Value for Money

Creativity is such a subject matter. We face the dilemma of its value every day. In a month that has focused on conceptualisation, I thought it would be timely to focus on how this is valued and why concepts need to cost money.

Like anything in this world, thought has a value. While some will argue that it comes for free, anyone who has worked in the design, advertising or creative industry knows all too well how expensive thought actually is.

With more time pressures than ever, deadlines that seem, at times, completely impossible and expectations growing exponentially, it’s difficult to even find the space to think in the madness of the day.

So what is the cost for one to step outside the mayhem and pause to consider, ponder, develop, formulate and conceptualise an idea? A thought? A piece of magic?

While it’s much easier to put a cost against the execution of a concept, most of the thinking doesn’t happen between ‘9 and 5’. Ask any creative and they’ll tell you that ideas come at the most inappropriate times!!!

Personally I yearn for the day I have a waterproof iPad in my shower so I don’t lose my ideas to further steam which assisted in creating the canvas on the shower screen for my finger painting and notes as the water beats on my back (apologies for the mental images folks).

So who pays for you to be in the shower? Or driving in the car? Or awake from your slumber? The truth is no one…it’s the ‘Cost of Creative’.

When it comes to attributing a value to that on the actual quotation or invoice, that’s where it becomes so much more difficult.

The subjectivity of its value has been argued by many before and will be debated for decades to come I am sure. What it does raise though, is the need for the acknowledgment in the very essence that there is, in fact, a ‘Cost of Creative’ factor in everything the industry produces.

So while some would question the dollars that adorn a quotation or the rate by which work is charged, there is a need to understand the immense amount of energy, passion and knowledge that goes into any concept that is placed on the table.

This is not unique to Jack in the box. In fact I would venture to say it is ever present across the many incredible agencies throughout the world.

There is a great deal of difference in cost and value. In the case of conceptualisation, it’s a case of the cost of its value.