How we work
Portfolio wins a night. Process wins a year.
A GIFLIF engagement starts with a scoping conversation, moves to a written scope and a retainer or project fee, and runs with one named lead accountable throughout. Clients deal with the people doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages.
Anyone can show you photographs of a full room. If you are handing over your festival, or your name, what you actually need to know is how the months in between are going to run.
Engagements that ran this way
The shape of an engagement
A real conversation
What you are trying to build, what has already been decided, what the budget range genuinely is, and when it has to happen. Free, and often ends with us telling you that you need less than you thought.
A written scope
What we are doing, what we are not doing, what we need from you and when. The "not doing" half matters more than the rest — almost every event that goes wrong goes wrong in an assumption nobody wrote down.
Build
A retainer for IP work, a project fee for production. One named lead, accountable, who you can reach directly. Weekly written updates as standard, daily in show week.
The honest debrief
What worked, what did not, what the numbers actually say, and what should change next time. For an IP this is the most valuable meeting of the whole cycle, because edition two is where the compounding starts.
Being your experience team, in practice
When we build your IP, the default is that GIFLIF does not appear at all — not on the creative, not on the signage, not in the press release. You are the organiser. We are the team that builds it and runs it through the year, including the channel and the content between editions.
- Credit is opt-in, not opt-out. If you want us credited we are glad to be. Nothing requires it.
- Your audience relationship stays yours. Ticket buyer data, sponsor relationships and the audience profile belong to you and to the IP.
- We will ask to reference the work. Usually after the event and always with your sign-off. If the answer is no, the answer is no.
What we need from you
- One decision-maker. Not a committee. One person who can approve a line-up and sign a contract without a three-week loop.
- An honest budget range. Not a number to negotiate against — the actual range. It changes what we propose, and a fantasy figure wastes everyone's month.
- The real deadline. Including the fixed constraints: an academic calendar, a season, a sponsor commitment, a minister's diary.
- Access. For ticketing and channel work, access to the platforms early. Most delays we see are access delays.
Questions we get asked
Who will we actually be dealing with?
One named lead who is doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages. GIFLIF is deliberately small enough that the person you talk to is the person building your event.
How do you charge?
IP Creation and YouTube run on a monthly retainer, because the work is continuous and the value compounds. Event Production is a project fee. Audience Intelligence is scoped to the show.
What happens if the event fails to sell?
We tell you early. The audience platform exists precisely so that a slow on-sale is visible in week one rather than week six, when there is still time to change price, city or campaign.
Will you say no to work?
Yes, and reasonably often. If a date is unrealistic, a budget cannot carry the ambition, or the concept will not find an audience, saying so at the start is cheaper for both of us than discovering it later.
Start with the conversation
The questionnaire covers most of what we would ask anyway, and takes about ten minutes.