As the open letter makes very clear - it was bad behaviour on the part of the agency, and Spike most likely didn't know it was going on (and the letter even suggests the agency was actively lying to him about it).
But - Spike is ultimately the one in control of the money-tap the agency is drinking from. While he had "absolutely nothing to do with this", it was no doubt done on his behalf, and he absolutely has the power to fix it. If he says "No, that's not how we do things", then it'll get fixed. (Arguably there are many other people below Spike who could also make that call, but I have some sympathy for the original poster - it would be a great deal of work if it's possible at all, to find out who in the middle management chain of command has sufficient authority to solve this problem and how to contact them directly.)
Unrealistic. He has the last word on the posters being choosen.
He already chose these posters, but was told that the guy asked for money.
It was his decision to rip him off.
He is the producer also.
Given that the only information we've got to go on is the open letter - I'll point out this bit and take it at face value: "They forwarded me an email you sent them asking for an explanation but of course they lied to you and said they didn’t know who was responsible."
I think it's 100% plausible that the agency accepted Lee's decision on which poster design to use as "last word", while not fully disclosing (and perhaps even actively deceiving him about) the payment/negotiations/contracts/copyrights with the designer.
Not that I know for sure, but I'd guess he had no idea where the agency got the artwork, whether they did it in-house, contracted it, stole it, or some combination.
I was thinking the same thing. Always, always, always have a contract in place. I really feel for this guy, but the way this went down, he provided them with his best work on the hope they would then reasonably compensate him.
A contract, negotiated up-front, might have prevented the agency from taking advantage of him.
A contract, negotiated up front, is something assholes like this will never do. This guy had no leverage. His options were walk away early, walk away late, or get screwed.
So the agency played hardball but the guy didn't budge, then tried to rip him off? Their bad faith effort seems to deserve punitive damages, I hope he takes them to court.
Whew...I thought this was going to be an indictment of the Oldboy remake. Sure, the original was great, but I was interested in how an American director would handle the material.
That said, this was probably not the kind of controversy Spike Lee needs attached to this project.
side note: Roger Ebert's raving review of Oldboy was what got me to watch the original Oldboy and that spurred a whole new appreciation of independent foreign films for me:
The entire vengeance trio is amazing, but I actually like Sympathy for Lady Vengeance the most. Park Chan-Wook's I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK is good too. You should check out Battle Royale if you liked Oldboy.
That's funny, I thought Mr. Vengeance was the best...artistically...whereas Lady Vengeance was the "safest" of the trio. Mr. Vengeance is astounding in its depths...however, it's not a movie I'd ever put in just for fun. In fact, I can't remember re-watching it after the first couple of times I saw it.
The controversy already started when we heard that Spike Lee (!), the amateur who doesn't even know the simpliest technical film skills got the rights.
A similar controversy arose when M. Night Shyamalan sat on the rights for "Life of Pi" for a few years, but was ultimately replaced by Ang Lee. The only one who could master such a job.
With the Oldboy remake it was clear from the beginning that it would lead to a desaster, but apparently the studio owed Spike Lee a big favor.
Seems weird he mentioned Spike Lee (who did nothing wrong, as far as I can tell) so many times, but didn't name the agency. Seems to hurt the wrong party's reputation.
Additionally, he has no apparent way to contact him.
EDIT: I really don't want to point fingers with 0 proof, but Spike Lee happens to be CEO of an ad agency named Spike DDB. https://twitter.com/SpikeDDB
This is what I was thinking as well. Did he also send this letter privately, but posted publicly to get support as well? That seems the only logical way to do it, if he hopes to get a response.
Just some more background - DDB is part of the Omnicom group, which is one of the world's largest advertising agency holding companies. SpikeDDB is a collaboration between spike lee and DDB (and therefore Omnicom by extension). All that being said, I don't personally know if the agency in question is SpikeDDB or not.
Spike contracted the agency, (or so it seems from a forwarded email) and he has the most control over the agency. I think by not publicly mentioning the agency's name, this gentlemen is demonstrating his desire to resolve this situation amicably and with integrity.
I think it's prudent given that while the agency apparently lowballed him, it's not clear whether the agency or Spike Lee's production company (40 Acres And A Mule Filmworks, appearing on the posters in question on his Facebook page) are the party actually responsible for the theft/misappropriation.
"misappropriation".. I had this word in my mind the entire time while reading the open letter. I can't really think of a word to better describe just what seems to be going on here.
Presumably his contract prevents him from discussing internal issues with any outside party.
(Knowledge source: Got totally screwed by a business partner via legalese and had all my work stolen, ended up doing half a year of work uncompensated, can't legally talk about it or the partner, and loss < cost of litigation. Ah well, water under bridge.)
Well a big part of this whole problem is that he had no contract to begin with ("We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements").
That aside, he works as a freelancer in an industry where naming and shaming specific agencies could very well hinder his ability to get future work, so I don't blame him for not doing it.
It's actually smart. You are more likely to get press traction and a response crucifying an individual than a faceless company. Also, everyone is responsible here, "having people who handle it" is all too often an easy way to free everyone from responsibility.
The difference is the implicit agreement between the author and the agency, without which the former wouldn't have spent two months making those works.
You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post:
"We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements and I certainly never agreed to donating or selling any copyright of my work without a licensing fee."
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal.
So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar.
Let's test that: to read this post, you must agree to pay me 5BTC. Have you now committed an illegality? I guess not.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post
He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again?
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
Sure they should, by whoever has an (explicit or implicit) agreement to pay them. Thankfully I haven't, but I still like to reward them when I can for all the joy they brought me.
Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute.
I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.
Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
> I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.
Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law.
> Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
I don't know much about the Dutch law, but it is supplemented by a 'piracy tax', ie, storage devices are more expensive to purchase among other things.
Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law.
