Mark Hancock recently posed the rather interesting question: “What would happen if the creative department remuneration was allied to sales?”
Well in the early days of advertising, copywriters were often paid by results. And some of them made big money. In the 1920’s Claude Hopkins at Lord and Thomas (ancestor of FCB) was earning $100,000 per year - and yes, that’s in 1920’s money.
Moving to payment by results may have some interesting effects in agencies. It would change the nature of advertising creativity, it would mean more businesslike creatives would flourish, it would mean much closer working relationship between creative and other departments - because creatives would be big stakeholders in sales success and, last but not least, it would mean that advertising becomes far less of an art form and far more of a business tool.
The closer working relationship bit is interesting. Over the years creatives have become more of an isolated and protected species within agencies. They are often kept away from clients, they sit in glass offices whilst everyone else is open plan, they are contacted via planners, and not generally exposed to the day to day goings on in an agency.
Surely it would be a good idea to bring creatives out into the open. Bring them into the centre of things. If they did have a stake in sales success they would be encouraged to think more about business results and less about ‘art’. And this may will give agencies back that one thing they regret losing the most - the proverbial seat at the boardroom table.
And so to conclude, I very much look forward to being abused by a creative team for reducing their earnings by messing up a coupon code or tracking cookie…
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