Last night, the Colorado BMA meeting brought in Kate Maddox, Senior Reporter at B2B Magazine. Kate discussed the results of B2B’s latest report on selecting an agency. There was nothing particularly surprising about her presentation in terms of why companies do an agency search (new direction, consolidation, not happy with their current agency). However, it was clear from the case studies presented that many times, companies expect a pretty decent degree of spec work in order to be sure that an agency “understands” the company.

I’m not sure why I find this surprising. One of the attendees, who worked at the local branch of a national agency, said that approximately half of the jobs they get include spec work up-front.

I’ve never been asked to produce on-spec, even when working in conjunction with one of the larger national agencies based here in Colorado. As a small shop, I would be hard pressed to even jump at an opportunity like that simply because of the risk — it would be hard to justify working on spec when I’ve got a paying client already needing my time and skill.