How Much Free Work Should Agencies Do To Win New Business?

One of the classic struggles in PR is the courtship process between PR agencies and their potential new clients.

The client, who needs the services and will pay the bills, wants to reduce his/her risk by learning as much about what the agency will do for them before starting to pay. The agency, for its part, wants to get the business, of course, but doesn’t want to give away its best “creative” work for free in order to secure the business.

This is all about marketplace leverage. The most desirable client has the most leverage and can demand almost limitless free work before starting to actually pay for it. On the other side, the most desirable agency can withhold all but its credentials and examples of past work and insist that a potential new client start paying before they see any “creative” work specific to their account.

In the middle, there is a constant tug-of-war, explored with insight and sensitivity by Jerry Johnson of Brodeur in the most recent issue of The Firm Voice, the online newsletter of the Council of PR Firms. Johnson naturally looks at the subject from the agency perspective, but his article offers insights for players on both sides.

If you have any role in either pitching clients or selecting agencies, you should check out the whole article. But here are his take-away tips for agencies:

• Pitch creative selectively. Creative is akin to marketing and promotion. Do it selectively. Only include speculative creative for opportunities that are (a) well matched to your agency’s strengths; (b) well funded; and (c) have good long-term promise that merits the investment required of good creative.


• Pitch creative strategically. The issue is not necessarily the specific creative content. It is the content that opens a client’s eyes to the agency’s core skills and underscores its strategic skill set. Not everyone responds to the same thing in the same way. I loosely follow an outline called “Chemistry by Design” to try and organize creative in a way that makes the most sense given the personality and culture of the client.


• Pitch creative economically. The good news is that with today’s technology, there are more and more economical ways to show creativity that are not very costly. Want to put together a video? Purchase a flip video camera for $125, shoot, edit and upload to YouTube. Off-the-shelf packages can produce a podcasts for peanuts. Online and overseas outsourcing agents can develop logos and creative around simple concepts at incredibly low prices.