re: Ad agencies unite against road safety campaign pitch fiasco.

Audio Android — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:02:02 GMT

Interesting article and I absolutely agree - 'pitching' en masse is so often a waste of time. Too many people's time .. and money - and it's only when you ad up the collective man hours & cost - that you see just how devastatingly negative it is.

But I have no sympathy for a lot of agencies.

Whilst some play fair and work properly and professionally - many dont.

As a music composer, I'm lucky enough (or I've worked hard enough) to generally be out of the 'pitching' circle - but let me tell you - agencies themselves can be NO ANGELS when it comes to enjoying pitches en masse from creative freelancers.

Where as the norm used to be paying a demo fee to 3-5 composers to pitch for a job (and communicating directly with those composers over the brief) - often now (by no means always) I see an agency instead pay that small demo fee to a (so called) 'Music Supervisor' who will keep that donation for themselves and each get 10-50 music composers to pitch for free (with the promise of a large sync fee for the 'winning' composer) - this can mean100 - 250 composers all pitching through a Music Supervisor who will put forward maybe 10 tracks each.

Criminal.

- And as you point out, no way to get professional results.

Like I say - it's not everybody & all of the time - just some teams/agencies some of the time...

Not directly on topic I know ;D) But certainly related.