West Eleven, Inc.

To give you an example, you can go to an agency site that I once worked for and visit their portfolio (if you're a creative reading this you could go to your old agency sites and the same thing applies). What you will find is many of the ads were created by people who are no longer with the agency. Some even before we got there. Now, WE (West Eleven) are preachers that everyone in the agency's fingerprints are all over every piece of work that the agency produces. Great work benefits everyone in the shop. But, we all know that the CD / AD's / CW's are the ones with more skin in the game. They come up with the concepts and ultimately have the most influence in the look, feel and voice of the communications. At this particular agency there was only myself as both CW and CD so I was the only one writing the copy and the scripts. I am no longer there but the agency still shows the work that I created – yes, some of them were void of any other creatives involvement, just the way it goes sometimes in a small shop especially with TV spots. So it is 'I' created. There are others that were a collaboration with an AD who is no longer there too. Should the agency let prospective clients know that those spots, those concepts, that work was created by someone no longer with the shop? 

Now, many agencies force creatives to disclaim that the work they are showing on their personal sites must inform the visitor that the work was created at such-and-such agency. That's fine and within their rights (isn't it?). But is it a double-standard?

In the end WE believe that everything comes out in the wash. Clients choose agencies for various reasons, if they have chosen an agency based on creative examples on a website or their book and those creatives are no longer there something tells me that they'll see it soon enough. Or who knows, maybe they'll think the work they are looking at is better.

Just something to think about. Thoughts?

*Every piece of creative on our site has been created by one, or all, of the creatives of West Eleven, some were created while working for other agencies.