That's putting your arguments into the realm of faith. If those three citations are any indication, your faith is misplaced. All of those were for people doing distribution (e.g. uploading). None of them were for downloading.
I don't think it is much to ask for you to have just one definite case to back up your claim that the legality of downloading is not in dispute. Just one.
I went through the first four hits on that. All of them included uploading. Please pick a case that you are confident supports your claims and then we can examine it.
As a point of order, the surest way to admit you are wrong is to tell the other person to "google it." It isn't anyone else's job to prove you are right.
Somehow there's this weird gap where people completely freak out over the difference between stealing and copying, but the difference between uploading and downloading just slides right by.
Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute.
Actually, not where I live. But the point is that the situations are different, because I don't have an agreement with any artist. Whether that makes it illegal to use copyright works was not the issue in discussion. What was being discussed was the supposed hypocrisy of anti-copyright people.
there wasn't any contract.
There's was an implied agreement. Whether he has a legal foot to stand on is irrelevant to this discussion, because we weren't talking about the legality of the situation, but what it should be.
And so I ask again, when did I agree to that, in an explicit or implicit way? And you yourself answered, "you didn't if you downloaded it without paying". So no, there isn't.
In case you can't get past the paywall (try googling the title and going from there), the summary is that a woman got a protective court order and then she called police and told them her husband had violated the court order. They did not act, and he killed her three kids.
If a court order with explicit instructions to arrest should it be violated isn't enough to move the police into action, simply encountering you isn't worth a hill of beans.
You agreed to it when you paid in order to watch it.
So yes, you didn't. But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. It's a simple deal, regardless of whether or not technology means you could.
Otherwise you can turn it around and ask "when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying" which is pretty similar to the case described here, just replace watching with using.
> If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
This argument makes no sense. You can play the music you bought for other people for free, just like giving a free car ride. You did in fact pay for the Toyota, just like you would to purchase an album.
The courts in my jurisdiction disagree, but in any case, I wasn't making a legal argument, but an ethical one. Unless of course you consider that any illegal activity is necessarily unethical, in which case we have nothing to discuss.
You can play the music you bought for other people for free
Not freely, I can't, only under the very restrictive limits of fair use. But I grant you the analogy isn't good. In any case, the point stands: why should I get to decide who can do what with the works (in my case, software) I produce, after I sell them?
I have a hard time seeing the argument that it should be unilateral. An agreement should be between multiple parties, so if you don't agree to what they're offering, you shouldn't take it. Otherwise it devolves into "I will take it because I can." Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones? If you want to take it, you probably see some value in its creation.
Otherwise it devolves into "I will take it because I can."
A free society implies that should be the default, with well justified exceptions. I don't see decent justifications for copyright.
Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones?
The fact that the latter are scarce and rivalrous. Private property is a mechanism to prevent/reduce conflicts. But I'm not opposed to suggestions for alternative mechanisms either.
> Private property is a mechanism to prevent/reduce conflicts.
I don't know that I agree. I'm more inclined to view private property as a mechanism to encourage productive use of land and other scarce resources. And I see creativity/time/inspiration as a scarce resource.
If it would be possible to keep driving the Toyota while lending it to three different friends at the same time - I'm sure Toyota would have a problem with that.
And fundies have a problem that I can watch porn. The question is, why should I care about their, Toyota's or copyright holders' problems? As a software developer, I ask as a copyright holder myself.
Who do you think you're kidding? You obviously know about the obligation to pay; you've just decided that if the product you want access to has been laundered through at least one 3rd party, you've never had to look any of the producers in the eye, and therefore you have no obligation to them. If anything, you're even worse than the person who originally published the content you're taking: they're at least accountable to the original relationship that gave them access to the product.
That first sentence sounds outraged and pointed, but it's not; it's a serious question. Every time this issue comes up, I feel like I read people making similar points, as if they were remotely convincing. I really want to know who, among all the people who are not already on your side on this issue, you think would be persuaded by the logic that "I didn't have a contract with the producer of _Wall-E_, and so I'm not obligated to pay them before downloading and watching their movie." It seems to me that a child can see where the obligation to pay comes from.
To be fair, all property law is just as fictional. I didn't agree to not trespass or use items that other people claim belong to them. I didn't agree to the papers they hold saying that I cannot go for a joyride in my neighbors' car.
The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area.
There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
Scarcity is what sustains private property, as a way to control conflicts when multiple people want to access rivalrous goods. Intellectual property is a collection of disparate concepts, but if we take copyright, there's no similar justification for it.
Right, some kind of solution for scarcity is needed, but any particular property system is merely a possible implementation. And while "scarcity" is not a problem solved by IP, there are other problem that IP does indeed solve.
All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
Sophomoric semantic rationalization. Two different settings for copyright violation, but sure, just use synonyms and related concepts to make one seem bad and the other OK; gullible message board nerds ravenous for validation for pirating movies, music, and software will lap it up.
There's more than a semantic difference between moral and material interests. In fact most "internet hippies" I know wants strong moral protection for authors [0][1]. It's a fairly central concept in the copyright debate, not least since it's part of the universal declaration of human rights.
No. If you have a contract to get paid for work, it really doesn't matter whether you "own" the end product in any meaningful way. You should get paid according to the terms of the contract, even if it was just a verbal contract.
And taking credit for someone's work is not remotely the same as copying it without their permission, attribution intact. Can you not tell the difference?
Sorry, it was a failed attempt at being funny. I was implying bananacurve was referring to a strawman ("internet hippies saying everything should be free").
Believing that copyright shouldn't exist or should be limited from it's current status but contracts should be enforced is a completely valid position.
You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright. Otherwise there is nothing of value upon which to base the contract. That is where copyright came from in the first place.
>You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright.
Yes you can. The value is in the time and creative process that went into creating the creative work.
A contract that says I will pay you $1000 to create a piece of open source software, is still a valid and enforceable contract, even though I won't own the software in the end.
