The Creative Standard
The quiet rivalry that exists between the people who bid (production) and the people who hire (agency/client) has a lot to do with perspective. We submit our numbers, hope they hit all the right notes, and then wait for the outcome. It’s an anxiety-inducing exercise that conjures misconceived visions of three bids, ours and our two competitors, sitting under a spotlight on an otherwise empty desk. Naturally this ignites ideas about how to make our bid stand out. We are, after all, visual artists.
Meanwhile, the agency side is madness. There are to-do lists as long as your arm, video meetings, quarterly budgets to wrangle, and clients to manage. The project you’re bidding on is one of many. This is the chaotic reality. Bidding in a standard format paradoxically helps your originality stand out.
Let me put it to you like this. Consider running to your local grocery store to buy the ingredients for your favorite dish. You breeze through the aisles because you’ve been there dozens of times, and it’s familiar. Now think about going to a new grocery store for the same meal. It takes twice as long because the layout is unfamiliar, and you have to stop and scan to find the things you need.
Also consider that 88% of each bid is just like every other bid. That is to say, for each job you need some people, you need to feed and water those people, you need some gear, etcetera. The remaining 12% is creative: location, special effects, makeup, your unique ideas on how to execute the job. That clever 12% of the bid needs to be communicated quickly and clearly. Present it in a format that’s familiar to the art producer or client and your originality pops.
Bid standardization is an evolutionary trend in the photo/motion world that mirrors what’s been going on in the TV commercial space. Forty years ago, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), created a standardized spreadsheet for bidding. It is so familiar to the industry that vendors have named their companies after the line number they serve on the ACIP spreadsheet.
At BlinkBid, we worked with the Artists Management Association and a whole bunch of producers to conjure and release a Universal Bid Form (UBF). In the similar vein of the AICP form, we built it specifically for the photo/motion industry and its need for evermore detail. It’s been a spectacular success.
We also created a standardized cover sheet which has also taken off. With a common language in place, we feel jobs will award more quickly, advances will be paid faster, and communication will be clearer.
Distinguishing yourself from the competition comes from another newish trend in the photo/motion space which has been part of the TV commercial process for decades. The treatment is a written or bullet pointed document with lots of pictures which illustrates your vision and how you will execute it. I’ve written about treatments before. We have a fancy page on BlinkBid’s website dedicated to the topic.
In an industry relentlessly striving for originality, a word like standard sounds heretical. However it’s long past time for a common business language to bridge the chasm between the money and the creative camps in the photo/motion space. We need something familiar so a person can quickly get an overall sense of how a job is going to come together.
Learn how to use the Universal Bid Form (a standard bidding form for the photo/motion industry) here.
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