What’s it like working with Wildfire? Have some questions? Here’s a quick summary of what to expect.
It’s hard to know someone’s headspace. So at Wildfire we thought we’d be upfront and answer a few common questions or those questions that people might be afraid to ask in their first few meetings with us.
Working with Wildfire.
We are a creative agency. Beneficially we are cost effective, efficient and highly creative. We work across all media and are strategy based design. This can be an advantage to use Wildfire as a “single point” one-stop creative shop or flexible job-for-job design studio. We strive for originality and look at developing well branded, well conceived work. On strategy, on brand and with some “WOW factor” we hope you don’t expect. We are “professional problem solvers” and strive to be creative solutionaries with end-to-end management of the creative process. We have fast turnarounds if needed, can be flexible to do overnight and late night work and we are more than fair on pricing.
Design and creativity is a partnership. So to get the best results and the best benefits for your company we need you onboard too.
Wildfire will expect a level of understanding from our clients. We ask them to sometimes take risks and back our creativity. We like it when we can share our professional advice. “Thinking outside the square” takes confidence and leadership from the client team as well. At the end of the day the client has to be willing to own the creative outcomes.
Everything we do goes through a process. It starts with a brief and then works it’s way through Preproduction, then production and final finished art to be published and implementation. We handle everything from end to end. All you as the client need to do is brief us well and meet the approval schedule. Wildfire does most of the heavy creative lifting, but it helps to have a switched on engaged client that likes what we do.
Notes on Illustrative Commissions
We can tackle Murals, photo-retouching work, traditional mediums like water colours and acrylic painting, digital illustrations and graphic stuff too. Luke loves graphic novel styled work and Myke likes sketching, pencil and ink drawings, life drawing and painting, hand drawn inks with digital colouring. Honestly, we are both happy to take on anything new and welcome ground breaking commissions. We do end-to-end illustration and can design to page or supply loosely for your use.
Myke Mollard has been illustrating for over 30 years. He’s been teaching for more than 11 years. Luke has been illustrating professional for 4-5 years now and so we can take any brief big or small.
Just remember the artistic copyright remains with the artist so use beyond the brief will be considered another job. Price is conditioned upon a briefing.
With any creative commissions clients aren’t the artists. Clients employ the artist to do a job. An artist has the right to promote his or her work in a folio and retains creative copyright over the images. If client’s don’t want the artist to promote or use their work outside of the companies business then you can pay the artist to stop this happening. In a sense you can buy out territories (State, National and local use) or a client can buy out a time period (once off, multiple use or forever). Basically, a client can buy the sole rights to the drawing too. Either way this can influence the cost. In these rights deals you are looking at purchasing the art for thousands not hundreds. So if the client wants to use the art after the initial territories and rights are briefed, it’s polite to continue the relationship with the artist and work with them not to exploit their hard work.
Most art is created competitively on price. So when it goes viral and clients want to protect their new found asset you really want to make sure the artist photographer are cool with your future use of the work. It’s a partnership and both artist and client should profit from that partnership.
Brand Essence + Positioning
It is advisable that you get some market research and take these concepts to crash test the new ideas once the new Brand Essence and Positioning is established.
No big idea is a big idea until it has been tested, explored or researched. So you can either agree to go forward with Wildfire’s ideas or research them and test them before going to market.
Brand essence really is about galvanising stakeholders and formulating good pathways forward. It’s also about getting Wildfire fired up and warming our creative minds to the future communications. It’s about getting to immerse ourselves in your company branding too.
Wildfire can create different tasks and workshops to educate teams on better branding, involve them in marketing theory and get them to think outside their personal agendas – think like a galvanised company. We do this by a serious of agreed workshops and Wildfire will talk to the lead executives on what they ultimately want from the team.
It allows them equal ownership of the creative process and as the workshops are often highly creative you will expect to find new ground and explore new methodology in approaching your target audience. This fresh approach can be agreed on and deployed or go to further Market research to be tested.
Accounts & Billing
Larger projects like Brand Essence and Positioning workshops are set fees, tender pitches and creative pitches are costed on the hours it takes to produce the full campaign and then normally depending on the creative a agreed amount with the client is negotiated a long with the B2B relationship.
The average small job in reality takes between 1-4 hours to give you an idea. Larger jobs can take between 10 – 40 hours if there is a lot of creative ideas to produce to get the desired result.
Briefs are vital in keeping costs down.
Wildfire estimates low and tries to over deliver, so when a job goes over, it’s normally at the appropriate market value or there was more work assigned to the initial brief.
The best solution is for the client to suggest there budget upfront and timing. Wildfire then has something to aim at. If not Wildfire will work until there is a resolution and in a job-for-job environment that means hours will be tallied up at the end with an open brief.
Intellectual Property
Handing over the intellectual property or the artist files is normally at the point of exit or negotiated at the beginning of the B2B relationship.
They are normally costed at $140/hour and or double the original invoice.
With illustrations the rights and territories are negotiated before hand and the use should be pre-planned. If the client wants to use this outside the first negotiated terms then all they have to do is ring and negotiate further terms on the illustration or designs use.
Most of the intellectual property usage is covered by a strong tight ongoing working relationship with Wildfire Productions and so this is normally not an issue.
Wildfire manages all it’s relationships with outside suppliers. It has close working relationship with all its current suppliers for more than 10 years.
Wildfire’s principle has 20 years experience in contracts. He has been a company director and has a certificate in Business management and has had good experience with talent and agencies in negotiating contracts and releases. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing so this experience is highly valued.
Models, stylists and contracted talent will be asked to sign release forms which Wildfire will hold and has over 20 years experience in negotiating with talent agencies and talent directly. These contract will be monitored if campaigns go over 2 years and Wildfire only urges clients to be respectful of the talents right to ongoing revenues generated by the ongoing success of the creative.
In terms of clients reusing or trying to use intellectual property without consulting Wildfire, leaving the client open to legal litigation. Wildfire only advises that contracts and briefs be made well in advance and take the time to purchase the intellectual property properly.
Wildfire as a publisher and producer takes intellectual property seriously and issues of copyright and in recent times companies are increasingly asking smaller producers to cut corners. This is inappropriate behaviour and Wildfire has a commercial obligation to protect the talent and creative either for it’s client and it’s current branding but also protect the ongoing rights of the talent so as not to expose the client to this litigation.
Please discuss at length with Wildfire if you have any issues.