You definitely can - it's contracts for performing a service, and it doesn't matter if the end result is some copyrightable artifact like a poem, an uncopyrightable artifact like a finding of fact (x % of surveyed people liked your product) or no artifacts at all, as for many services.
Not that I'm firmly in the camp of 'everything should be free', but in this case the agency promised the designer "There's no money now, but since you hold the copyright on the work, if we decide to distribute it, we'll have to pay you later. So work for peanuts, okay?"
If there were not copyright at all, then the agency wouldn't have had the promise of future revenue to lure the designer into the deal in the first place.
If everyone knew up front that once the work was done it would be free to the world, there would have been no misunderstanding, and the designer would have had an easier time insisting on getting paid properly up front.
If you publish something in public for all the world to see, don't expect random strangers to just hand you money for the privilege of seeing it.
But if someone tells you they will pay you for your work, and then when you spend two months working on it, they refuse to pay and furthermore pass the work off as their own, that's fucked up no matter what the copyright laws are in your country.
This has little to do with IP law, and everything to do with contract law and negotiation. A position like "short copyright period and no software patents" is trivial reconciled with "don't do work without contracts, and have the law enforce contracts."
Most movies don't make what they used to--that is before the Internet. I would sue in small claims court. I'm surprised
The Cricket didn't sub the job out to Indian graphic designer--and get away with paying a few rupees.
Small Claims Courts are limited to claims of a certain amount, typically something like $500. There's no way he could get back anywhere close to the real value of his design by suing them there.
Besides, what the movie makes doesn't matter. He'd be suing the ad agency that ripped off his design, not the producers of the movie.
They didn't seem to use his comps… I'm assuming he had access to the same pool of photography that the finals used, but that doesn't mean they ripped him off. The work on top of the photos seems very different to me.
If Mr. Garcia wants to work long hours in a stressful environment but at least get paid something for it.... perhaps he should apply for a job at Penny Arcade.
Sadly, this story is all too typical of how advertising agencies work. Having worked with a number of agencies in the past, I found that nearly all of them were more than willing to steal work, not pay, break contracts, and engage in other unsavory hardball tactics.
This situation certainly looks like a blatant ripoff to me. I hope Juan Luis Garcia gets a great attorney and hefty amount of money.
There's big money and fame in high-profile work, and that can be very attractive... but stories like this, and the frequency with which they occur, are important to pay attention to. You can do everything right, you can make everyone happy, you can meet every demand, and you still stand a very real chance of getting absolutely shafted.
I've experienced enough of this with much less prolific projects that I happily keep pretty much everything small time now. Chasing billboards and marquees is almost always a game for lucky people and the already-rich.
Are there any reasonable escrow services out there for designers? It seems that a third party with a list of conditions for both sides could hang on to a predetermined amount of money and the digital assets until both parties agree to release.
There are perhaps caveats that I've not considered, but this idea comes to me again and again when I hear this kind of story (again).
Edit: Guess I also have to throw in here that I am continually amazed at the number of people who are afraid to do the dirty work of being in business (drawing up contacts, negotiating, calculating margin, saying NO, etc).
well, yes. I am assuming a lawyer call is enough to make 95% of people shut up and pay. at least in western world.
So existence of contract reduces your risk 10-20 fold
Seriously, what is it with "Agencies" lately? Who the F--k are these people?
I have heard/experienced a dozen similar stories recently. I have a friend who left a huge agency to freelance–only to have another small agency work him to the bone and take advantage of him almost exactly like the story here.
YES I ABSOLUTELY GET THAT THE ONUS IS ON THE FREELANCER/SUB TO GET THEIR CONTRACTS IN PLACE ...
But, seriously, these people are ridiculous. A bunch of salespeople in suits tossing around buzzwords so they can land a job taking advantage of a big company's big budget. Everything is a pitch or a comp or a big lead.
My advice to all freelance hackers and designers: if you meet someone who says they work at an agency, (a) tell them you're a janitor and (b) run away.
> My advice to all freelance hackers and designers: if you meet someone who says they work at an agency, (a) tell them you're a janitor and (b) run away.
c) Tell them you don't do spec work, because you're not a moron - fuck you pay me.
Agency finds naive freelancer, offers a job for exposure & other bullshit, overwhelms with fixes/updates, pretends being dissatisfied/offended, refuses to pay. This kind of story is as old as freelancing itself, only the names of parties involved change.
PSA for inexperienced freelancers: Nobody will unclog your crapper for a promise of future gigs, designers and programmers shouldn't put up with such scams either. Too many of us gained this wisdom the hard way.
They're parasites and bottom dwellers empowered by the fact that online marketing lowered the entry bar into marketing.
During my 5-year experience with them, I quit in one where I worked full-time, worked with several dozen of these 'agencies', my ex works for one, and I am due payment tommorow by one. I'm drawing a line here (not nudged by this letter, I've come to that decision few weeks back) - I'll never work with them again.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients. They're never satisfied with the results, they won't pay the market rate, they abuse their employees. At first agency, I worked 120h a week, for several months, on several ocassions. Ended up in ER twice, lost an organ (gallbladder) and seriously damaged another (chronic gastritis) in short period of time, had micronap hallucinations regulary. Yes, I should've known better. Youthful energy got the best of me. It got best out of all their other employees, almost all who have left "violently". I was 27 at that point.
On a more lighter note - old school marketeers with vision, concept and drive now get even more respect from me. I didn't appreciate them enough when I started, thinking that they're not doing enough "numbers". Tough times for them and it's a shame. They'll be back on horse soon enough, I hope. There ought to be data-sucking ad-providing backlash at one point, right? Tell me it is so.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients.
Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing. I feel slightly sorry for this guy, but his failure to get any kind of deal memo or contract in place shows him to be an amateur.
