This isn’t a rhetorical question. It was actually the central provocation of a panel*, discussing the cost—real and conceptual—of a treatment. Even though treatments have been the document with which a commercial pitch is won for decades (we’ll talk more about treatment history in-depth in future posts), this conversation only took place—believe it or not—in October 2024.

It was clear from the panel (also broadcast live on Instagram) that the room was full. ABDC, an industry association created for advocacy, representation, and professional development for commercial directors in their regional market, hosted the panel at this event*, stating that over 200 directors joined the association’s WhatsApp group following a conversation on this exact subject: the cost of a treatment. This is clearly a subject the industry is interested in and wants to engage with. So why is it barely discussed?

The question becomes even more intriguing when you add the fact that, by watching this live event, you could see that the room was full. The crowd cared, and the subject landed. But the truth of the matter is: this is a highly controversial, heavily debated issue—always under the curtains—because there’s a lot to uncover under the “how much does a treatment cost?” umbrella. Some aspects even challenge ethical standards within the industry, and those questionable practices often originate from the top players—who are not only unwilling to change but are rarely questioned, since doing so could result in subtle retaliation: agencies withholding jobs from directors or production companies who dare to speak up.

This becomes even clearer when you realize that not a single treatment maker was invited. No researchers. No writers. No layout designers. The fact that no one from the treatment-making side was included tells you what you need to know about why this industry finds itself in a grey, secretive mess that allows ethically murky practices to continue—avoiding giving voice to all the parties involved in the creation of a treatment. And that’s a shame, since we are uniquely positioned to speak about both the metaphorical and very real costs of making them.

Instead, the panel brought together producers, agency creatives, RTVs—and one director who had recently worked with one of the creatives on the panel. In this context, we couldn’t help but notice: it’s difficult to be fully outspoken when you’re sitting next to someone who just hired you. From our standpoint, this came across more as a PR event than an actual transparent, cohesive space that genuinely wants to question the roots of the issue and spark real change in the industry.

And if the topic couldn’t get any more heated, at the heart of the conversation was the issue that, right now, directors are in a particularly challenging position—required to inject creativity and coherence into undercooked scripts with underdeveloped concepts. As one panelist aptly noted, “Even when the idea isn’t ready, we ask for a treatment and expect it to solve the problem.” This practice not only blurs the lines between the roles of agency creatives and directors, but also allows creatives to pass their responsibilities down the line.

On top of that, a recent survey also revealed that:

• 98% of respondents regularly create treatments for the projects they pitch.

• 75% deliver them within three calendar days or less.

• 97% regularly work on weekends and holidays to meet deadlines.

• 50% rarely receive any feedback after submitting.

The fact that the average treatment takes 32 hours to complete is why we call it the “treatment marathon” at Ghost. Most of that work is done on weekends and holidays, squeezed into unrealistic deadlines. Nearly 100% of directors said they always produce a treatment for every job they pitch. And yet, considering that close to 90% said they’ve created treatments in the past year for projects that never moved forward—no feedback, no closure—that represents a huge amount of energy and creative labor poured into something that often gets buried in a client inbox, with empty promises to “come back later in the year,” “next quarter when budgets are renewed,” and so on.

Also, can we please take a moment to actually digest that last bit? 90% of treatments never go ahead. That’s borderline insane. It reveals a dark truth: an immense number of projects handed to production companies are not even approved by the client yet. This is a massive waste of time and money for production companies, who hire professionals like us to execute a winning pitch—and extremely frustrating for directors. Even though most of them are paid to work on treatments (each company has its own arrangements), everyone who works for a living should be expected to work on something that actually has an end goal.

Here, directors seem to be working on projects that were never meant to go forward in the first place, being used by agencies as a way to improve their own undercooked creative ideas—and in the worst-case scenarios, having their ideas mashed with other directors’ pitches for the same job, repurposed by the agency to call it “their creative pitch” when presenting it to the client. In other words, directors and treatment teams are doing the agency’s work for them, so it can be pitched more effectively—with polish, structure, and creative energy that wasn’t there to begin with. And who pays the bills? The production companies.

