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Last week, Sweetgreen’s newly unveiled Kale Camo Hoodie hit my social feed. My first reaction was: “What a clever way to super-serve mega fans.” The company proudly heralded the idea in a press release and touted the new merch on social media just before the holidays.
An hour later, another post hit my feed. Apparel retailer Market called out Sweetgreen on Instagram with a post that read, “WE PITCHED SWEETGREEN A COLLAB IDEA AND THEY JUST ENDED UP STEALING IT.” The post was accompanied by screenshots of an email exchange with Market’s CEO about how they’d pitched this exact same concept to Sweetgreen a full year earlier—complete with a detailed deck, kale and all.
The backlash was swift from both culture media and the social media sphere, with audiences accusing Sweetgreen of idea theft and being downright hypocritical. But this incident is about something much more than a not-so-good look for Sweetgreen. It’s about how the advertising industry has created a “Free Ideas Economy.”
Agencies and brands have been complicit in normalizing the expectation that generating creative ideas is a cost of doing business. We’ve resigned to the fact that creating campaigns on spec is the way for an agency to get its foot in the door, hoping to be rewarded with a long-term, sticky agency of record contract.
I look at this Free Ideas Economy as both an agency founder and an in-house brand leader. I know how valuable a good idea can be. It can drive sales, win hearts and minds, and even change the world. So why are ideas sometimes the last thing brands are willing to pay for? Why are great ideas something agencies are still willing to give away for free? Why isn’t the industry doing more to prevent this?
The Kale Camo Hoodie incident should serve as a wake-up call for our entire industry to rethink how we value, protect, and compensate for creative concepts. Ultimately, the thing we’re all here for in the creative advertising and brand community is the thing nobody wants to pay for.
How does the ad industry solve this and return to a marketplace where agencies are paid for ideas? How do we give agencies the recognition, protection, and financial reward they deserve? Just as importantly, how do clients become equal partners in dismantling the Free Ideas Economy?
On the agency side, more shops must adopt innovative models engineered to compensate for ideation, pitching, and being on-call to turn around ideas. Agencies must also diligently use nondisclosure agreements and intellectual property protection clauses in pitch-related documents, even stipulating that the ideas clients don’t elect to use remain agency property. Legal clarity is good, and memorializing these conversations can serve both sides.
On the brand side, clients need to view creative ideation as a working cost, a product to be commissioned and paid for. That includes paying a fee to agencies participating in a pitch process. Brands must also collaborate with agencies on new frameworks that shake up the standard and stodgy AOR model. They need to build relationships that incentivize agencies to offer more creativity on tap rather than perpetuating the Free Ideas Economy.