EDIT: I extended my original comment as it was so brief as to be potentially confusing.
As for ripping off his design for the poster - nope. I recognized the visual concept immediately as a fan of Chan Wook Park's original Oldboy of which this is a remake. Here's a publicity still from the film: http://byt.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
So the notion of a man emerging from a packing case in an empty field is part of the scripted action of the film, not Mr Garcia's idea. The image of a woman in the background is also related to a story element (which I'd prefer not to explain lest it spoil the plot) and I'm willing to bet she appears with similar costuming in the film. The fonts, layout and content of the textual elements are wholly different And far more inspired by the publicity materials of the Korean original.
The marketing company should not be employing Mr Garcia's material on their social networking pages. However, it's unsurprising that whoever is in charge of the social media marketing would assume that any and all art assets were the products of a work-for-hire agreement as that is normal practice within the industry. however, this also has to viewed in the light of:
Early in the conversation the agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the “exposure” so since I knew I was not going to getting paid I put the posters in my portfolio.
This is a grey area. An industry portfolio is generally understood to be for exhibition to other clients. Standard practice for cinematographers, production designers and other keys etc. is to either a) negotiate a release for copyrighted materials to be part of a public demo reel or b) to limit access to the demo reel to potential clients, eg by using password-protected videos on vimeo or sending publicity stills privately through email, samples of recorded dialog (if you're a sound person, as I am). And so on. Again, this is the sort thing that is usually established in a deal memo, and such a normal situation that it's typically boilerplate.
Without such an agreement, any claim by Mr Garcia that the pictures in his portfolio were official key art in any capacity (even unused) verges on being an implicit appropriation of trademarks, publicity rights, and/copyrighted material (to they extent that they employed any elements from production stills etc.), as distinct from mere 'fan art.'
Now, it's bad that Mr Garcia got no contract in place but I really think there is a bit more to this story, because the first thing any producer learns on anything but the most amateur-hour production is to get legal releases for any and all performances or copyrighted material on a work-for-hire basis. contractual relations are the lifeblood of the film business and even small indie productions with budgets of only a few thousand dollars use boiler plate agreements.
I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked in this field for a decade and I've been party or witness to disputes about ownership of work from both sides of the table. I don't find Mr Garcia's version of events entirely persuasive.
Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing.
I'm sorry for you feel that way. You can opt-in in making a meaningful and fruitful business relations instead? Shame it's an opt-in, and not opt-out, though. I guess Bible's right on that one.
Producers want to pay as little as possible, for obvious economic reasons. Freelancers want to be paid as much as possible, likewise. If you're not operating under a union or guild contract of some sort (and paying part of your income in dues for the privilege of outsourcing and standardizing your rates and working conditions), then it's up to you to make the best deal you can for your services, and and part of that involves a willingness to walk.
On a couple of occasions I've rejected a job only to be called up several weeks later when the lower-cost provider the producer contracted with didn't perform, and in cases like that I ask for and get my full fee. It's a tough world.
No, I don't agree with that. It's a dog-eat-dog world if you make it. But world is so far and wide that you can bypass all that crap for the most part.
I am not (well, trying not too when I'm zen enough, unlike now with all this ranting) taking up working with anyone who doesn't see our collaboration as pure win-win situation, and will provide me with more than I ask for, and I provide him with more than he bargained for.
Stress-B-Gone, and life become a real page-turner!
That's the ideal way to work, but it doesn't always pan out - and relationships with heightened expectations but no formalities often make for the worst conflicts if they go south.
So long as the author/designer didn't have a contract in place to sell his work, then they don't own it and he retains copyright. As a result they're committing criminal copyright infringement and he should be referring this to the FBI for federal prosecution. They will have zero ability to prove that they own the work so I imagine it might go very well for the designer.
Surely copyright law isn't that difficult. Every person owns the copyright to everything that they make, even sans registration with the LoC. Okay, so the designer does retain copyright, provided that it wasn't work-for-hire.
There is no contract between the designer and the design company. And from what he says, he didn't get paid to develop on an hourly rate which means that it's not work-for-hire. And he hasn't been paid, which means that there wasn't an implicit contract or a verbal one that culminated in payment.
That means that the design company won't have any proof that it originated the art (and thus would have copyright of it), nor will it have any proof that it purchased or licensed the art (and thus would have some rights to use it). The designer could likely produce many design iterations that might be quite convincing to a jury that he was in fact the person who generated the designs.
Of course there's no way to be sure that the FBI would take the designer seriously. He's just a "normal guy" and his adversary is large and probably well funded. But that doesn't mean that the "normal guy" is wrong.
The designer should not have worked without a contract. What he did amounts to spec work. Next time, he will make sure that he and the agency sign a contract stating that when he gets paid, the transfer of copyright occurs.
Right, I agree with you 100% that he made a mistake. But the mistake that he made doesn't mean that the agency has a free pass to take his work and use it for free, no consequences.
Well, no what? You gave me a link and nothing more. That's not a rebuttal. It's very nearly as bad as saying "nuh uh!!" as if we're children on a playground.
Wrong wrong wrong! Even if you don't want to participate in their way of doing business - there's an _enormous_ amount of very high value skills you can learn from them.
"A bunch of salespeople in suits tossing around buzzwords so they can land a job taking advantage of a big company's big budget. Everything is a pitch or a comp or a big lead."
That is indeed exactly the difference between most "agencies" and most small design firms/freelancers.
