The “third party effect”

There’s a trickle-down effect that can happen when you’re working as a third party. If you’re a creative freelancer, and you’re hired by an agency to create work for a brand, you have to be aware of this. You have a different goal than the agency, and they have a different goal than the brand. The trickle-down of these goals can taint your workflow. 

Your goal as a freelancer is to make good work for good money. If the project takes too long, or if there are too many revisions, this makes the money not so good for you. But agencies always ask for extra revisions and deliveries, because their goal is different than yours. They’re trying to make a great impression on their client in order to land a long-term retainer with them. This allows them to bring on full-time staff for the project, and make a lot more profit. The brand’s goal (or more accurately, they people who work at that brand’s goal) is to be in charge of flashy projects and to maximize deliverables, so they can show their bosses they did a good job, so they can get a promotion. 

This is the trickle-down effect that takes place. A brand asks for more. The agency is incentivized to give it to them. So they ask you to put in extra work to help them impress the client. 

What should you do in this scenario?

Traditional client relationship wisdom might tell you to do the work without pushing back, to develop a good relationship with the client. But remember: the agency eventually wants to bring on someone full-time to replace you. With this in mind, especially when working with agencies, you should always set boundaries and map out the maximum internal and external rounds of revisions included in your scope. Also, explain what overages are in play for each revision before the project begins. 

P.S. I explain this process more in-depth in a YouTube video I published recently. Go watch it here.