“I got into this business because I love ideas and the crazy non-conformist people who have them,” asserts Jon Williams, founder and chief executive of Liberty Guild, a curated group of independent creatives. “We put ideas at the heart of our business as they should be. People care about what they sell … I care about the act of creation.”

Williams is part of a growing movement to ditch timesheets. Clients have historically used the ‘time is money’ school of thought to quantify a service, billing ad agencies and design studios by projected hours. “What tends to happen is clients go line by line on each role,” explains Miranda Hipwell, CEO of adam&eve/DDB. “They go through the minutiae of the hourly price for a CEO, CCO, CSO … and then the team behind it. They want to see all the details.”

Some argue that charging by the hour is an outdated way of paying creatives for their specialities. It can force them to focus on the wrong objectives as the billable hours tick by or create a toxic environment where everyone works into the night until the inevitable burnout hits. Creative energy flows in cycles; why sacrifice better ideas to work within the timesheet? On the other hand, it has also been argued that it incentivises agencies to take or waste their time.