Ad agencies taking work in-house

[digitalgrb8]

First post here so apologies for starting with a rant!

I run a small but successful retouch company in London. Been going 9 years now. Recency lost 2-3 jobs because of ad agencies INSISTING on taking the retouching in house. These are photographer clients of ours that we have been working with for over 5 years doing ALL (I mean every little thing) their work. Heavily discounted editorials in the hope of us all being noticed / admired and then landing a big well paid job.

More and more, the agencies are insisting on taking the post production in house. Although I respect the guys working in house, they have no relationship with the photographers, and do not have any idea what style they normally have / techniques they like. 9 times out of 10, the photographers have complained to me after (and the agency) that the work done in house was not good enough or to their liking.

Its all done because of £££££ !!!! - of course!

But its gonna KILL the editorial content. How are the photographers gonna get good deals on the editorial retouching from companies that get no ad work in return?

They have even get to the point of telling the photographer that unless they allow the post in house they will loose the job. Some people I know have turned down jobs because of this, but they have to eat / pay the mortgage like everyone else, and most eventually cave in.

Do other people have similar problems / worries.

G

[Benny Profane]

Dude, the magazine business has been going down the same dismal road that the newspapers turned down a decade or more ago. And all that was during supposed "boom" times. Now that we're staring at an oncoming world recession, I wouldn't be so surprised that cost cutting is and will be rampant. It may sound harsh, but the reader could care less about the relationship between the photographers and retouchers who produced the images, and the executives at the big media companies probably even more so, unless they're related to them.

[pixelzombie]

that's been going on for a while, at least in this area..one of my co-workers got a job offer to work at one of the larger agencies for quite a bit more money...

[digitalgrb8]

Yes, I know.

I too have talked to a few retouchers who jumped ship from independant retouch companies to in-house depts. for lots more money.

One said that after a while they got totally bored doing commercial work with little or no creativity. Stuff like pack shots / everything looking perfect / the same.

I doubt the in-house dept. have to try and appeal to the photographers in the same way that the small companies like myself do.

[mayday]

It's sad that the craft is not valued to the same level it once was.

[twopoint0]

The only thing that never changes in this business is the fact that things change all the time. I'm a 20+ year prepress retoucher that started an in house studio for an agency this year- I've spent most of my career trying (not always successfully) to stay ahead of the curve.
By the way, our agency frequently encounters photographers who insist on doing the retouching themselves (Its all done because of $$$$$ !!!! - of course!). Some of their work is good, and some of it keeps me busy retouching the retouched images.
Agencies are doing retouching and photography, prep houses are doing design, photographers are correcting color...

[Markzebra]

If they think they can do it cheaper and better in house… its not rocket science is it? You can only compete with the quality of what you do versus what they can do. I had a client tell me today that they would only pay an agreed sum for a job regardless of how many amends their client wanted, and I'm really forced in the current climate to consider it. Everyones already cutting corners. When the sun shines make your hay, thats what I've been doing.

Retouching-wise the problem is there's more and more people who think they can do this now, most agencies have a whole stack of designers on board who think they can retouch. As soon as the studio manager says "ok you try" and it comes back at least half of the way there, thats a job lost.

[HughSteenk]

In NYC, it's been happening unsuccessfully for the last 5 years. Most are failures. Most produce junk and the ADs realize this and push to go back outside. The In-house also doesn't pay like the boutique, not the reverse. Therefore, they can't get or keep good people and get prepress and junior retouchers and the work looks like. A lot of agencies in NY have tried and scrapped it after awhile.

[HughSteenk]

I'll also add that if you're losing out to in-house boys, you need to re-evaluate the quality of your work. What aren't you offering. The low end has been dead for years. The middle is dead too. Be the best or fold.

[digitalgrb8]

Originally Posted by HughSteenk

I'll also add that if you're losing out to in-house boys, you need to re-evaluate the quality of your work. What aren't you offering. The low end has been dead for years. The middle is dead too. Be the best or fold.

See I knew SOMEONE would say that!
Its nothing to do with the quality of the work! The photographers are getting the ad work on the basis of the excellent quality editorial work (that we work on).
e.g. we spend days making skin look beautiful, for an editorial. Everyone LOVES it! so the photographer lands a massive campaign for skincare. All retouching ends up in house. zero money for us.

[Benny Profane]

Originally Posted by HughSteenk

In NYC, it's been happening unsuccessfully for the last 5 years. Most are failures. Most produce junk and the ADs realize this and push to go back outside. The In-house also doesn't pay like the boutique, not the reverse. Therefore, they can't get or keep good people and get prepress and junior retouchers and the work looks like. A lot of agencies in NY have tried and scrapped it after awhile.

