This week I was approached by an event planner who creates events for companies like Apple (exciting!). They asked about providing photography for a small event in London. After describing the event itself, they asked me two questions. The second question was if I was available and could provide a quote for event photography.

What question was more important than asking for availability and an event photography quote, I hear you ask?

“Do you do kickbacks?”

I know very well what they meant – they wanted to know if I was in the business of bribing event planners to hire me by creaming 10% or whatever off the top of my own fees as some kind of ‘thank you’ for being hired.

I do not – I work with a lot of event planners and none of them demand a commission, but we’ll come to why that is below.

I’d not heard it called a kickback before and I was curious what they’d say, so after confirming that unfortunately I wasn’t available (which was true), I innocently asked “Sorry if this is a daft question, but what’s a kickback?”

They replied to say thanks for letting them know about availability… and then they pasted in what is quite obviously a pre-written argument defending commissions, which suggests to me that they get push-back on this often enough to have something ready to go when questioned:

“Also known as commission, a kickback is where the Event Planner receives a percentage of what the vendor is paid as a thank you for recommending them to the client as part of the event budget.

This is standard practice in the events industry and kickbacks range from 5-15% of the total the venue / vendor is being paid by the client.

You don’t have to offer a kickback to work with us but vendors who offer a kickback are considered first when hiring our event team for a new event.

Kickbacks also encourage a long term relationship between us where we end up spending less time on events as we know each other so well, we’re not starting from scratch each new event.

In practice, mostly our partners slightly inflate their rate card to accommodate the commission on top of their normal fee, or where necessary adjust the fee to cover it. We then invoice you for this % after the event once you have been paid, and hopefully work together lots with this arrangement in place and on our database.”

I fundamentally reject this argument from start to finish. Every stinking word of it.

The entire argument that paying a commission is beneficial to a long term relationship is pure gaslighting bullshit.

Being good to work with is what fosters a long term working relationship. These guys hiring me purely because I pay them to is not a healthy relationship, it’s one built entirely on their greed: if I stop paying them a commission it doesn’t matter how good I am, I won’t get the work. That’s bullshit.

It’s also not “standard practice”; I’ve been in business 17 years and only one other agency ever demanded a commission – some company called Ruby Events I think, about ten years ago, I said no to them too.

Isn’t it like paying for advertising to get ‘leads’?

No, because when you click on an advert you know you’re clicking on an advert. Does this event planner’s clients know that all the people they choose to work with are there for the singular reason that they paid to be there?

And does the client ultimately realise that they are the ones actually footing that bill in the form of inflated supplier costs?

If event planners want to make more money, CHARGE MORE MONEY.

For event planners that refuse to let go of this idea that event photographers owe them money for the privilege, there is a much simpler way: ask the photographer to supply some photos for the event planner to use for free. The cost to license them would normally dwarf the commission. Everyone’s happy this way.

For example, a certain palatial wedding venue in SW London has me on their lengthy list of ‘recommended’ suppliers despite demanding a commission from us all, which I have never paid. Instead I send them hundreds of free photos of their venue looking amazing.

I give them photos that make them look good, they recommend me so that I’ll make more photos of their venue looking good, and around we go. Every time I’m there I build a better relationship with their own team, which itself makes the day go even easier, which leads to a better experience for their clients, which means even better photos – and around we go again!

Event planners should just charge their clients more instead of getting suppliers to make up the difference

The line suggesting us photographers simply increase our fee to accommodate the commission the event planner demands is nonsense too.

How about the event planner just charges their own client more? How about the event planner takes our regular fee and adds 10% on themselves when they provide a breakdown to their own client? No need to waste time invoicing suppliers for their commission, just get paid it by their own clients in the first place.

Maybe there’s some kind of accounting issue with directly charging their client more? Even though their client is going to end up paying more for this one way or another – either to the suppliers or to the event planner. So I really don’t get it.

Event planners that charge commission aren’t recommending suppliers based on skill

Either way, what’s happening here is event planners charging a commission are quite clearly not hiring suppliers because they’re necessarily good or the best, but because they’re willing to pay the event planner.

In fact this event planner literally spelled it out: “vendors who offer a kickback are considered first”

They don’t hire for their events based on skill, they hire based on how much money they can cream off your fee. This event planner puts events together for Apple. I would have thought that Apple would rather the suppliers at their events were there because they’re the best, not because they’ve paid to be there, don’t you?

So I don’t work with planners that demand a commission, and if I did then I wouldn’t be licensing the planners to use a single one of my photos to promote their own business. But I’m pretty sure they’d demand a right to those photos anyway and wouldn’t hire me if I offered “either free photos or a commission”.

So I say no to event planners that ask for a commission, and I say an even firmer NO to event planners that send me ridiculous emails like the one above trying to gaslight me into thinking it’s a good thing that they only pick suppliers who pay them, rather than picking the best suppliers for the job.