Legend, Inc. is a project-to-project advertising agency without retainers, prepayments, or contracts required. Our invoices are primarily based on hourly rates. We will, of course, accommodate our clients’ special needs, but we typically charge on an hourly basis for creative and agency time, plus commissions on media or vendor placements.
Many of our clients rely on us for everything including media and vendor placements plus creative and production work, but it’s always up to them.
We maintain a separate CTA (Client Trust Account) for our clients’ funds and operate our agency from an account we refer to as our AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) account. It has always been our practice to fund all operations through our actual income, not from cash flow from total billings. That is an important distinction to the savvy client.
Over the years we have “inherited” many excellent clients from advertising agencies that went out of business living on their cash flow. Many of those clients were forced to pay the media and vendors again when their agency ceased operations without paying the vendors. Media and vendors always hold the clients ultimately responsible UNLESS the agency protects their clients ahead of time, as we do. We will fill you in on the details of this agency business practice, but it is clearly demonstrative of our overall business practice of always putting our clients and their interests first.
We believe in strong client-agency relationships and insist on them. For those services and projects which you hire us to perform, we will become a partner, not just another vendor. We are easy to deal with, responsive, and, internally we maintain a simple and efficient organization and management system.
The first project with any new relationship is always the most difficult, and sometimes it is also the most important. Our average client relationship currently is well over 12 years. Some of our relationships have prospered for far longer than that. It is in our best relationships where we believe we always perform our best work.
Our key personnel and associates have been together for many years. Sometimes our clients go through growing pains and a changing of their personnel. The changing personnel syndrome can create a changing advertising agency syndrome as well. Changing personnel within a company can mean growth and progress, if it is handled well. But, changing advertising agencies can be disruptive, expensive, and a major setback in brand management. We encourage periodic reviews, if needed, and other mechanisms of relationship-building to avoid these problems. An enduring and honest advertising agency relationship can maintain a great creative advantage for clients and should always be a goal from both sides of the equation.
We are available for meetings, but most of our business is conducted via other means. Meetings can be an expensive waste of time. Excessive emphasis on meetings can indicate a relationship that needs more trust. We meet in person with most of our clients as needed, but we are in contact with them in other ways almost every day.
Basically, our business practices can be summarized in this phrase: We treat our clients the way we would like to be treated. And we never take anything for granted.