Games2win did a campaign for Jockey India in MAY 2010. Yup MAY 2010.
They were mighty pleased with the results and its the 3rd of November now, and we still dont have the money!!
Why?
Listen to these gems of excuses:
- The team has changed
- The agency hasn’t got the money from the client
- The agency is shifting offices!!
Can you believe that I had to write to the CEO of Jockey and the team for a F******* 2-3 lac payment??? And the CEO and his team are responding….
Is this what business in India is all about?
WTF is going on????
Aditya Singh
CEO of Jockey or Agency ?
It is happening to us big time now. We have agencies who didn’t pay us since May. They are making us starve now. :-((((
Abey John
The supplier is always the last to get paid especially for ‘non-show-stoopper’ services/products. This is an “eastern” mentality that I’ve seen time and time over again. My theory is that competitive pressures will bring about a change in that attitude, eventually. But the general perception that I’ve observed is that there is a huge gap between in what is assigned value. They will spend a bundle on building the sexiest showroom and then will go boggled eyed when they see the internet marketing bill. A recent prospect – a diamond jeweler wanted to enter the US market. I quoted 7 lacs for a complete copywriting overhaul including prepping the site for SEO. He balked. On the other hand he happily shelled out 3 lacs for a camera to take product shots. And even there that’s going half cocked. If he had hired a graphic designer/visualizer I suppose he could have gotten his product shots at half the value. In the east we are still very much physical when it comes to transactional value of goods and services. The value of intangibles are disbelieved. It goes to the heart of our cultural bias. Everything abstract outside the church/temple/mosque is just psychobabble. Healthy skepticism no doubt but it cripples business sense. If I am talking to an Indian client I tend to quote 3x more knowing this. As expected I don’t get much business from India. 🙂
Aditya Singh
There are fast payers also in India. Many companies did release money in 15 days.
So, its actually stupid finance people at some large company who don’t know how to manage their cash flow. Some of them are just lazy and try to manage their cashflow by delaying vendor payments.
Abey John
That’s probably more right Aditya. Inefficient cash flow management.
Kiran Kumar
We have a story too. We created an application for Airtel during IPL (Yup APRIL 2010). Still haven’t got the money from Madison.
Reasons given:
The concerned person has quit the agency (now that concerned person didn’t think it was ‘professional’ to inform her clients about her quitting).
They haven’t received the invoice. (This happened somewhere in August after several deadlines for payment given by the agency have lapsed. In reality, they never responded whenever we sent the invoice and asked for confirmation).
The client has not paid. (Finally, we have been chided by the top boss in the agency for being naive for asking them to pay after the customary 60 days. Didn’t we know that the agency may or may not pay after the client pays them but will not certainly pay before the client pays?)
Abey John
Wow that’s magic. (see Alok’s flash news on gettin paid) I guess screamin works. But you need to scream in the right place hmmm. 🙂
Aji (Digital Marketing)
We have mix of clients, some pay right on time, some delay too much but they pay (so far manageable)