To our credit…

I was lucky enough to go to Click 08 last week, the conference on digital developments in advertising organised by Creative Review. It was quite a small event, but it was one of the more useful conferences I have been to this year. I think that it was mainly useful because it was a showcase of projects without collapsing in on itself in a welter of self-promotion and self-agrandisement, but it also raised a couple of questions for me that I think it’s valuable to consider. Key was the issue of accreditation on digital projects.

In the States there is an organisation called SoDA (Society of Digital Agencies) and one of the things they are working on is the establishment of a code of practice with regard to crediting sub-contracted work. This is an issue that affects anyone who works with agencies whether in this country or elsewhere particularly with ad agencies.

The difficulty, as I see it is, that wherever you are in the world it is largely the ad agencies who own the relationships with large brands.  Digital agencies can most easily get access to large clients with an apetite to innovate through ad agencies, it’s one of the reasons that Poke are so sucessful. Mother hold a business realtionship with them and pass them digital work. What is interesting is that Mother never take credit that I have seen - even if they have been involved in the strategic direction of such projects.  That’s an example of a good relationship that benefits both parties. Where it can go wrong is when ad agencies profit off the backs of highly creative digital agencies, sometimes to the extent of collecting awards.

Our experiences of working in partnership have largely been happy ones, but we are a large company and have independent relationships, so perhaps we are less likely to be exploited. However, as budgets tighten and client relationships become ever more important I wonder if this will change.

Do you think that a code of practice and a refusal to work without it would help or hinder digital agencies’s struggles to be sat at that brainstorming table with big brands? Do you get along fine without such relationships? Do you care about credit? I’d be really interested to know.