Flat fee, lumpy year

The fee is divided by twelve. The year is not.

I started on the agency side of the desk, and the first thing a retainer taught me is that it is a promise to be equally available in months that are nothing like each other.

Count the weeks ahead. The fasting month is expected around the middle of February, depending on the sighting, which means the work for it is happening right now. The film, the pack, the media, the versioning, the eleven rounds on a line that has to hold in two languages, the approvals that need three people in two cities at their desks on the same day. Six weeks of the heaviest output the account will produce all year, invoiced at one twelfth of the fee, twice.

Then July. The client is out of the country, the brand team is on leave, the market has emptied, and the same amount is invoiced for a maintenance month and a status call nobody joins.

Nobody rephases it. Not the agency, because asking to be paid more in February invites the question of why it is being paid anything in July. Not the client, because a flat number is easy to defend in a budget and a curve has to be argued for again every year, as the month keeps moving earlier.

So the template holds, and the template was written for a country with an even year, where the peak is in December and the calendar sits still.

A flat fee is a loan the agency makes in January and collects in July. Both sides know it. Both sides have agreed to call it a price.