FREE PITCHING

Free pitching or free tendering of design work as is sometimes referred to is the practise where design companies produce unpaid speculative design work for clients in the hope of winning the job. A practise that I believe form observation may have developed partly because of the reasons of having too many design companies and little design jobs to go round. Same as having too many design graduate with little design jobs hence making the market more competitive then it should be.

This practise of free pitching I find as very inappropriate and is another level of financial waste. In a recent article, published in issue 148 of Computer Arts Magazine Maxine Horn for the British design Innovation stated that “an average free pitching cost agencies £38,000 a year that totals around £1.7bn in waste resources.” Waste resources that designers have found is later paid back either by design staff working unpaid overtime hours or either the cost for the pitch is absorbed by other clients through increased fees. The cost of a free pitch cannot be taken on by smaller designer companies which mean they don’t get to pitch for a job therefore missing out on some design opportunities. From statistics, it has been found that companies with more than five employees win 66% of their pitches while those with fewer than five staff win only 33%. This fact again suggests that the chances of smaller companies winning design jobs is slimmer than larger companies.

Free pitching is bad for smaller companies as lager companies have in their disposal the ability to pour more resources into each pitch therefore producing more success and result.

The practise of free pitching does not only lead to financial waste but I also intellectual waste, creative waster, time waster etc. I feel it is a clever way to exploit one’s creativity because at this stage the design ideas of the companies are very fragile and could be taken away. I believe design is an intellectual property and at pitching stage one runs the risk of devaluation and also at this stage, ideas maybe stolen.

I recently came across a design company online. Really it’s more like a portfolio site for the designer but what I found was very interesting and gripping really. And I thought it could be a good example for this subjects matter though I have not further investigated the issues.

The site contained the work of Brian Michael Gossett a designer, illustrator and art director creating work for advertisements, commercials, editorials, print, film and broadcast media. I came across his work whilst researching into the Red Teatly Tea ad I had seen online a while ago and was interested in investigating the company that did the ad as it explored themes from the African continent which I thought was well executed and representative of the African people to an extent.


It was then I came across a storyboards that was designed my Michael for STAR DUST. The story board had a detailed sequence of the ad idea/ story line, the visual style and idea approach. The board was used while pitching for the job which they did not win but was won by Christopher Hewitt with German power house Sehucht.



The final ad was 97% similar in style and idea to the designs drawn up by Michael for STAR DUST. I could not even tell the difference as his storyboard may pass for the storyboard of the one taken to production. It just crossed my mind in an instance if the idea was not rubbed. And sometimes with design we never know what idea came up first.

Recently I was showing Rick (tutor) screen grabs of a campaign by the NHS I was looking into whilst I was researching for my final project. It was a website to help people get information about alcohol and it had an interactive interface where you can instantly know the amounts of unit in every bottle of alcohol. The site had the same style and concept of Dave Croucher website design he did way back in 2nd year for his alcohol museum and we had a little laugh about what came first. The way in which the objects go out of focus as the cursor moves away from them was also used here.

NHS KNOW YOUR LIMIT CAMPAIGN WEB PAGE



These though are very thin lines in design that some times raises questions we may never find logical answers for. Well I would have thought about the idea for sliced bread if given more time. It raises the question if two separate people can have the same idea and come up with the same visual concept.

For the Red Teatly ad I honestly could not work it out. Maybe there is a possibility that two different agencies on two different geographical location can think in the same direction / line and come up with the same idea or maybe this could just be a cause of clients taking advantage of ideas / concept they come across with during a pitching session. There’s also been suggestions that clients sometimes may use the pitching session as means to brain storm for ideas to help them direct they way their final brief will be written out as most times design companies who come to pitch for ideas are not really given a proper brief. They are just left with a few words on paper and expected to come up with a whole body of work that can lead to a potential marketable concept.

The idea of coming up with concept with little information on the brief in itself is not representative of the creative capability of a design company as the brief are too short and not clear which will limit the potential out put of the design company pitching for a job.

Like other profession, I don’t see any reason why designers should produce this detail free work where as in other sector it’s different. For instance , an individual hoping to have his house built will not as that the builder build a smaller section of the house for free before he’s actually commissioned to take on the job of building the main house. I believe that free pitching should be scraped and all designers should log onto the various anti pitching website and sign the forms.



The British innovation website features a detailed article by the professional pitch organisation where a detail procedure for an ideal pitch is written. It can be found on this link. It makes an interesting read.