The GDC National AGM was held recently in Montreal and was a terrific experience. During the long meetings many presentations were given about the activities of GDC across Canada. I represented the BC Chapter and gave a report about some of the great things happening out west, but after I was home and the dust had settled did I realize that I forgot to recount a tale about the great advocacy work done by Dean McNeil and our National Ethics Committee on behalf of me and my design firm. I’ll quickly share the story with you now.
My company has provided design and production services to CMHC for many years and enjoyed a good working relationship with them, so you can imagine our chagrin when we discovered a section of their RFSA (Request For Services Arrangement) that included an unpaid speculative design component as a mandatory requirement. In order to be considered for contract renewal, we were being asked to design a series of promotional banners and a full page advertisement according to some generic instructions and without compensation. Ouch.
Believing that our track record and past experience, in addition to already being an approved vendor for CMHC would have given us an honest chance, we tried an innovative approach and submitted a proposal that didn’t include any spec work, but rather contained previous samples of similar projects we’d recently produced for CMHC along with an explanation about the GDC Code of Ethics and our belief that speculative work is unethical and devalues our industry.
We also reported this situation to the GDC National Council and Ethics Committee, but with less than a week before the RFSA deadline, there was little that could be done. In retrospect, we should have immediately stomped our feet in protest and refused to submit anything at all, but the reality is that we’d already spent considerable time putting our response together by the time we discovered the spec requirement. The contract was worth over $150K and we didn’t want to lose the work, so we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best, thinking we might get lucky. No dice—we were disqualified and lost the contract with a curt note from Ottawa that said:
“It was determined that Industrial Brand Creative did not meet all of the mandatory submission requirements… and has been eliminated from the evaluation process.”
Rather angry as you can imagine, we turned to the GDC National Council and Ethics Committee for assistance. An articulate letter was sent by Melanie on our behalf that went unanswered, so Dean sent a follow up letter and then personally spoke at length with the Procurement Specialist at CMHC in Ottawa to plead our case. Unfortunately, governmental procedures being what they are, they were bound by their policies and could not reverse the decision to eliminate IBC after the closing date for fear of being audited and a media scandal, but they did recognize our position and promised to look at the situation.
At first they pleaded ignorance and apologized for the indiscretion, but stated it was policy. Not willing to accept that answer, Dean did a terrific job of explaining the realities and negative impact of speculative work and noted that most federal and provincial government departments have already eliminated or even prohibit speculative creative as a component in their RFP’s. Dean pointed out that the international design community had deemed spec as unethical and counter productive and passed along a good number of articles and references for the edification. After a couple lengthy conversations with CMHC, I’m happy to report that the senior managers of the Federal office of CMHC in Ottawa met internally to discuss this contentious issue.
Here’s is the response from the Senior Procurement Specialist at CMHC:
“ we (CMHC) have discussed the issue of including a design spec as a requirement in our documents, and although it was common thought that we should only ask for samples of previous work, it has not become a policy at CMHC. Therefore, I can say it is unlikely that a creative component will be asked for in future opportunities”
And this from the local Marketing and Communications Specialist at the Vancouver office of CMHC:
“from now on, we won’t be including this (speculative creative) requirement in future RFSA’s for graphic design services. I was able to get our Marketing Division in Ottawa to omit the requirement for doing Spec Work in an RFSA they currently issued as a result of your concerns raised to us so really do appreciate you letting us know.”
So it seems that although my design firm lost work as a result of standing on our principles and making a stand for our code and Society, we managed to make a difference and educate another client so others won’t be subject to the same situation. Thanks to Dean’s efforts on all our behalves to keep the dialogue open, the GDC has made a difference where this situation will not happen again.
So I offer my sincerest thanks to David, Linda, Melanie and especially Dean, who were all not only encouraging and sympathetic, but went to bat for us and really worked hard to educate this client and continue to do so for all GDC members. It’s terrific to feel the support and am very proud to be a member of GDC.
[The graphic “Spec Hurts” used here is part of the No!Spec campaign designed by illustrator Von Glitschka and is available as a hi-rez printable download on the No!Spec web site.]
June 9th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Awesome Mark!
This is something that I want to show to my colleagues in Colombia (South America), there’s no anti-spec campaigns and nobody is willing to educate both practitioners and clients.
Educational campaigns are always better than fight against clients and corporations.
Thanks,
Juan Madrigal
June 17th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Thanks for taking one for the team, Mark. But more accurately, thank you for circling the wagons and making sure that something changed.
We have also lost work, many times, in taking this stand but haven’t made enough noise to get anything changed. When Ray was Ethics Chair we did manage to make some impression on a couple of businesses, but sometimes it feels like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
With CMHC being a federal government department, they are much more of a beacon to other organizations and businesses. I applaud CMHC for taking the time to learn and change.