Terms

08How an engagement begins

Work starts when you accept a proposal or statement of work in writing, which includes email. That document sets out the scope, the deliverables, the fee, the timings and anything specific we have agreed. These terms sit underneath it. Where the two disagree, the proposal wins on the detail of the work and these terms govern everything else.

09Quotes and estimates

A fixed price is a fixed price for the scope described. An estimate is our honest view of the likely cost based on what we know at the time, and we will flag it as an estimate rather than let you assume otherwise. Quotes hold for 30 days unless we say something different in the proposal.

10What we will do

We will carry out the work with reasonable skill and care, keep you informed without burying you in reporting, and tell you early when something is not working rather than at the end of the quarter. The people named in the proposal are the people who do the work. If we ever need to bring in a specialist, we will say so first, and we remain responsible for anything they deliver.

11What we need from you

Marketing work moves at the speed of the slowest approval. We need timely feedback, a single person who can make decisions, access to the accounts and platforms the work touches, and any brand, product or legal material we have asked for. Where you supply us with copy, images, logos or data, you confirm you have the right to use them and to let us use them on your behalf.

If a delay on your side pushes the work back, we will do our best to absorb it, but we may need to reschedule and, on fixed price projects, adjust the fee if the delay is substantial.

12Fees and payment

Retainers are invoiced monthly in advance. Project work is invoiced as set out in the proposal, usually part on acceptance and the balance on delivery. All fees exclude VAT, which we add at the prevailing rate. Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date.

On late payment we may charge interest and reasonable recovery costs under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and we may pause the work until the account is settled. We would much rather have the conversation than send the reminder, so if cash flow is tight, tell us and we will find a sensible way through it.

13Media spend and third party costs

Advertising budgets, software subscriptions, stock imagery, hosting and similar third party costs are yours and sit outside our fee. Wherever possible we ask you to hold the accounts and the card in your own name, so you keep control of the spend and the data, and so nothing stops working if we part company. Where we do pay for something on your behalf, we agree it in advance and recharge it at cost.

14Changes to the work

Plans change, and good marketing changes with them. Small adjustments within the agreed scope are part of the job and we do not bill for them. Anything that materially adds to the scope gets a short written note of what it involves and what it costs, and we only start once you have agreed it.

15Ending an engagement

We do not use long contracts. Either of us may end a retainer by giving 30 days written notice, and neither of us needs to give a reason. Either of us may end an engagement immediately if the other commits a serious breach and does not put it right within 14 days of being asked to, or becomes insolvent.

On termination you pay for work carried out up to the end of the notice period, including any committed third party costs. We will hand over the current state of the work, the account access we hold and the files you need, in a usable format and without making it difficult.

16Who owns the work

Once we have been paid in full for it, the intellectual property in the deliverables we create for you passes to you. That covers the campaign assets, the copy, the designs and the site build described in your proposal.

We keep ownership of the tools, templates, frameworks, code libraries and internal processes we bring to the job, along with anything we developed before the engagement began. You get a permanent licence to use those things inside the deliverables. Third party components such as fonts, stock photography, plugins and platform software stay with their owners and are licensed to you on their own terms, which we will make clear at the time.

We would like to show the work in our portfolio and case studies. If you would rather we did not, say so and we will not.

17Confidentiality

Each of us will keep the other's confidential information private, use it only for the engagement, and share it internally only with people who need it. This covers commercial figures, strategy, customer data, unreleased products and anything else clearly not public. It does not cover information that is already public through no fault of ours, that either of us already held, or that we are required to disclose by law or by a regulator. These obligations survive the end of the engagement.

18Data protection

Where we handle personal data on your behalf, for example customer lists used in an email campaign or audience data used in advertising, you are the controller and we act as processor under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. We will process that data only on your documented instructions, keep it secure, put appropriate agreements in place with any sub-processor, help you respond to individuals exercising their rights, and delete or return the data at the end of the engagement.

Our own use of data, including this website and the newsletter, is set out in our privacy notice. Where an engagement involves a significant volume of personal data we will sign a separate data processing agreement alongside the proposal.

19Results and liability

We can commit to the quality of the work, the effort behind it and the judgement we apply. We cannot commit to a specific ranking, cost per acquisition, follower count or revenue figure, because those depend on your market, your product, your pricing and platforms whose rules change without notice. Anyone who promises you a number is guessing at best.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Subject to that, neither of us is liable for loss of profit, loss of anticipated savings, loss of business opportunity or indirect losses, and our total liability in connection with an engagement is limited to the fees you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. We are not liable for the acts, outages, policy changes or account decisions of third party platforms.

Because this site and our guides are provided for general information, we exclude liability for business losses arising from acting on them without taking advice on your own circumstances.

20If something goes wrong

Tell us. Email [email protected] with what happened and what you would like done about it, and we will acknowledge it within two working days and come back with a considered answer rather than a form response. We are small enough that a complaint reaches a decision maker immediately, which is one of the few real advantages of working with a small team.

21Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time, and the version published here is always the current one. Changes apply to website use from the moment they are posted. For live engagements, the terms in force when you accepted the proposal continue to apply unless we agree a change in writing.

22Governing law

These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest carries on unaffected. Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce them.