Why Unconventional - The Problem of Ethics
We believe there are 3 key ingredients of any people driven business especially in our realm of things - Talent, Passion and Ethics. All 3 seem to be depleting in traditional/conventional agency setups because of the way they are structured - from revenue models to remuneration/ reward & recognition models. While you may hear a lot of hue and cry in the traditional/conventional agency world about “talent and passion problems these days” what you may not hear frequently about is the problem related to ETHICS.
The OG Achilles' heel for many traditional/conventional agency setups today is ETHICS - especially honesty and integrity in conducting business internally and externally, across the board. One word worth a million conversations to start and end – KICKBACKS. The problem has been around for decades. The problem has worsened in recent years, exacerbating the challenges faced by many traditional/conventional agency setups.
Kickbacks allow people who should not be in control to take control and run a parallel economy – feeding on Client’s money and agency’s reputation. Much like Deep States, traditional/conventional agency setups are prone to Deep Agencies running within the agency. Within these Deep Agencies unspoken alliances and secret collaborations decide who and how the traditional/conventional agency partners with or favours internally and externally, to deliver Client related requirements that need to be outsourced. E.g. stills-audio-film-etc. production, celeb onboarding, events, media deals, hiring freelancers to do regular work (ouch) et. al. Kickbacks or cuts as they are popularly called are forced to be routed into the lives of individuals running those Deep Agencies, in cash or kind, proportionate to the spends.
The result is an extremely polarised system with a small inner circle of wheeler dealers prioritising personal gains over ethical considerations, using position to bend rules, favouring their own type, making ad-hocness the order of the day versus a large outer circle of talent which does the real work and goes home every day with the feeling of being expendable, despite being more worthy. Kickbacks and a few related or similar issues actually feed back into the talent and passion problems, worsening the perpetual state of flux traditional/conventional agency setups often find themselves in. Think hard about it and you may wonder if the chaos you see in your traditional/conventional agency setup is accidental or a meticulously planned one.
Alas, at the end of the day it’s the Clients who pay for everything. And they need to ask this question every now and then. Are they really getting the value for money they are spending on or via their traditional/conventional agency setups in terms of timelines, cost or quality advantage? If not, then are there patterns which need to be analysed deeply to check if there are ethics issues jeopardising any or all of that? We would be happy to do an assessment of your ongoing engagements, for FREE.
Unconventional is committed to providing 100% fair and transparent deals to all its Clients and Talent. In fact, one of our offerings under the Partnership umbrella is called ZEROKB i.e. Zero Kickback or Baggage partnership deals for all Client needs ranging from Pitch Consulting to Audio-Video production to Celebrity onboarding and much more. Connect with us to know how we do it.
Next: The Problem of Talent
“Talent is limited” or “Talent is a problem” or “It’s the same talent everywhere” are a few common things you can hear these days. That’s what everyone in the traditional/conventional agency setups seems to be saying but is that the real problem? Or is the real problem hiding in “Why all of that?”