…or an opportunity for consultancies to educate clients?

Regarding the debacle of the Greater London Authority London logo tender, I believe that our industry has a couple of questions to answer.

First, why are consultancies asked to free-pitch for work, and second, why are they asked to produce lots of work as part of the submission?

The answer to both is because we have done so in the past. We have permitted our clients to expect work for nothing and, in an attempt to impress, over-delivered with lots of pieces of work.

Surely then, is it not odd that we bleat on about clients asking for free work in the first place and then go overboard by submitting a raft of ideas?

The sooner we face up to the fact that, as a profession, we have created this problem and have two options of how to deal with it. We either lie in the bed we have created and shut up about it, or we start to educate clients how to really get the best work from consultancies in the future.

Lambie-Nairn has obviously taken the sensible option.

Glenn Taylor, Creative managing director, Stocks Taylor Benson, by e-mail