have paid the fees professional designers or traditional photo agencies charge. "The great thing that we see in the emergence of microstock is that it's significantly expanding the pool of people paying for imagery," says Getty Chief Operating Officer Nick Evans-Lombe.
• But what should photographers and graphic designers do? They need to target that part of the market that isn't looking for the lowest price, experts say, because budget Web sites have already won those customers. "Designers as a profession should be moving up the value chain," says the design association's Grefe. "What designers need to do is to explain that inherent in most design is the branding and the essence of the company."
• Photographers likewise should develop relationships with clients more interested in quality than price, say industry players on both sides of the debate. One company positioning itself as a photographer-friendly alternative to microstock sites with its PhotoShelter site is Bitshelter. The New York startup, founded in 2005, won't let photographers list their images for sale for less than $50. "We really want to take a stand against the $1 image," says PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi.
• Ultimately, creative professionals need to communicate the value they create for clients so they can differentiate themselves from commodity-priced images. Dan Heller, an independent photographer in Marin County, Calif., and author of Profitable Photography in Digital Age, says beginning photographers should expect to spend four years creating an online presence, networking, and building their own brands before they turn a profit. It takes persistence and business sense as much as talent, he says. "Selling yourself is not selling your photos," Heller says. "You can't say, 'My images are worth a premium,' but you can say, 'I am worth a premium.' "

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• The ultimate effect is that marcom work done by amateurs is just not good, and that's a brush that paints our entire industry in a plain vanilla hue, dragging us all into one ugly, commoditized quagmire.
• Or consider what might happen if the garment industry decided that clothing costs were getting out of hand: In the future, they'll only make clothes in red and white, and there'll only be two styles (casual and formal) and three sizes (small, medium and large). That would save a lot of money, but saving money isn't necessarily the objective when it comes to new outfits or buying houses. And yet, do-it-yourselfers think they're saving money when they buy software kits and design Web sites or brochures themselves.
• The reality, however, is that they're not saving money once the value of their time vs. the value of the work produced is calculated. Marketing managers tend to look at the hourly rates of advertising and graphic design professionals and think them highly inflated. They see $75 or $100 per hour and think, "I don't make anywhere near that much." But they're confusing "total time" vs. "productive time." Any human resources professional will tell you that if a person puts in 40 hours a week, only a certain percentage of that is time spent being productive.
• To me, the main consideration is the quality of the work, and my experience is that creative work requires lots of practice before you get good at it. In fact, most professional graphics software programs require daily practice. I've watched experienced art directors exchange suggestions for improving productivity (that is, speed) and the quality of special effects for programs they've used for years. One of my senior art directors teaches night classes at an art school, and yet he's constantly learning new techniques and shortcuts. These people are good, because they work every day at getting better than the day before. They practice, share tips, attend seminars, read trade publications and, most importantly, they make a living by creating things that satisfy paying customers' diverse demands.
• If one of advertising's objectives is communicating memorable ad messages, you should work with professionals who have dedicated their lives to meeting this challenge. This isn't a computer game we play for kicks; it's a serious business. If you want vanilla, go to the grocery store. Leave the more exotic flavors to the professionals.

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