Why the pricing of creativity is the industry’s most costly self-deception
Jon Williams, Founder/CEO of The Liberty Guild, bemoans the outdated models that treat an idea as labour rather than value, suggesting that, as automation increases, the human creative leap is becoming a most precious asset.
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The idea that you can assess the value of creativity by estimating the “time it takes to have an idea” is not just problematic, it’s commercially idiotic. In fact, it’s just idiotic in all senses.
And this idiocy isn’t just bringing down the quality of ideas, but it’s dragging down the whole value chain.
Many agencies are still pricing creativity with commercial models that belong to another century.
Our industry still claims to value ideas, while doing almost everything possible to avoid charging for them. These were my overall takeouts from a stage I shared with Nicky Bullard, the founder of Elevator, the UK’s only creatively-led intermediary for creative pitches, and Matt Bonny, Managing Partner at BMB, at [film production conference] FOCUS 2025 in December, where we talked about what creativity and production is actually worth in the modern world.
Modern, being the operative word. We’re operating in a market transformed by AI, media fragmentation and relentless cost pressure. Yet many agencies are very very far from modern in their approach, still pricing creativity with commercial models that belong to another century –in your ear Beach and early in that century at that.
If creativity were linear, we could all be geniuses by Friday afternoon.
Hours. Day rates. Retainers. Comfortable, familiar, and increasingly detached from the reality outlined above. Man still hadn't walked on the Moon the last time these models were fit for purpose.
Let’s be honest. The idea that you can price an idea by using time as a unit of measurement is a collective act of self-deception. Ideas are not hewn from labour. They are precious. You’re not paying for the measured moment of inspiration, you’re paying for the years of failure, taste and risk that make that moment possible. If creativity were linear, we could all be geniuses by Friday afternoon.
Above: Ideas should be cherished, when they are treated as disposable, everything that follows them is treated the same way.
As Matt Bonny pointed out on stage, procurement hasn’t helped. Too often, it is structurally designed to pursue “savings” rather than value. Rate cards become the weapon of choice because they look comparable, even when everyone knows they’re a fiction. The perverse outcome? Cost-plus models that reward inefficiency. Slow work gets protected. Brilliant work gets questioned.
And then there’s the pitch process. As Nicky Bullard made clear on stage, we routinely give away the thinking that should be our most protected asset. Unpaid ideation. Vague ownership. IP leakage dressed up as “chemistry.” The problem is that this doesn’t just weaken agencies — it sets off a chain reaction. When ideas are treated as disposable, everything that follows them is treated the same way.
When the idea is underpriced, production is forced to make up the difference.
Production companies inherit compressed timelines, shrinking margins and impossible expectations, all built on the assumption that the most valuable bit of the work somehow costs nothing.
AI has poured fuel on this fire and exposed the smoking hot mess of the reality underneath it. Execution is getting faster, cheaper and more automated by the month. That doesn’t devalue creativity; it concentrates its value.
As production becomes increasingly commoditised, the human creative leap becomes the true scarce asset and when the idea is underpriced, production is forced to make up the difference. Which it now can’t….Efficiency becomes survival, craft becomes negotiable and margin disappears long before anyone talks about quality.
At FOCUS, we talked about the alternatives already emerging, such as productised creativity, subscriptions, IP licensing, tiered scopes and blended value-based models. None are silver bullets.
Above: Currently, if a creative’s idea isn't ‘bought’ by the client, they retain the IP, this has to change.
As Matt Bonny warned, some are simply retainers wearing new clothes. And outcome-based pricing, which is often positioned as the holy grail, only works when both sides genuinely understand and share the risk. Without that alignment, it’s just optimism with a spreadsheet, and production once again ends up carrying a disproportionate downside.
If we don’t protect ideas at the start, especially in pitches, we surrender leverage before the conversation even begins.
The direction of travel, however, is undeniable. Agencies and production companies need tighter ownership of IP (in our model, if a creative’s idea isn't ‘bought’ by the client, they retain the IP), clearer trade-offs in fee negotiations, and the confidence to articulate what actually makes them valuable. As Nicky Bullard observed, if we don’t protect ideas at the start, especially in pitches, we surrender leverage before the conversation even begins. And when leverage disappears upstream, production feels it first and hardest.
This isn’t about agencies asking for sympathy or production companies asking for protection. It’s about commercial maturity across the ecosystem. Hourly rates were never designed to price imagination or craft. They were designed to manage uncertainty. Creativity and great production are, by definition, the exact opposite of this. Unpredictability is where the magic lives.
If we want better work, healthier agencies and sustainable production companies, we need to stop pretending otherwise. Because until we change how we price ideas, we’ll keep telling ourselves a comforting lie that creativity is priceless, while quietly forcing everyone downstream to sell it by the hour.
