Steve Harris: Dishonesty is a terrible thing in an advertiser or an advertising agency
An interesting piece today on LinkedIn from The Brand Agency’s Chairman & CEO, Steve Harris…
Dishonesty is a terrible thing in an advertiser or an advertising agency. And when it is blatant, easily discoverable and in the public domain there has to be some question marks over the integrity and intelligence of the perpetrators.
A start-up Perth ad agency is falsely claiming to have produced a number of high profile campaigns that were actually produced by other Perth agencies. Yep, they’ve posted case studies on their web site for work they didn’t do and included a narrative about how “they” developed and delivered the work.
To be clear, I don’t have any issue with individuals who have worked on a client or campaign who then move agencies and choose to include their involvement in that work in their CV, portfolio, personal web site or even client credentials presentations. I do take issue with an agency passing off another agency’s work as their own when that agency never worked on the client.
It’s also worth noting that individuals rarely create work on their own. It usually involves a whole host of people from different areas. For individuals to claim the work as a solo effort and credit a new agency several years after the fact is disrespectful to their colleagues who all made contributions.
I’ve chosen not to name the agency at this stage, but it is pretty blatant when they actually say “we created” the campaign when the agency didn’t. They are even using images and material directly lifted from case study material produced by other agencies.
Worse still, the work by The Brand Agency featuring on their web site was pro bono for a not-for-profit organisation. The agency claiming the work is not only claiming The Brand Agency’s work as its own, it is claiming work that was done pro bono when it hasn’t contributed a minute of time or a cent of cash. It’s taking credit for another’s charity contribution to the community in which we live and work. Not very nice.
I’d welcome your feedback. Let’s discuss.
3 Comments
It’s complicated isn’t it. Usually the contract says agency owns the intellectual copyright, but the person or team who also thought of the idea feels like it is theirs, and the production team feels like they made it.
This feels ok to show work depending on how you word it. Also, this does come across like the big boys are starting to feel a little threatened.
Dear Startup,
No. It’s not complicated.
If an agency created the work, the agency has the right to feature that work on their site.
If an agency didn’t create the work, the agency doesn’t have the right to feature that work on your site.
If the creator of a piece work joins another agency, the work can be listed on their CV on their new agency’s site, but the work itself should not be featured on the new agency’s site.
Simple as that.
If the pieces on their site had a caveat upfront saying it was individual work produced at X agency, I think it wouldn’t have caused a problem. School boy error. In a tiny market like Perth, small startups can eat into bigger agencies business especially when run by people who know what they’re doing. So yes, there probably is a little bit of fear out there but doesn’t excuse them from making this dick move. Learn from it, dust yourself off and come back harder.