The agency has salespeople who know how to value and sell the work a freelancer can do, for an order of magnitude or so more money that that freelance will negotiate for themselves. You might think "I could give that company what they want in a few days with WordPress, a great theme I'm already very familiar with, and a solid day's worth of graphic design and css futzing - I'd do it for a friend for a few grand, but they're a big company so I'll see if I can get away with charging them $8 or $10 grand…". And you'd quite likely lose the job to the agency who comes in talking about Business Goals and Website Goals, Audience Demographics, Conversions, SMART metrics, Information Architecture, User Interface and User Experience design, Content Inventories, Conversion focused and SEO focused copywriting, Social Media integration, broader alignment with current marketing activity, leveraging existing business relationships and co-branding key messages - they'll spend two weeks (billing by the hour) talking to key stakeholders and decision makers at the client (while dressed, as you point out, in smart suits), then submit a proposal for a $280,000 project and, in case the budget doesn't stretch that far, a simpler $150,000 version. And they'll also have the known-effective "sales closer" tactics, probably something like "we've got a few slots open in out pipeline next quarter, I'm pretty sure if we could get this approved and signed before the end of the month I could talk finance into a 12% discount on a full upfront payment…"
The _good_ agencies will actually deliver a lot more business value that a freelancer with a good design eye, a folderful of WordPress themes, and a GoDaddy hosting reseller account.
A _bad_ agency will just have search/replaced the company name in their previous pitch powerpoint decks and web project proposal docs - and deliver a not-very-varefully-planned canned-theme WordPress site anyway, probably farmed out for $8k to some freelancer with the promise of heaps of future work and some great exposure…
Knowing which clients are going to get $100k+ value out of a project, then pitching a proposal based on value delivered, rather than hours worked. _That's_ what a successful agency does. (And what most freelancers have very little idea how to do.)
No, not really. From my anecdotal experience, which does include many a project exceeding the amounts you cited, it usually goes like this (paraphrased):
Agency's army of spineless sales people [1] spends a lot of time ass licking many people, one of them happens to love his anus tickled in that manner, then he dumps a bag of money to them, they spend 90% of that money pumping ads, and 10% on development of what's supposed to masquerade as a 'marketing campaign'. Anus-tickle-lover still gets a nice spreadsheet at the end of the month ('Yay, profits!') and they all live happily ever after.
Well, not all. In-house developers crook their spine to the will of their masters and get an occassional team-building event paid for, and outsourced developers get eaten alive in the witch's cabin.
[1] It helps if you're a handsome woman. A fact, sir. No citation needed. Desired even.
Shhh, nobody was supposed to know landing huge-ass contracts involves sucking dick. On a serious note, I guess bigiain's point was that freelancers that know better usually have no clue about bringing business value to the table.
Heh - I suspect the main difference between your description of the process and mine is that I'm in a "third cup of coffee, should be on my way to the office" timezone, and I'm guessing your in a "finished at the office, savouring the third beer" timezone, and hence we've got slightly different sates of mind and social inhibitions. But I'm sure we both know exactly what each other is describing.
(Surely you have seen the occasional great non-literal-ass-licking salespeople working for genuinely great marketing agencies? And agencies that deliver _spectacular_ word and achive magnificent results for clients? I'm quite proud to have been told I came in second with pitches against a few agencies I'm particularly impressed by in my small space here… But I will beat them one day, Oh yes…)
But no, I don't have office, don't usually drink (can't, destroyed a bunch of parts of digestive system).
occasional great non-literal-ass-licking salespeople
No. To be perfectly honest, no. Not once. They're pretty disgusting to me.
genuinely great marketing agencies
Sure. Rarely, but yes. They don't do FB Ads and AdWords tho.
I'm quite proud to have been told I came in second with pitches against a few agencies I'm particularly impressed by in my small space here… But I will beat them one day, Oh yes…)
I'm happy for you being happy and enthusiastic. I was once too. But, I'll take the liberty to advise you - leave the space. Immediately. It's a sulphuric pit. You don't age well there.
Well, all that doesn't hold water unless you're on of them. Are you?
Sales, SEO and those doing middle work are loaded with "GOALS" that never are enough by the employers. It is sickening what they do. The lack of respect for the true working class is only going to get better if we shut out these type of services.
It's actually good that you didn't have a contract. If you did, you would probably be sworn to secrecy and not be able to share this story. Sure, with a contract you could take them to court, but you can do that anyway if someone stole your work.
I did work through an agency for a San Francisco interior designer. The agency's Founder paid me with multiple bad checks. Meanwhile, two years later, my work continues to be used and I remain unpaid for a month of full time work.
I ended up launching a site exposing the guy behind the agency who has a history of writing bad checks. I've received many emails from others he scammed or tried to scam so I find some peace in the fact that when people google his name, a site exposing the guy come up.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadAs the open letter makes very clear - it was bad behaviour on the part of the agency, and Spike most likely didn't know it was going on (and the letter even suggests the agency was actively lying to him about it).
But - Spike is ultimately the one in control of the money-tap the agency is drinking from. While he had "absolutely nothing to do with this", it was no doubt done on his behalf, and he absolutely has the power to fix it. If he says "No, that's not how we do things", then it'll get fixed. (Arguably there are many other people below Spike who could also make that call, but I have some sympathy for the original poster - it would be a great deal of work if it's possible at all, to find out who in the middle management chain of command has sufficient authority to solve this problem and how to contact them directly.)
I think it's 100% plausible that the agency accepted Lee's decision on which poster design to use as "last word", while not fully disclosing (and perhaps even actively deceiving him about) the payment/negotiations/contracts/copyrights with the designer.
A contract, negotiated up-front, might have prevented the agency from taking advantage of him.
Even if he blew most of the money he was making on lawyers, what then?
Now he puts everything he's ever owned into suing the company?
We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements
...leads to these:
The agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the "exposure"
I never even got paid the peanuts they owed me
The agency responded by threatening me with legal action and worse
Whenever a client states or implies that "the exposure" will be payment enough, alarm bells should be ringing.
