Speculative (free) pitching commonly sees clients ask suppliers to produce creative work for free as evidence of their ability to undertake the work. The DBA, the UK trade association for design, does not recommend this method. We believe it leads to poor decisions being made at the outset and will never produce the level of considered work needed to drive your organisation forward.

It devalues what agencies are selling and can bring about specific potential hidden consequences for the design-buying business.

Choosing an agency based on unpaid creative work presented in a pitch is not a good way to source the best agency for your requirements.

The quality of any creative produced will only reflect the amount of time the agency has spent on the pitch. You run the risk of appointing a poor agency with lots of time to spend on your pitch over the strongest agency who was busy with fee paying work in the lead up. Ultimately this will affect your competitiveness. 

Any creative work presented in a pitch won’t have been produced with the level of insight into your business and objectives that is required to deliver the best solution for you. The creative will be hastily pulled together and based on a very narrow understanding of you, your market and the true nature of what is required.

Creative like this is risky to share within a business as it can lead to commercial decisions being made on the basis of taste rather than commercial sense.

It also pays to be mindful that this isn’t free creative. The cost of producing this work will be recovered through the subsequent work you do. The agency will likely resent giving their work away for free and this can undermine and hamper your commercial partnership.

Finding the best agency that you can afford for your project should be your ultimate goal.

Assessing an agency on their credentials is the only way to ensure you end up with the right agency for you.

There’s further information on this in our Guide to the Credentials pitch vs the Creative (free) pitch.

To identify the right agency to meet your needs, we recommend focussing on five key areas to make your judgement: Credentials, Capabilities, Creativity, Chemistry and Cost.

These can all be ascertained through a Credentials Pitch, involving meetings with a small number of agencies, at which you can gather evidence across these five areas to inform your choice.

None of these meetings require any of the agencies to produce original creative.

For additional detailed, step-by-step advice on buying design

You can access the DBA’s free Client Guides on Commissioning Design which also have further information around creative pitches and credentials pitches. The guides focus on:

How to buy design: 01 Getting started

Agencies come in all shapes, sizes and types, so how do you pick the best for your project?

How to buy design: 02 Writing your design brief

For help in writing the project brief for designers.

How to buy design: 03 Agency selection guide

What are you actually looking for?

How to buy design: 04 Pitch guide

For use when preparing for a pitch with designers.

How to buy design: 05 Pitch brief

For use in briefing the designers on what you require from them at the pitch meeting.

How to buy design: 06 Pitch score sheet

For use when scoring designers in the pitch.

How to buy design: 07 Pitch feedback

For use when giving feedback to unsuccessful designers.

How to buy design: 08 Asking for a proposal document

Asking for a proposal document.

How to buy design: 09 Proposal score sheet

For use in scoring a response to the brief.

The DBA’s Code of Conduct is a set of recommended practices, which have been designed and developed to provide DBA design agency members with a series of guidelines to improve the professionalism of the industry. DBA members use the code of conduct to reflect and influence the way they run their businesses. Point 7 states:

“Members shouldn’t take part in pitches that require unpaid work. The level of payment for pitches should relate to the time and effort involved.”

We support DBA members in taking this stance. Head to Free pitching: Advice for Agencies to find out more about the guidance we offer to agencies in responding to requests to free pitch, and how this can open up conversations that will help deliver the best solution for you.