Adland Trapped Inside a Wet Paper Bag

If you run an advertising, digital or creative agency, you already know this contradiction too well. Your team produces smart, original, culturally relevant work, yet the commercial reward rarely reflects the quality of what you deliver.

You have probably blamed some familiar forces along the way. Clients undervalue creativity. Procurement dominates the conversation. Budgets keep shrinking while expectations grow.

All or some of that can be true.
But it is not the full picture.

A harder truth sits underneath many discounted retainers and uncomfortable renewals. The creative industries are full of founders who have never learned how to negotiate, pitching to client teams whose job is quite literally to do exactly that, with the budget firmly on their side of the bargaining table.

This is not a level playing field, and pretending it is comes at a cost.

How the Client Side Really Sees Agency Folk

Most agency founders come up through the work. We are trained to use our work to persuade emotionally, to build belief, to sell ideas and paint compelling visions of future success. We talk about outcomes, perceptions, feelings and possibility. We care deeply about relationships and we tend to wear that care openly.

From the client-side commercial team’s perspective, this often reads very differently.

They see agencies as a soft touch. Passionate, articulate, optimistic and emotionally invested, yes. People who deal in ideas, feelings and narratives, who weave visions of successful outcomes while turning up in floral designer shirts and hemp-cuffed trousers. Talented, quirky, interesting and enjoyable to work with, but hardly commercially dangerous.

Meanwhile, they are trained to focus on numbers, risk, leverage and precedent. They are calm where we bubble with enthusiasm for the work and what it can do. They remain detached where we are over-invested. Negotiation is not an uncomfortable moment for them. It is simply part of the job, sport even.

When these two worldviews meet, the outcome is rarely a welcome surprise.

One Founder Who Got This Wrong

This perspective is not academic.

For a long time, I was the grand master of not asking for the deal, but instead letting the deal happen on other people’s terms. I believed that relationships mattered more than commercial clarity and that if we did great work the commercial side would somehow, miraculously take care of itself.

Seldom did it take care of itself.

What it did however, was quietly confirm every assumption the client-side commercial team already held. That we would bend to retain the relationship. That we would prioritise goodwill over margin. That pressure would be met with accommodation rather than negotiation and push back.

I was not being collaborative. I was being commercially absent, and many founders reading this will recognise the same pattern in their own careers, their own agencies.

It’s an industry-wide issue.

Why Great Work Does Not Balance Power

There is a deeply embedded belief in creative culture that great work should speak for itself. That strong ideas naturally command a premium.

In reality, creativity does not balance power. Negotiation does.

When one side understands how the first number anchors the conversation, how value is framed, how silence creates pressure and how concessions should be traded rather than given away, and the other side relies on enthusiasm, trust and goodwill, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

This is not about clients behaving badly. It is about systems favouring those who know how to operate within them.

Why Negotiation Matters More Now

AI is collapsing production cycles in progressive studios. Tasks that once took days or weeks can now be completed in hours or minutes. When speed and efficiency increase, time based pricing becomes a weaker proxy for value.

Clients now care far less about how long something took and far more about what it actually delivers. Outcomes, impact and commercial relevance matter more than ever.

In this environment, negotiation becomes essential. If agencies continue to rely on outdated hourly rate charging regimes rooted in mid twentieth century thinking, they hand leverage to client teams who are already expert at using those frameworks to their advantage.

Founders who understand how to frame value, set anchors, manage concessions and apply basic behavioural psychology will have a decisive edge. Negotiation skills are becoming a core leadership capability, not a nice to have.

Learning to Ask for the Deal Changed Everything

The good news for founders is that this gap is surprisingly easy to close.

Since taking on coaching with Californian real estate negotiation consultant Amy Gardiner, I have seen a significant improvement in the quality of conversations, conversion rates and commercial outcomes. The shift did not come from being tougher or more aggressive. It came from being clearer, calmer and more deliberate.

Simple changes had outsized impact. Being willing to set the anchor rather than react to one. Treating budget pushback as a conversation rather than a dead end. Understanding when silence was working in my favour. Separating warmth in the relationship from firmness in the commercial terms. Framing cost around outcomes, risk and value rather than hours and discounts.

These are basic negotiation skills and elementary behavioural psychology. Yet many agency founders have never been exposed to them.

A Direct Recommendation to Founders

Because of this recent experience, I now actively recommend that agency founders engage with Amy Gardiner for negotiation training. Not because agencies need to become ruthless, but because founders deserve to enter commercial conversations properly equipped.

Negotiation is not a personality trait. It is a learnable skill. And for creative leaders who want to protect their work, their teams, their commercial reputation and their margins, learning it is no longer optional.

From Founder to Commercial Equal

I will always be an agency founder, I spent decades in this role. When I transitioned my role to Martech agency software founder the landscape changed, but I didn’t evolve until undergoing training with Amy. When founders show up with commercial confidence, the agency changes. Discounts reduce. Scope creep slows. Retainers stabilise. Most importantly, the way clients see you shifts.

You are no longer just the passionate creative partner. You are a commercial equal.

Not because the work improved, but because the work was finally protected.

If the creative industries want to address chronic underperformance, the answer is not fewer creatives or louder complaints about procurement. It is better-equipped founders. Leaders who are prepared to ask for the deal, defend the value they create and engage clients as commercial equals.

At Blutui, we believe commercial confidence is a creative advantage. Learning to negotiate is not selling out. It is stepping up into the role your agency actually needs you to play.

With insights from Amy Gardiner
Written by Graeme Blake, CEO, Blutui