The 5 Things Every Marketing Agency Should Look for in the Client’s Contract
Your marketing agency just got a great new piece of business. Terrific news! The creative team is full of energy and ideas, the account service folks are ready to roll, and billings will start climbing soon. After there’s a contract signed, of course. Soon enough, there’s an email with your client’s standard (and very lengthy) “Professional Services Agreement” in your inbox with a request to sign before the work is approved. What now? First, avoid assuming that the client’s document represents a done deal. It can feel overwhelming to be on the receiving end of a legal document that neither the agency nor its legal advisor drafted. What kind of language should you expect, and what does an unreasonable provision look like? Where the client is an enterprise-sized company with a large in-house legal team or, even worse, a procurement department, managing the contract process, the contract review and negotiation seem more time consuming than completing the actual marketing work. It helps to know which issues to look for in a presented contract, especially those that could be legal or financial minefields for the agency. Here are 5 things every marketing agency principal should look for in the client’s contract form: Intellectual Property Provisions – Clients will expect to own the intellectual property in the work the agency creates for them, and their contract form will likely include language that provides for this, with the default provision that the client own rights to the work as soon as it is created. It’s certainly fair for the client to expect to own the IP (unless the parties have agreed to some sort of licensing arrangement), but only once the agency is paid for its work. Negotiate language that conditions [...]