Poor management. It will succeed eventually.

edit: Well, it COULD succeed if managed well. I've been in the corporate environment long enough to know how badly it can't be.

[ftp-Jeff]

It is an ever decreasing circle!

Photographers started retouching themselves years ago, to earn more $$$ out of the job.
Then the price war started! Now photographers are quite often expected to do retouching as part of the job! The only people that have won out of this are the agencies! Do you think they pass on savings to the client? NAH!

Now photographers are moaning when they can't do the retouching, cos they have no budget!

If everybody stuck to what they were good at, this would never of happened!

We have photographers, agencies and "fred's in sheds" retouchers, asking if we will drum scan, do certificated proofs, or even finish the crap retouching that they have tried to do themselves. Not a chance!

Or, worse still, they ask me how to do it! I tell em straight!

So any of you that have been involved in undercutting.. Tuff! What do you expect?

[twopoint0]

ftp-Jeff-
I've seen prep shops offer creative services and photography, photographers offer retouching and ad placements, and agencies offer the whole gamut.
You're right about people sticking to what they're good at, but everyone is scrambling to make a buck, (or in your case pound), and in the end everyone suffers because the final result is acceptance of lower standards.

[ftp-Jeff]

Yep! It will get worse.... So will the work!

[DJSoulglo]

oops, double post.

[DJSoulglo]

well....

I am an inhouse retoucher The way we work at this moment is that I'm the only fulltime retoucher at our agency (180 amsterdam) and when jobs get too big for 1 person to handle (which is almost every project) we get people in from respected retouching houses.

For me I'm quite happy, I was trying to become a retoucher anyway, and my next step was to quit my job as a studio artist and then move to a retouching house, but then the opportunity came up to start a whole new production arm of our company and we jumped at it.

We do a lot of stuff, but we also use a lot of people, who get a good ammount of work from us. The only thing for us is that when I'm working on something, we make money instead of just giving it to someone else.

We set it up properly, have our own proofing etc and again we work with really good retouchers.

Sorry for everyone else, but for me it's been a lifesaver.

And ofc my work is worse than anyone else's because I work for an agency, you're right about that. Not every in-house retoucher is some intern that is just retouching with his copy of "Skin" in hand. Some people (myself included) actually worked as photographic assistants, studio artists (where you do a lot of creative lo-res retouching anyways), worked at retouching agencies or various other backgrounds.

Also it makes sense to have a person that has been making mechanicals and logos and what not and understands the requirements for bleed, delivery, adaptability to get into the retouching, because it speeds certain parts of the process up.

[DrisOne]

I work as as an in-house retoucher at an agency, we actually have 2 on staff...we get to do great creative work aside from the boring stuff....it can be a headache working w/freelancers when they dont know the workflow of your agency or have the opportunity to sit right next to production when they are meching files to the vendors and work face to face with AD's and CD's on a daily basis.

[digitalgrb8]

Just to say, I don't have any issues with people working in retouching in ad agencies, I'm sure there is loads of talented people out there....

Its just tough on independent companies when more and more of the ad work is taken away from us.. We do the editorial work to get the big(er) money jobs...

G

[annawj]

I got a job as an in-house retoucher at a global ad agency as an escape route from the living hell of retouching for image libraries - which was how I started out.
I guess it depends on the agency and your managers, (my manager had previously run a very successful retouching house) but we did some really great creative work for big clients, we also did many, many, pack shots.
We would get work in all the time, retouched by other companies (some from very famous retouching companies) and photographers to be 'fixed' before it could be signed off, we had some real shockers. In the end though, through poor senior management the agency saw fit to get rid of our manager, meaning no one was bringing in new work, at which point the bottom fell out of the whole enterprise.
I moved into high end fashion and beauty retouching in a very small but successful company and saw things from the other side, working closely with photographers was new to me, and personally I now prefer this personal route, it works brilliantly for very subjective fashion and beauty.
But when it comes to big advertising campaigns which I also work on, you're always plunged into the murky world of Agencies, with way too many people making conflicting comments on the same job. The great thing about working in-house is that the many levels of art direction are all there in the building, problems and disagreements get thrashed out quicker, art directors can pop in and look at work, see proofs immediately, comment rounds don't have such a delay time and obviously, most importantly for the agency, it saves them money, as long as they are busy. If not they soon become a financial burden and are seen as the expensive option - as in the case of my old employers.
Personally I think that both in-house and independent companies will continue to work, as they offer a different service, one style appeals to photographer driven work, the other to big advertisers who need a more continuous management of the whole design process.

[Markzebra]

Did you work for Getty before they went belly up, at one point Anna?

[annawj]

I used to retouch for photographers for Getty submissions, back in the image library days, but never in-house.
The libraries I worked at were small fry, all eventually swallowed up by Getty or Creatas or Jupiter.