Dear O&M,
I am writing to bring to your attention an ordeal I was put through recently by Ogilvy PR Manila.
Last March, I was contacted by Wish Saliente Torres, a broadcast producer with Redworks at Ogilvy & Mather Manila.
She invited me to bid as a director for the documentation of an upcoming event by the Cebu Chamber of Commerce.
This was for an account with Ogilvy Public Relations. The Group Account Director for this account was Rishi A. Miyata.
I bid for the job to direct the documentation of 27th CACCI Conference through a small business that had specialized in producing wedding videos and AVPs. The event ran two days, March 14th through 15th.
We were required to work alongside the Creative Director and 1) light and film interviews of several attendees to the conference and 2) provide extensive video coverage of the various panels held throughout the two day event.
We were awarded the bid and flew to Cebu on March 13th and joined Mrs. Torres, Ms. Miyata and several of their colleagues from Ogilvy PR.
Over the next two days, March 14th through 15th I proceeded to document the conference with my production team to the satisfaction of Mrs. Torres and Ms. Miyata.
My team and I flew back to Manila March 16th and received texts from Wishnie and Rishi congratulating us on our work and putting us on standby for further work with Ogilvy PR and the Cebu Chamber of Commerce.
At the time, I was looking forward to continuing to provide my services as a film director for Ogilvy & Mathers PR on future production requirements.
Some weeks passed by and I decided to check on the status of my payment. I contacted the production company I worked with and spoke with the owner of the company.
He explained to me that according to Ms. Miyata our payment would be arriving soon, they were just waiting on a check to be signed by the Cebu Chamber of Commerce.
Here in the Philippines it is common practice to defer payment to production suppliers up to 2 months after a shoot. Again, I felt assured that we would be taken care of in a timely manner and the let matter rest.
As we passed 2 months without payment I began to worry. Standard contracts with production suppliers usually stipulate a deadline of no more than two months, anything past that is already in breach of contract.
I contacted the owner of the production company, he again reported that Ms. Miyata had given reassurances that the Cebu Chamber of Commerce would make payment to us very soon.
He explained that he could not advance payment to me either because he carried all the costs of the production in Cebu and still had not been reimbursed by Ogilvy PR.
He was in debt a hundred thousand pesos or more and I would have to wait until Ogilvy made payment to his production company.
3 months passed without payment and I was confronted by a medical emergency involving my partner and I badly needed my talent fee.
I contacted both Mrs. Torres and Ms. Miyata in a panic via text and urged them to try and advance payment if they could.
They were not able to do so and the experience left me deeply disappointed and saddened.
The months dragged on with continuous assurances from Ms. Miyata that payment was always just a week away and that we had to be a little more patient.
3 months turned into 4 months, 5 months and then 6 months.
By early October I was fed up with the litany of excuses I was receiving from Ms. Miyata and her finance team.
I sent her, Ms. Torres and Mr. Castaneda a text explaining to them that if payment was not made that week, I planned to go publicly about my ordeal.
I then made a post on my Facebook account explaining that due to a terrible working experience with Ogilvy PR I would no longer accept work from Ogilvy & Mathers Manila.
The next day Ms. Miyata called me and explained to me that payment still had not come forth from the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and that Ogilvy PR could not advance payment either.
She then offered to pay my director’s fee out of her personal bank account. While I appreciated the offer, I initially refused, uncomfortable with the arrangement.
I could not understand why Ogilvy & Mathers, an international advertising agency with billings in the hundreds of millions of dollars, could not advance payment of a few thousand dollars to my colleagues and I.
Ms. Miyata insisted on the offer and I relented. At the end of our phone conversation she promised to send the money to the Creative iSnaps account and offered to meet with me over lunch at some point when her work schedule was less busy.
I was able to finally collect my paycheck sometime in the middle of October, more than six months after the work with Ms. Torres and Ms. Miyata.
At the end of the ordeal, I was shocked and appalled at the fiscal irresponsibility of Ogilvy PR, no effort was made prior to awarding the bid to check and see if the client could make timely payment for the work and there were no safeguards in place to protect the production suppliers in the case of a deferment or a default.
Sadly, this is a common story here in the Philippines when it comes to production work for advertisers.
The owners and CEO’s of the major production companies live in a constant state of fear of losing the business of major advertising agencies and have learned to accept the very worst terms, in order to continue to receive bids from these agencies.
When things like this happen, there are serious consequences.
Production companies stacked under debt like this stop having the ability to pay their employees, in turn their employees – or freelance hires like myself, stop having the ability to pay for our lives.
Most of us working in production here in the Philippines, happily do so without health benefits or social security.
It is what allows your agency to save your clients money when it comes to their production needs.
But we rely on those modest paychecks and these days many of us have no idea when we might receive payment for our work.
It has made life in this career field very challenging. Large production companies, buckling under debt (not, I might add, lack of work) have sold off their assets and fired scores of employees, freelance specialists like myself have abandoned the casino table of production work and sought out jobs that give us regular paychecks twice a month.
If you have a moral conscience, I would urge that your New Year’s resolution include treating your production supplier’s better in the coming year.
When you receive a production requirement from a client, please put safeguards in place that would assure that the money is there to pay your production suppliers when the work is complete.
And when disaster strikes and the client defaults on their payment, please have a system in-place at the agency to settle the outstanding bill with your production supplier in a reasonable window of time – not 1 year or more after the labor was provided.
I began my career as an advertising director with Ogilvy & Mathers in 2012 and my initial work with your agency was an incredible success.
The special Valentine’s digital video I directed for Dove Philippines, Real Men Surprise Their Dates, became one of the breakout viral successes of the year for Ogilvy & Mathers.
I was fortunate and privileged enough to work with an excellent team and a brilliant creative director and I was very much looking forward to deepening my engagement with Ogilvy & Mathers and continuing to provide O&M award winning advertising work.
But this experience has left me deeply shaken, I feel aged by this last ordeal. I am now unwilling to risk several months of great stress and anxiety taking on yet another rush job with no assurances for timely payment by O&M.
We, your partners in production deserve better.
You can expect us to go to several days without sleep, to sacrifice our health and relationships and work us to the bone for your ad work.
We love this job and do all these things for you happily.
But please, pay us on time.
Yrs,
– Waise Azimi
www.waiseazimi.com
