In advertising there is a time honoured tradition of producing work for clients for free.
It's called the pitch - speculative strutting of one's stuff, to contest for a client's business.
Most agencies do it, sometimes grudgingly and sometimes with ferocious gusto.
Creatives love the process, because - usually - it offers a clean-slate opportunity to show their prowess. Everyone realises the campaigns may never run; or if they do the clients fingerprints will be all over their pristine work as a consequence of mundane details and the anxiety that accompanies spending money on media.
I don't have an ad portfolio. I sent my showreel to a headhunter, who promptly lost it (twerp), and my print samples were turned to pulp when my garage flooded. I had no digital backup versions of either (twerp). But no matter. Other than as a record of how I have been spending my time and attentions for the first part of my career in advertising the material serves no purpose. I don't think my old school style of writing and designing ads would have an currency these days - and, frankly, I am not sure making clever ads is a job worthy of a grown man. I suppose I have moved on.
Or have I?
While fossicking about in my mothers garage I found a folder of samples and letters of recommendation from the pre-LinkedIn era. I had a moment of nostalgia - some of the stuff wasn't too bad. Sadly the printouts are pretty lo-fi, but clear enough to remind me of some of the fun I used to derive from telling other people's stories. The image that accompanies this post is a pitch ad I made as part of a campaign to woo the Electoral Commission. They weren't impressed, or not sufficiently to offer my colleagues and I a seat at the table. Instead they went with an orange Gumby man.
Such is life. Sometimes orange gumbies win on the day.