That said, this was probably not the kind of controversy Spike Lee needs attached to this project.
side note: Roger Ebert's raving review of Oldboy was what got me to watch the original Oldboy and that spurred a whole new appreciation of independent foreign films for me:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2005
Would've loved to see what he thought about this one, though Ebert's successor only gave the remake 3 stars
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013 http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/oldboy-2013
I don't really see any parallels between Battle Royale and Oldboy. You might check out The Chaser and Yellow Sea, though.
A similar controversy arose when M. Night Shyamalan sat on the rights for "Life of Pi" for a few years, but was ultimately replaced by Ang Lee. The only one who could master such a job.
With the Oldboy remake it was clear from the beginning that it would lead to a desaster, but apparently the studio owed Spike Lee a big favor.
Additionally, he has no apparent way to contact him.
EDIT: I really don't want to point fingers with 0 proof, but Spike Lee happens to be CEO of an ad agency named Spike DDB. https://twitter.com/SpikeDDB
(Knowledge source: Got totally screwed by a business partner via legalese and had all my work stolen, ended up doing half a year of work uncompensated, can't legally talk about it or the partner, and loss < cost of litigation. Ah well, water under bridge.)
That aside, he works as a freelancer in an industry where naming and shaming specific agencies could very well hinder his ability to get future work, so I don't blame him for not doing it.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post:
"We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements and I certainly never agreed to donating or selling any copyright of my work without a licensing fee."
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar.
Let's test that: to read this post, you must agree to pay me 5BTC. Have you now committed an illegality? I guess not.
Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post
He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again?
So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
Sure they should, by whoever has an (explicit or implicit) agreement to pay them. Thankfully I haven't, but I still like to reward them when I can for all the joy they brought me.
Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute.
> He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again?
I read it, your prior post was very short. See my quote above directly from his blog post; there wasn't any contract.
I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading.
Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
Canada: http://archive.is/W0mdI
Netherlands: http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-...
Spain: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fastlink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Site_Down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buccaneer
Note: Just because I don't have any cases offhand of my friends fined for jaywalking, doesn't mean it isn't against the law.
> Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too.
I don't know much about the Dutch law, but it is supplemented by a 'piracy tax', ie, storage devices are more expensive to purchase among other things.
That's putting your arguments into the realm of faith. If those three citations are any indication, your faith is misplaced. All of those were for people doing distribution (e.g. uploading). None of them were for downloading.
I don't think it is much to ask for you to have just one definite case to back up your claim that the legality of downloading is not in dispute. Just one.
Here's one for jaywalking: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/raquel-nelson-jai...
As a point of order, the surest way to admit you are wrong is to tell the other person to "google it." It isn't anyone else's job to prove you are right.
Actually, not where I live. But the point is that the situations are different, because I don't have an agreement with any artist. Whether that makes it illegal to use copyright works was not the issue in discussion. What was being discussed was the supposed hypocrisy of anti-copyright people.
there wasn't any contract.
There's was an implied agreement. Whether he has a legal foot to stand on is irrelevant to this discussion, because we weren't talking about the legality of the situation, but what it should be.
There is also an implied agreement that when an artist asks you to pay $12 for a CD, that you pay for it. This isn't very hard to understand.
Some things are just part of societal existence. You can't opt out of them any more than you can opt out of paying your taxes on profits you make.
That's a particularly poor example.
Supreme Court Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
In case you can't get past the paywall (try googling the title and going from there), the summary is that a woman got a protective court order and then she called police and told them her husband had violated the court order. They did not act, and he killed her three kids.
If a court order with explicit instructions to arrest should it be violated isn't enough to move the police into action, simply encountering you isn't worth a hill of beans.
So yes, you didn't. But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. It's a simple deal, regardless of whether or not technology means you could.
Otherwise you can turn it around and ask "when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying" which is pretty similar to the case described here, just replace watching with using.
Why?
when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying
If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
It's against the law.
> If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
This argument makes no sense. You can play the music you bought for other people for free, just like giving a free car ride. You did in fact pay for the Toyota, just like you would to purchase an album.
The courts in my jurisdiction disagree, but in any case, I wasn't making a legal argument, but an ethical one. Unless of course you consider that any illegal activity is necessarily unethical, in which case we have nothing to discuss.
You can play the music you bought for other people for free
Not freely, I can't, only under the very restrictive limits of fair use. But I grant you the analogy isn't good. In any case, the point stands: why should I get to decide who can do what with the works (in my case, software) I produce, after I sell them?
A free society implies that should be the default, with well justified exceptions. I don't see decent justifications for copyright.
Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones?
The fact that the latter are scarce and rivalrous. Private property is a mechanism to prevent/reduce conflicts. But I'm not opposed to suggestions for alternative mechanisms either.
I don't know that I agree. I'm more inclined to view private property as a mechanism to encourage productive use of land and other scarce resources. And I see creativity/time/inspiration as a scarce resource.
That first sentence sounds outraged and pointed, but it's not; it's a serious question. Every time this issue comes up, I feel like I read people making similar points, as if they were remotely convincing. I really want to know who, among all the people who are not already on your side on this issue, you think would be persuaded by the logic that "I didn't have a contract with the producer of _Wall-E_, and so I'm not obligated to pay them before downloading and watching their movie." It seems to me that a child can see where the obligation to pay comes from.
The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area.
There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
See Against Intellectual Property, by Stephan Kinsella: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
I'm not sure why you feel I would disagree with that, or why would that contradict my position. I'm not a believer in natural laws.
[0] http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-c... [1] http://the1709blog.blogspot.se/2012/05/pirate-party-plans-fo... [2] http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/400/60/PDF/G0...
And taking credit for someone's work is not remotely the same as copying it without their permission, attribution intact. Can you not tell the difference?
Yes you can. The value is in the time and creative process that went into creating the creative work.
A contract that says I will pay you $1000 to create a piece of open source software, is still a valid and enforceable contract, even though I won't own the software in the end.
