At The Broadcast Producers Conference this past March, Frank Scherma, partner/executive producer of bicoastal/international @radical.media, spoke on the subject of "trust between agencies and production companies." More than half of his presentation floated the notion of dropping the traditional approach to bidding. SHOOT asked Scherma to elaborate on this concept. The following is his call to arms.
It’s time to change the way we do business. Almost 30 years ago, a group of producers developed a new way to do business in the commercial industry. They created the "bid form" which was terrific for 30 years ago and probably for five years ago, but not any more. The coming millennium is the perfect time to implement changes in the way we do business.
Let’s throw out the current bid form and do away with the current structuring of bidding jobs. The bid form has become a burdensome, time consuming, expensive way to do business. The bidding process has become a farce. We now discuss how many production assistants we need on a set, why our walkie-talkie price is higher than the other company, why the wardrobe stylist is $50 a day more than the other bid, etc. We all spend more time bidding a job than actually producing a job by discussing it with the producer, discussing it with a business manager, answering questions from the cost consultant, and discussing with the producer again. If we were all able to produce within the time we use for bidding, we would be able to deliver the same spot for a better price.
Jobs are awarded to a director and production company based on three criteria: the director’s reel and approach, the agency’s trust in the company that the director is aligned with and the bottom line price. That’s it.
Production companies, directors and advertising agencies have to figure out how to work within the bottom line that has been allocated by the client. We need to figure out how to deliver the finished commercial that the client wants within that bottom line. Directors and creative teams, like all creative people, would like to have every resource at their fingertips to do the best job they possibly can. Given a free reign, they would love to have the Louma crane, the helicopter, the HotHead, the Spacecam, the best editor and let’s have Mick Jagger write the music. But when you give any creative person certain financial parameters, most of the time they will attempt to work within those parameters.
So what replaces the bid form? An existing formal specification sheet showing the details of what the bottom line price is going to provide, and let’s go to work. Who cares how many production assistants are on the set? However, do you need to know how many shoot days, how many hours, how much film is needed, how many days on the crane, how many extras, etc.? When we bid a job, it is just a best guess based on research, the director’s work habits and the company’s experience. In producing a job, the main goal is to bring everyone’s creative vision to life within this budget. We may need to transfer money from the art department to pay for the extra lights we’ll need because the hanger that is now available is bigger than the one we talked about on the initial call. Or perhaps the prop helicopter that was working when we were researching has just blown an engine and we need to fly one in from Utah. The only thing that is constant when producing a commercial is that things will change.
Give me a bottom line price and a producer who understands the creative team’s concept, and we can begin to look at what we need to accomplish to get this vision on film. Perhaps we need to change the schedule and cut down the talent hours or maybe we only need 20 extras per day instead of 30. Maybe the helicopter shot can be accomplished with a crane, maybe some Flame work is cheaper than shooting with motion control. I suggest we work on creative solutions to get the bid to a working number. We should never talk about comparative walkie-talkie prices or the rate of the third grip. Just focus on the bottom line.
Every week I get a call from an agency asking me how we can do business differently, how we can deliver the best spots to our clients given the current time frames (never enough time) and the financial parameters? Step one is to stop laboring over the bid form. Pay attention to the bid specs, and change the current process of bidding. I get calls from producers saying that they want to use a director, here’s the schedule, here’s the budget-can you make it work? This is good business today.
Change is inevitable-it is fear of the unknown that causes it to occur slowly. As an industry we change constantly. Let’s make this change and get to work producing memorable, interesting commercials that sell the product. But let’s stop talking about the minutiae and get to work.
