The advertising industry asks directors to work for free. Spend weeks on pitches that go nowhere. Compete blind against unknown numbers. It costs hundreds of thousands yearly and it's driving talent out of the business.
Add your nameUnpaid creative work per pitch. Every week. On top of existing commitments.
Free The Work, 2023
Report declining work year-on-year. The pipeline is drying up and the pitch volume keeps climbing.
DRCT Census, 2024
Report existential anxiety about the future of their career in this industry.
DRCT Census, 2024
Of directors fall in the low-income range.
DRCT Census, 2024
You pitch blind.
Who are you competing against? How many directors are on the shortlist? What's the budget? You don't know. Nobody tells you.
You write your treatment blind, competing against an unknown number of directors, for a budget you have to guess at. The rules are disproportionately stacked. And the lack of transparency hits hardest where representation is already thinnest.
Production companies sent us the same brief. One job. Twelve separate pitches. We suspect there was more.
equals mgmt, 2026
Annual cost absorbed in bidding on projects that were never approved. Per production company.
Industry estimates
Your work vanishes.
You spend a week on a treatment. Moodboards, shot lists, a written vision for how you'd bring this script to life. You cancel other work. You go deep.
Then the brief dies. The client didn't approve the creative. The project was speculative the entire time, and nobody told you. Production companies lose hundreds of thousands yearly in bidding costs on projects that were never real.
They feast. You serve.
Architects charge for design work. Lawyers bill for opinions. Consultants have day rates. Commercial directors? Expected to deliver a week of creative thinking, visual research, and written work for free. Every time. Win or lose.
Salaried professionals setting the terms for freelancers who absorb all the risk. That's the current arrangement, and it's driving talent out of the industry.
Unpaid work per quarter for a director who pitches ten jobs and wins two. More than a month free.
Calculated from industry averages
Name another profession where you work a full week unpaid on a competitive proposal.
Reform isn't theoretical. It's already producing results in the countries that moved first.
May 2023
The ADDP called a treatment strike. Directors collectively refused to pitch unpaid. The result: almost all pitches in Spain are now paid. Production companies adapted within months. The work didn't stop. The exploitation did.
January 2024
The DRCT and German producers built a pitch cost share model. Directors and production companies split the financial burden of pitching. 54.3% of participants reported positive experiences in the first year. The model is still evolving, and it's gaining ground.
The ADA, ADDP, DRCT, AIR, AIR3, ACCP, Swissfilm Association, and Werbefilmproduzenten are already in. Thousands of directors globally have signed on. The conversation is happening with or without every individual company's permission.
Join directors worldwide demanding fairer pitching practices. Your name adds weight.
2,847 people have signed