If there were not copyright at all, then the agency wouldn't have had the promise of future revenue to lure the designer into the deal in the first place.
If everyone knew up front that once the work was done it would be free to the world, there would have been no misunderstanding, and the designer would have had an easier time insisting on getting paid properly up front.
If you publish something in public for all the world to see, don't expect random strangers to just hand you money for the privilege of seeing it.
But if someone tells you they will pay you for your work, and then when you spend two months working on it, they refuse to pay and furthermore pass the work off as their own, that's fucked up no matter what the copyright laws are in your country.
Are you trolling?
Even the extreme open source advocates would agree that, if you commission a guy to do some work for you for an agreed price, you should pay him.
Besides, what the movie makes doesn't matter. He'd be suing the ad agency that ripped off his design, not the producers of the movie.
Did you get to the part where they clearly posted his comps on facebook?
Sounds like a move up.
This situation certainly looks like a blatant ripoff to me. I hope Juan Luis Garcia gets a great attorney and hefty amount of money.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/designer-claims...
I've experienced enough of this with much less prolific projects that I happily keep pretty much everything small time now. Chasing billboards and marquees is almost always a game for lucky people and the already-rich.
There are perhaps caveats that I've not considered, but this idea comes to me again and again when I hear this kind of story (again).
Edit: Guess I also have to throw in here that I am continually amazed at the number of people who are afraid to do the dirty work of being in business (drawing up contacts, negotiating, calculating margin, saying NO, etc).
1. The contract will be honoured and
2. The cost of litigation is lower than the unpaid $.
I have heard/experienced a dozen similar stories recently. I have a friend who left a huge agency to freelance–only to have another small agency work him to the bone and take advantage of him almost exactly like the story here.
YES I ABSOLUTELY GET THAT THE ONUS IS ON THE FREELANCER/SUB TO GET THEIR CONTRACTS IN PLACE ...
But, seriously, these people are ridiculous. A bunch of salespeople in suits tossing around buzzwords so they can land a job taking advantage of a big company's big budget. Everything is a pitch or a comp or a big lead.
My advice to all freelance hackers and designers: if you meet someone who says they work at an agency, (a) tell them you're a janitor and (b) run away.
c) Tell them you don't do spec work, because you're not a moron - fuck you pay me.
Agency finds naive freelancer, offers a job for exposure & other bullshit, overwhelms with fixes/updates, pretends being dissatisfied/offended, refuses to pay. This kind of story is as old as freelancing itself, only the names of parties involved change.
PSA for inexperienced freelancers: Nobody will unclog your crapper for a promise of future gigs, designers and programmers shouldn't put up with such scams either. Too many of us gained this wisdom the hard way.
They're parasites and bottom dwellers empowered by the fact that online marketing lowered the entry bar into marketing.
During my 5-year experience with them, I quit in one where I worked full-time, worked with several dozen of these 'agencies', my ex works for one, and I am due payment tommorow by one. I'm drawing a line here (not nudged by this letter, I've come to that decision few weeks back) - I'll never work with them again.
Their job is to suck your soul out, give you peanut shells, and kiss asses to their clients. They're never satisfied with the results, they won't pay the market rate, they abuse their employees. At first agency, I worked 120h a week, for several months, on several ocassions. Ended up in ER twice, lost an organ (gallbladder) and seriously damaged another (chronic gastritis) in short period of time, had micronap hallucinations regulary. Yes, I should've known better. Youthful energy got the best of me. It got best out of all their other employees, almost all who have left "violently". I was 27 at that point.
On a more lighter note - old school marketeers with vision, concept and drive now get even more respect from me. I didn't appreciate them enough when I started, thinking that they're not doing enough "numbers". Tough times for them and it's a shame. They'll be back on horse soon enough, I hope. There ought to be data-sucking ad-providing backlash at one point, right? Tell me it is so.
Correct. And your job as a freelancer is to do the same thing. I feel slightly sorry for this guy, but his failure to get any kind of deal memo or contract in place shows him to be an amateur.
EDIT: I extended my original comment as it was so brief as to be potentially confusing.
As for ripping off his design for the poster - nope. I recognized the visual concept immediately as a fan of Chan Wook Park's original Oldboy of which this is a remake. Here's a publicity still from the film: http://byt.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
So the notion of a man emerging from a packing case in an empty field is part of the scripted action of the film, not Mr Garcia's idea. The image of a woman in the background is also related to a story element (which I'd prefer not to explain lest it spoil the plot) and I'm willing to bet she appears with similar costuming in the film. The fonts, layout and content of the textual elements are wholly different And far more inspired by the publicity materials of the Korean original.
The marketing company should not be employing Mr Garcia's material on their social networking pages. However, it's unsurprising that whoever is in charge of the social media marketing would assume that any and all art assets were the products of a work-for-hire agreement as that is normal practice within the industry. however, this also has to viewed in the light of:
Early in the conversation the agency told me that I could publish the work as my own for the “exposure” so since I knew I was not going to getting paid I put the posters in my portfolio.
This is a grey area. An industry portfolio is generally understood to be for exhibition to other clients. Standard practice for cinematographers, production designers and other keys etc. is to either a) negotiate a release for copyrighted materials to be part of a public demo reel or b) to limit access to the demo reel to potential clients, eg by using password-protected videos on vimeo or sending publicity stills privately through email, samples of recorded dialog (if you're a sound person, as I am). And so on. Again, this is the sort thing that is usually established in a deal memo, and such a normal situation that it's typically boilerplate.
Without such an agreement, any claim by Mr Garcia that the pictures in his portfolio were official key art in any capacity (even unused) verges on being an implicit appropriation of trademarks, publicity rights, and/copyrighted material (to they extent that they employed any elements from production stills etc.), as distinct from mere 'fan art.'
