Inside the Studio That Turned Down Its Biggest Client

A seven-figure retainer, three years guaranteed, and a studio of eleven people who said no in a meeting that lasted twenty minutes.

It is the kind of decision that looks obvious written down and costs somebody a difficult quarter in practice.

Tomas Adeyemi, who spoke to five of the eleven, has been close to it from the start.

Background

The work would have taken roughly 70 per cent of the studio's capacity, on a brief that would not have left the client's brand team.

The timeline tells its own story: eighteen months from first conversation to the point anyone outside the room saw anything, and then six weeks in which everything visible was decided.

They are candid that the decision was affordable because they had eight months of runway.

We could not find the version of ourselves that would have been at the end of it.

one of the partners

The method

They took two smaller commissions instead and ended the year six per cent down on revenue and, by their own count, four projects up on work they would show.

Studios copy each other faster than they admit. Expect three versions of this arrangement by next summer, at least one of them badly costed.

Reaction has split along predictable lines. The people who have to maintain it have the sharpest questions, and the fairest ones.

There is no shortage of people willing to call it inevitable in hindsight. Nobody involved describes it that way.

Where it goes

Asked whether they would do it again, four said yes without qualification. The fifth said it depends on the runway.