What if, instead of paying your taxi driver with money, you instead tried paying with exposure?
After all, just being seen in the back of their cab would look great in their portfolio and surely lead to a lot of future business.
Well, you'll discover pretty quick that attitude won't get you very far.
It doesn't work like that
And yet creative freelancers and agencies often encounter this kind of treatment from clients who don't value their time.
If we could emphasise how absurd that is then it would really highlight the importance of a good time tracking tool, like Toggl.
And so, armed with some hidden cameras, Toggl sent us to flip perceptions and find out how professionals across other industries react to the kind of time wasting behavior that freelancers and agencies often encounter.
Here's a few clips and a bit more about how it came together.
They really know their users
Toggl started out back in the 2000s as a fairly typical IT servicing company in Estonia.
To help manage their time across different projects, they had the smart idea to make their own very simple time tracker as an internal tool. Clients loved seeing that data and word quickly spread.
While other time trackers are bloated with fancy features, Toggl understood that a good time tracker must just be so simple and intuitive that people actually use it. It certainly can't cost any time.
And thus was born what is now one of the world's most widely used time trackers.
While Toggl no longer sells its own time, its tool is so successful because they so deeply understand the people who do - and that affinity with freelancers and agencies feeds into all their communications too.
It was Toggl's then marketing manager Mart Virkus who came up with the idea for this video (back when we focused on content marketing).
Before shooting, we sat down with a little focus group of freelancers to hear about their worst experiences with time-wasting clients from hell. There were a lot of recurring themes.
We decided to hone in on designers in particular as they were a key growth audience for Toggl and we had a good opportunity for the video to be featured on a popular design site.
Everyone in our group had, of course, all been told at some point to "make the logo bigger".
Good designers can tell you that a logo needs some breathing space to truly stand out with confidence, whereas a cluttered canvas with an oversized logo can just look a bit desperate.
But "make the logo bigger" is just the tip of the iceberg.
They had also all delivered work for free in order to be shortlisted for future business that never materialised.
And a few of them noted that clients often start out by making the same devaluing remark that goes something like: "I've got a mate who does this so I don't normally pay for it".
All of that helped us make the most relatable video we could for them.
And, of course, there is always that client who asks for a simple deliverable but ends up trying to pile on lots more work after the price is agreed.
Filming in public can be surprisingly complicated, especially in London where there is a complex maze of jurisdictions, which can mean rules vary sometimes just depending on which side of the street you are on.
Our client from hell is Matt Addis, a great stage and screen actor, and actually a very nice bloke. It was important that he was always the joke and not any of the public we encountered.
Everyone we filmed was incredibly good spirited, at least once we explained everything afterwards and got their permission to use the footage. In most cases, they knew we were filming something even if they didn't know what to expect.
My favourite scene was this one filmed completely hidden in which Matt is stopping people to ask for a quick photo but keeps making ever more elaborate requests for how the photo should be taken.
The video made headlines and the reaction from the design community was great to see. We hit just the right nerve while making people laugh - and giving more people a chance to learn about Toggl.
By the way, I am a big fan of Mart Virkus and not just for his creative marketing, which he continues today for Patchstack.
Mart is also behind the legendary Arcade Rage comics. If you haven't seen them yet, Bored Panda has featured his work in 2020, 2021, and 2024 so do check them out.