Now, it's bad that Mr Garcia got no contract in place but I really think there is a bit more to this story, because the first thing any producer learns on anything but the most amateur-hour production is to get legal releases for any and all performances or copyrighted material on a work-for-hire basis. contractual relations are the lifeblood of the film business and even small indie productions with budgets of only a few thousand dollars use boiler plate agreements.
I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked in this field for a decade and I've been party or witness to disputes about ownership of work from both sides of the table. I don't find Mr Garcia's version of events entirely persuasive.
I'm sorry for you feel that way. You can opt-in in making a meaningful and fruitful business relations instead? Shame it's an opt-in, and not opt-out, though. I guess Bible's right on that one.
On a couple of occasions I've rejected a job only to be called up several weeks later when the lower-cost provider the producer contracted with didn't perform, and in cases like that I ask for and get my full fee. It's a tough world.
I am not (well, trying not too when I'm zen enough, unlike now with all this ranting) taking up working with anyone who doesn't see our collaboration as pure win-win situation, and will provide me with more than I ask for, and I provide him with more than he bargained for.
Stress-B-Gone, and life become a real page-turner!
There is no contract between the designer and the design company. And from what he says, he didn't get paid to develop on an hourly rate which means that it's not work-for-hire. And he hasn't been paid, which means that there wasn't an implicit contract or a verbal one that culminated in payment.
That means that the design company won't have any proof that it originated the art (and thus would have copyright of it), nor will it have any proof that it purchased or licensed the art (and thus would have some rights to use it). The designer could likely produce many design iterations that might be quite convincing to a jury that he was in fact the person who generated the designs.
Of course there's no way to be sure that the FBI would take the designer seriously. He's just a "normal guy" and his adversary is large and probably well funded. But that doesn't mean that the "normal guy" is wrong.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506
"A bunch of salespeople in suits tossing around buzzwords so they can land a job taking advantage of a big company's big budget. Everything is a pitch or a comp or a big lead."
That is indeed exactly the difference between most "agencies" and most small design firms/freelancers.
The agency has salespeople who know how to value and sell the work a freelancer can do, for an order of magnitude or so more money that that freelance will negotiate for themselves. You might think "I could give that company what they want in a few days with WordPress, a great theme I'm already very familiar with, and a solid day's worth of graphic design and css futzing - I'd do it for a friend for a few grand, but they're a big company so I'll see if I can get away with charging them $8 or $10 grand…". And you'd quite likely lose the job to the agency who comes in talking about Business Goals and Website Goals, Audience Demographics, Conversions, SMART metrics, Information Architecture, User Interface and User Experience design, Content Inventories, Conversion focused and SEO focused copywriting, Social Media integration, broader alignment with current marketing activity, leveraging existing business relationships and co-branding key messages - they'll spend two weeks (billing by the hour) talking to key stakeholders and decision makers at the client (while dressed, as you point out, in smart suits), then submit a proposal for a $280,000 project and, in case the budget doesn't stretch that far, a simpler $150,000 version. And they'll also have the known-effective "sales closer" tactics, probably something like "we've got a few slots open in out pipeline next quarter, I'm pretty sure if we could get this approved and signed before the end of the month I could talk finance into a 12% discount on a full upfront payment…"
The _good_ agencies will actually deliver a lot more business value that a freelancer with a good design eye, a folderful of WordPress themes, and a GoDaddy hosting reseller account.
A _bad_ agency will just have search/replaced the company name in their previous pitch powerpoint decks and web project proposal docs - and deliver a not-very-varefully-planned canned-theme WordPress site anyway, probably farmed out for $8k to some freelancer with the promise of heaps of future work and some great exposure…
Knowing which clients are going to get $100k+ value out of a project, then pitching a proposal based on value delivered, rather than hours worked. _That's_ what a successful agency does. (And what most freelancers have very little idea how to do.)
Agency's army of spineless sales people [1] spends a lot of time ass licking many people, one of them happens to love his anus tickled in that manner, then he dumps a bag of money to them, they spend 90% of that money pumping ads, and 10% on development of what's supposed to masquerade as a 'marketing campaign'. Anus-tickle-lover still gets a nice spreadsheet at the end of the month ('Yay, profits!') and they all live happily ever after.
Well, not all. In-house developers crook their spine to the will of their masters and get an occassional team-building event paid for, and outsourced developers get eaten alive in the witch's cabin.
[1] It helps if you're a handsome woman. A fact, sir. No citation needed. Desired even.
(Surely you have seen the occasional great non-literal-ass-licking salespeople working for genuinely great marketing agencies? And agencies that deliver _spectacular_ word and achive magnificent results for clients? I'm quite proud to have been told I came in second with pitches against a few agencies I'm particularly impressed by in my small space here… But I will beat them one day, Oh yes…)
But no, I don't have office, don't usually drink (can't, destroyed a bunch of parts of digestive system).
occasional great non-literal-ass-licking salespeople No. To be perfectly honest, no. Not once. They're pretty disgusting to me.
genuinely great marketing agencies Sure. Rarely, but yes. They don't do FB Ads and AdWords tho.
I'm quite proud to have been told I came in second with pitches against a few agencies I'm particularly impressed by in my small space here… But I will beat them one day, Oh yes…) I'm happy for you being happy and enthusiastic. I was once too. But, I'll take the liberty to advise you - leave the space. Immediately. It's a sulphuric pit. You don't age well there.
Well, all that doesn't hold water unless you're on of them. Are you?
http://vitamintalent.com/common/img/vitabites/vitamin-t-agen...
They will screw you every chance they get.
I did work through an agency for a San Francisco interior designer. The agency's Founder paid me with multiple bad checks. Meanwhile, two years later, my work continues to be used and I remain unpaid for a month of full time work.
I ended up launching a site exposing the guy behind the agency who has a history of writing bad checks. I've received many emails from others he scammed or tried to scam so I find some peace in the fact that when people google his name, a site exposing the guy come up.