Flow is a beautiful thing. We come up with our best creative ideas and solutions when we have free flow of thought. But when we do this thinking for someone else, like a client, we come up against constraints like time and budget — finite resources. Anyone who has worked in the creative consultancy environment will be familiar with this conundrum.
Dentsu Creative’s recently released “Power of Modern Creativity Report” says 85% of clients agree that while consumer behaviour has undergone rapid changes in the past five years, the agency model is yet to adapt. And 78% of chief marketing officers say that the siloed, overengineered agency model is no longer fit for purpose in today’s world.
In a rapidly evolving ecosystem full of interesting and complex challenges to solve, this is perhaps the ideal time to start experimenting with new ways of working. For starters, a time-based billing model is one of the legacies that needs to be recoded for a changing world.
If agencies are able to free themselves of the confines of billable time, they’ll be able to build better and more interesting collaborative partnerships
That’s because strategy, innovation and creativity need velocity — flow plus momentum — to thrive, and outdated systems stifle this. Innovation may be an overused buzzword, but I really like the idea that as humans we can apply our imagination and intelligence to the pursuit of progress and transformation. That’s what got us from the Stone Age to the Age of Enlightenment, and perhaps, too, the future Age of Spiritual Machines.
These leaps in humankind imply that the evolution of innovative thought is not just about what we do, but how we do it, and how we create value. Time, in and of itself, isn’t a very interesting or useful way to measure what our ideas are worth, particularly when you consider the value of experience, insight and wisdom. Sometimes we have a lightning-quick but invaluable spark of creativity, born out of years of experience, that offers deep strategic value to the recipient. I’m not convinced that simply bottling that offer at a higher hourly rate will deliver a fair price for the idea.
The converse is also true — agencies can charge out many hours for a bad idea that adds no value. Charging by outcomes rather than outputs is likely to be a healthier and freer way of approaching the achievement of results, instead of simply monetising the monotonous ticking over of the big process machine that constitutes the current agency model.
If agencies are able to free themselves of the confines of billable time, they’ll be able to build better and more interesting collaborative partnerships and strategic solutions. And be able to come up with ideas that don’t get crushed under the weight of the great ticking clock. As musician Nick Cave said in his “my muse is not a horse” speech: “My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature.” Though he was talking about the art of music-making, I feel the same way about the art of strategic creativity.
Which is why I took the rather bold step to free my muse from the confines of time counting. A client once told me my ideas were like a secret sauce, and that got me thinking; what if I could quite literally bottle my ideas as something measured only by value and quality? So, I bottled my Secret Sauce. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a fun idea that is opening up opportunities for richer engagements with my clients.
So here’s what it looks like:
Ideas that are just so good you want to bottle them are what we need to build new businesses, new products, new services and new cultural ideas. Meaningful work puts the purpose back at the core of everything we do.
Research has shown that people who work in creative industries are less creative and less happy when they are on the productivity clock when they perform tasks. Creativity thinker Maria Bowler argues that our culture’s obsession with productivity is counterproductive to real creativity and sucks the joy out of inherently creative people. Creative flow transcends the boundaries of time and when in flow, that is when the magic happens.
We should all find more creative and fun ways to package our services. For me, a prepaid solution like Sunny’s Secret Sauce — where clients literally buy a bottle of delicious sauce along with my undivided attention to their problem — is turning into a cool experiment with new ways of working. And, ultimately, it’s not about “bottling ideas”. Secret Sauce is a strategic advisory where ideas are developed, opportunities are identified and we can be more free flowing with value. Together, we’re achieving more collaboration and building mutual accountability. The cost of the service is only partially related to its perceived value, and the client is the final judge of the value received.
For other creative folks, there might be more appropriate or authentic ways to move towards their own value-based models of creative outcomes. We all need to do what’s right for our creative process. It’s time to reimagine the ways in which we value and package creativity, and recognise our blind spots. Only then will we successfully reinvigorate the creative consulting industry and ultimately transform how we propel our communities and economies, in the process achieving flow plus momentum in a much bigger way.
Duncan MacLennan is the founder of Sunny, a futures and innovation company.
The big take-out: It’s time to reimagine the ways in which we value and package creativity, and recognise our blind spots. Only then will we successfully reinvigorate the creative consulting industry.
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