What Is a Rep?

If you’ve been in this industry for even just a short period of time, you’ve likely heard of ‘reps’. However, thanks to an ever-evolving history and some prevalent misconceptions about their roles and responsibilities, it’s not surprising if you aren’t 100% on exactly what a rep is, or does.

In the words of Corey Rogers, a veteran rep and board secretary of the Alliance of Independent Representatives (AIR), he says independent reps are “connectors for creative content, resources and solutions.” In short, a rep has a roster of clients (directors, production companies, post houses, etc.) who they want to connect with agencies and brands - and the briefs they are submitting - to put their clients in a position to bid on projects. Still unsure? Have no fear - we’ll get to the details in a moment.

Speaking to LBB’s Ben Conway, Corey is joined by Doug Sherin, another experienced rep and board director for AIR, to clarify the role of the modern independent rep, detail the history of the job, and explain why they believe changes must be made to the current compensation model that reps rely on for their livelihoods.

What Is a Rep?

“There wasn't really any such thing as an ‘independent rep’ until maybe the mid to late ‘80s,” says Corey, describing how ‘sales reps’, as they were known at the time, worked in-house, until the model shifted in the run-up to the ‘90s. Independent ‘directors reps’ were the first to emerge, as the rest of industry stuck with on-staff reps, before globalisation and increasing non-traditional productions called for reps to broaden their rosters.

“We became more of a resource connector, rather than a rep,” says Corey. “And most of us have never really been agents - we're not really advocating on behalf of a person or selling widgets like a traditional ‘sales rep’. Most reps are not in any way ‘directors reps’ at all, what they have is piles of resources spread across the globe, whether it's production companies and directors, editorial and post, VFX, experiential, influencers, whatever… You're just trying to connect your stuff with opportunities or people who may have future projects.”

Doug describes reps as “information gatherers” and “conduits” that link the right director, VFX company, editor or whoever they represent with the right opportunity.

“To this day, 99% of jobs can transact by the simplicity of knowing about a job in a timely fashion and having the most relevant piece of work that speaks to that,” he says. “It's the right work at the right time with the right director or company. I put forth work to plenty of producers, agencies and brands that I have zero rapport with - and I have bid jobs, been invited, and booked jobs. Because if you concentrate on putting forward work that makes sense - done deal. It doesn't matter if you're a superstar mega production company or if you're a brand X boutique that just happens to have the right stuff. That is the truth.”

[Above: Corey Rogers and Doug Sherin, reps and AIR board members.]

Setting it Straight: “We Don't Do Sales” 

Perhaps because reps originally started on-staff at companies, Corey explains that there is a misconception around the profession. He dispels this swiftly: “This idea that we do sales got ingrained. But we do not do sales.”

He continues, “We find opportunities, and then we connect our clients - our resources and solutions - to those opportunities. Now an opportunity could be a board, a job or a project, but it also could be an introduction to a creative director or a producer or an agency…We are trying to shorten the distance between our clients and a project.”

Corey believes the disconnect comes from a sales mentality - where salespeople earn commission for booking jobs. However, reps do not book jobs themselves, they find opportunities to get jobs. And importantly, not every opportunity found is guaranteed to result in a job being booked for the client.

“When that job goes into bid, our core function in this business is complete,” he explains. “We have done the job that we are tasked to do, which is to find an opportunity. We're not door openers, we're door finders.”

It’s these opportunities that Corey believes are the true metric of a rep’s success - not the number of jobs won. “How many things did they find? How many reels did they send out (that were really strong for that job)? How many introductions did they make? How many screenings did they get? How much activity did that rep generate for the company?”

Of course, reps are incentivised to help their clients win jobs, especially as they’re currently paid through commission - but that’s not how it’s always been. This mismatch of job purpose and method of compensation is why Corey describes the current setup as “broken.” 

How Did the Model Break?

Independent reps in the ‘90s were originally compensated with 6% of the ‘hard costs’ of a project. This is known as the ‘A to K’ - meaning the lines from ‘A’ to ‘K’ on the AICP bid form that shows the cost of a job before fees.

Recalling this period from a rep’s perspective, Corey says, “Markups at that time were around 30-35% of the job. So it was a lot easier to make money because you're getting 6% of A to K. Those were fairly healthy and everybody was happy. Nobody really worried too much about monthly fees, because everybody was making enough money.”

Then, he says, cost consultants arrived and the A to K was put under scrutiny, reducing its value. This led to reps taking ‘split deals’ - taking just 3% of the A to K, but also 10% of the markup. However, not long after, there was an industry-wide shift to get reps off of the ‘hard costs’ of a job and make them more like partners - this resulted in reps being compensated solely through the profits of a job, earning 20% of the markup.

Agencies then started to change their compensation models, cost pressures rose, and the average markup soon began to fall. 

Adding how the globalisation of the industry, spearheaded by the digital revolution, led to increased competition for agencies and fewer traditional productions, Corey summarises the scenario as “less money, less work and more talent -  and less less money for us. So it's a bad combo.”

How the Modern Rep Makes Money

Describing the situation as it stands today, Doug says, “We did a million dollar job recently for a popular tech brand. It was a 10% markup. So it doesn’t matter that it's a 1.5 million dollar job, the markup just wasn't there… everything is really squeezed!”

“For the most part, everybody's markup globally is maybe around 20%,” says Corey. “Then they started to push that on us - not thinking about how a percentage of a percentage is still a percentage. Why would we reduce our percentage? Everybody's already getting less, and now you want us to take another cut? Then [rep commission] became 18% of markup (which itself had already come down). It’s a never-ending spiral downward.”

Some do charge a monthly fee too - something the reps have worked hard to define as a ‘service fee’ rather than a ‘retainer’ - which simply provides a minimal nomination, should the client fail to book a job following the rep’s work. But this isn’t consistent for all clients, and the average fee is below what Corey and Doug deem sufficient.

“We’re one of the only functions in any business, especially this one, that I can think of where our compensation is tied to whether or not other people succeed at their job,” says Corey, before Doug interjects, “Oftentimes they do book the job, and then the job still gets killed!”

Relying on commission from their clients’ jobs means that without a monthly ‘service charge’, reps can be working for a company or individual - and providing significant numbers of opportunities - without seeing any remuneration at all.

“If a client ended up getting 100 bids in a year, but they didn't book any of them, we would have gotten paid exactly nothing,” says Corey. “We would have been amazing at our job, and not been paid anything.”

Next Steps for Reps

Where does the solution lie? Corey believes that, realistically, you need to up-end the industry’s way of thinking and pay reps a larger monthly fee. However, he says that simply won’t happen.

One of the other proposals, which Doug brings up, is to reimplement an older model, with reps taking a gross percentage of the overall project’s costs, so their commission doesn’t rely solely on the profits of a project any more.

“We call it the ‘adjusted gross’,” says Corey. “Anything you’re marking up, we get paid on as a percentage of the gross and we’ve come to a small range of gross numbers that can be adjusted. Over the course of a year, it roughly comes out to be the same [as the current model] but we’re not at the mercy of decisions our clients make to get or do the job.”

As this contest to earn their fair share of the pie continues, Corey and Doug - and the wider AIR organisation - have turned their attention also to reforming the reel submission and treatment creation processes that reps are such an involved part of. AIR has two major initiatives to standardise them and provide an even playing field for both parties during the bid - those who are looking for talent and resources, and those who are vying to be hired for the job. 

You’ll be able to hear about this in detail at a later date but for now, here’s hoping that you can finally answer this question with confidence: What is a rep?