• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 24, 2014

Well, here's a feelgood story. Sid Lee is opening a Los Angeles office in the headquarters of men's health charity Movember Foundation. The agency, which already does pro bono work for the charity, will further help the cause by moving in and paying rent. The move follows the opening of the agency' first U.S. office in New York two years ago. Of the move, Sid Lee USA CEO Will Travis said, “We will be joining the Movember Foundation in the Culver City location as a partner, fully integrated in the space, We will be located there until further growth demands otherwise, and then the expansion may be together.”

Making an argument against paying designers by the hour, designer Ken Carbone writes on obstacles when negotiating design fees. The design process is mysterious -- even threatening -- to some clients because they don’t understand it. It’s easy to fall into a "time trap" where clients equate time with value, which invariably ends with the question "Why will this take so long?" In my experience, that gap in understanding can readily be solved by estimating the value for a design program in the client’s own terms, based on values that reflect the client’s particular business or industry. This "value mirror" approach offers a client-centric model that works at any scale. The magic in this pricing model is that it’s built from the client’s point of view, based on his or her own definition of value." As much as it makes sense to price work "by the job" or by value, there will always be clients who insist upon making it a math problem and devaluing the work to time spent on the job.

Okay -- so this question is asked maybe every 2.5 seconds of every day in an ad agency. It's the continuous debate over which is more important, creative or strategy. Warehouses of books have been written on the topic. Billions of electronic bits have been wasted on the topic. And here's a few more bits to consider. Trouble is, the answer is easy. Advertising is not a business of creativity for creativity's sake. It's a business where creative has a purpose and that purpose is to sell stuff. If ad agencies did create creativity for creativity's sake, creative could take whatever form flowed from a creative's mind. But since advertising creative has a purpose, that purpose must be defined. And that purpose is called strategy. So which is more important, strategy or creative? Well one thing's for sure; there can be no effective advertising creative without a strategy behind it. Debate among yourselves.