St. Louis, MO – January 10, 2023 – Is your video vendor a villain in your client service story?

Do you – or rather does your client - get nickeled and dimed to death with unnecessary fees and forced to pay multiple times for work they have already paid for?

Does your video vendor refuse to grant copyright on the work they do for you?

In talking to public relations and marketing agency professionals, we have heard numerous horror stories about experiences they have had working with freelance video production professionals and studios.

When you listen to their stories, their video vendor sounds like a terrible villain. That is unfortunate because their video storyteller should be a hero or a wise guide that allows the client to be the hero of their own story.

In hearing these stories told by those who work in PR or Marketing Agency it is clear that the source of the villainy traces more to sloppy scoping or a fundamental failure to focus on the fine print in engaging outside help.

Another way to say it is that your video storyteller really isn’t a villain unless you let them become one.

Let’s focus first on some of the horror stories we have heard.

Number one, it is insane to think that you would keep paying for a service you already paid for. That happens a lot with agencies who are sloppy about their own fine print. They broker deals that are too favorable to their subcontractors rather than being more favorable to their clients.

Number two, nickel & dime rental fees for things that should be part of the scope of video production work.

Another one of my personal favorites is that you agree to pay rental fees on video equipment that the vendor themselves already owns. WTF? Really? That is insane, but all too common.

I laughed when I was pricing a job and the potential vendor gave me a price for labor and then a separate price for equipment. He wanted me to pay a high fee for his photographer to go out on a shoot, but the price didn’t include a camera. Seriously?

The first time I encountered this I thought it was an aberration. But the more we have moved into higher end production, I’ve come to realize this is common within the video production industry.

I think it is crazy, but sellers will charge you for anything if they can get away with it. But what you chose to buy is up to you as the buyer.

I’m not complaining as the common practices within the video production industry allow us to differentiate STORYSMART from the competition. We won’t nickel & dime our clients. We believe in transparency, cost-certainty and value-driven pricing.

Mostly, I like to avoid surprises and manage expectations on costs. That is something that 17 years with the St. Louis Cardinals infused into my DNA.

If you hire STORYSMART to tell your story with video, we won’t charge you extra for a video camera or a memory card. It is all-inclusive pricing when it comes to the tools of our storytelling trade.

You should demand the same with your vendors so you can take care of your client’s the right way. You don’t want to nickel and dime them to death. That is recipe to get fired.

Do you charge your client a rental fee for the car you drove to that client meeting? Or a rental fee for the computer you wrote their press release on? Can you imagine the carpenter you hired asking you to pay a rental fee on his hammer?

The price should be inclusive.

If I’m paying you to do a job well, I’ll defer to you on what equipment you need and expect you to handle that yourself. Obviously, there is a reasonableness boundary in all situations. That includes you as the agency professional. You need to reasonable in terms of what you are asking a freelancer or vendor to do for you and compensate them appropriately.

But the one area that shouldn’t be up for discussion is who owns the work. If you are hiring a creative professional to do a job, you need to make sure you have a written agreement that stipulates it is a work for hire and you own the copyright on the work.

If you paid a photographer to take a headshot photo of you so you could update your LinkedIn profile, how would you feel if the photographer came back to you insisting that you pay them again for putting your picture up on a digital board in Times Square when you became famous?

That sort of thing happens more than you realize because of the default settings in creative relationships in the world of photography and videography.

I remember dealing with a similar scenario when I was with the St. Louis Cardinals. When I was still an infant, the team hired a photographer to take some player photos to decorate their team store in the old Busch Stadium (Busch Stadium II…the current one is Busch Stadium III). Half a century later, when I was the VP of Communications for the team and we had digitized that photo for our archive, we posted one of the images on Facebook to posthumously mark a birthday of a Hall of Famer.

The grandson of the photographer reached out insisting that we take the photo down or pay him. He said we didn’t have the rights for that use. After talking it through with our in-house lawyer, we took the photo down and decided we couldn’t use it for anything even though we had clearly paid for it.

I later took the grandson to lunch to talk to him about buying the full rights on his grandfather’s collection. The grandson acknowledged we had paid his grandfather to take the photo, but he said the agreement didn’t allow us to post to Facebook because Facebook didn’t exist in the 1960s. When I asked him to produce a copy of the agreement, I could see him squirming in his chair. My guess is he didn’t have a copy.

The reality is absent a written agreement otherwise, the photographer or videographer who creates a photo or video owns the copyright on that image or video. They can license it to whoever they want with whatever conditions they want to set. So we may have paid for the photo, but unless we had a copy of the agreement we would lose a case in court.

In the space of doing work for creative agencies, it isn’t unusual for creators to maintain the status quo -- meaning clients need to keep paying for additional uses of creative work. We paid for the one use – decorating a team store, but we would need to pay again for Facebook or any other use.

I find the idea that I’m going to pay you really good money to do a job and you own it to be offensive to my sense of fairness. But I’m a lawyer turned entrepreneur. I know the law. The law protects creatives. I am also a pragmatist and a person who adores the gift that creatives bring to the table. I believe in making things a win-win-win all the way around for all involved.

Nothing good comes from relationships that are out of balance. Greed and a sense of entitlement is a bad thing when it is allowed to run amuck.

Pay your creative well to do a good job but own the work as a work for hire. Own the intellectual property rights on the work. Grant a portfolio license to the creative so they can showcase the work but stop there. Don’t let them become a villain who won’t let you wish someone happy birthday on Facebook. That is just wrong. Be


About STORYSMART

You have a story to bring to the screen, but you don't have the time or resources to do it yourself. Telling your story well with video can be hard. And let’s be brutally honest. No app will turn you into a great filmmaker. Few are capable of producing a do-it-yourself (DIY) video or film we actually want to watch, much less remember.

To do justice to your story on screen, you need the right skills and equipment, not to mention time, money and talent.

That is why STORYSMART developed our premium video storytelling as a service. We help clients tell their story in the amazing way they deserve with a proprietary done-for-you video storytelling service unlike any other.

STORYSMART provides a nationwide premium video storytelling service that empowers clients to have their stories told professionally while retaining their intellectual property rights as though they did it themselves.

STORYSMART provides clients an experienced television reporter or journalist filmmaker to help them tell their story following our proprietary high-integrity brand journalism system. Our transparently priced premium services for agencies, businesses and families ensures that each client gets an authentic, high-quality story they own the intellectual property rights on forever.

About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is the founder and CEO of STORYSMART, a premium video storytelling technology startup that empowers anyone to have their stories told professionally while ensuring they retain the intellectual property rights on their productions.

A creative and innovative communications leader with nearly three decades of experience, prior to founding STORYSMART, Ron was responsible for modernizing the St. Louis Cardinals communications by leading the team’s investment in video storytelling, brand journalism, fan engagement and social media.