It’s true that this reckless behavior is more commonly spotted in poorer, less professionalized markets. However, in our experience, these conditions mirror the global treatment landscape. Directors and their crews are routinely asked to write, design, research, and polish ambitious decks for scripts that haven’t been approved by clients—and sometimes, not even by internal teams. It’s a gamble with time, energy, and creative capacity that adds up fast.

SHOULD DIRECTORS COOK UNDERBAKED AGENCY IDEAS?

Directors across this panel in particular spoke openly about the new reality: being asked to fix what wasn’t ready. “We don’t just get the brief,” one said. “We get a half-baked idea, an unapproved script, and a disconnected client. And somehow the treatment is expected to solve all of it.”

The result? Treatments are now being used to fill in strategic, conceptual, and storytelling gaps that should have been resolved inside the agency. And this isn’t about ego or politics—it’s about process. Creative directors in advertising can earn upwards of $200,000* (depending on the market), so when their scripts lack coherence or direction and the responsibility shifts to the director and their treatment team to make it work—you have to ask: what exactly are we all being paid to do?

It’s one of the quiet reasons why so many commercials today feel generic, lacking in creativity, and, quite frankly, just bad. When the script is undercooked, the treatment becomes the fix. And when the fix is expected to be delivered in 72 hours, the quality suffers. These, among other important issues implicit in the cost of a treatment, seem to be the root causes the panel wasn’t willing to debate—at least not in this instance. Which brings us to a larger question: is the treatment system broken, or is it working… depending on which side you’re on?

What used to be a space for expressing visual intent has, in many cases, turned into a tool for patching creative issues no one had time to solve. It’s not always the case. But it happens often enough to spark real fatigue across the board.

One director on the panel compared it to being handed a broken house to renovate. “We don’t have blueprints,” they said. “And the client hasn’t even decided if they want a house.” Another added, “Treatments are being asked too early in the process—they’ve become strategic documents by default.”

A panelist said: “Sometimes we send out nothing but a line, a vague insight, or an empty page. And then we expect the treatment to do what the agency should have done. The director, the production house—they’re asked to resolve a script we didn’t know how to write.”

ETHICAL ISSUES RAISED AND FINAL THOUGHTS

As one speaker also pointed out: “And then comes the ethical part. The guy sends three treatments, receives three ideas, grabs a bit from one, another from the second, and a third from the third—and that’s the film that gets made. We all know this happens.”

At Ghost, we believe this is one of the most important conversations happening in the industry right now. Because if you care about treatments—and we do—you also have to care about the conditions under which they’re made. That means asking better questions, rethinking the timeline, and treating the treatment as a creative product in its own right.

This is also important to us because, despite being paid the same amount—whether we’re working on a poorly creative treatment or a masterpiece—we want to see better scripts circulating. We want directors to get more from the time and energy they put in. We want production companies to thrive and invest in pitches they know they can actually win. This is not a problem that concerns agencies alone. It’s a domino effect that strikes us all—and it threatens the thing we love most: beautiful, compelling, thought-provoking work.

We also think future panels should include the people who do the work. The researchers, the writers, the layout designers—the ones who build the director’s vision from the inside out. Leaving them out doesn’t just omit a key part of the process—it reduces the conversation to surface-level critique. It turns something that appears transparent into what it often is: performative transparency.

Because what we’re seeing isn’t just a culture of rush. It’s a culture of silence around creative labor. The kind that makes it easy to ask for something extraordinary in 72 hours, without asking who’s actually doing it—or what it might cost them.

*ABDC live panel at Clube de Criação Festival (13/10/2024), Instagram @abdcnoinsta

Brazil is ranked among the top 10 ad markets globally, with its advertising industry generating over $20 billion annually (Statista, 2023).

Panelists: Camila Naito (Head of Production, WMcCann), Henrique Dellamora (Executive Creative Director, AlmapBBDO), Victor Francisco (RTV Director, Talent), Talita Cardozo (Creative Director, Soko), moderated by Georgia Guerra-Peixe (President, ABDC) and César Arney (Director, ABDC).

*Salary data sourced from publicly reported creative director earnings across US and EU advertising markets.

You can listen to a podcast in English, produced by NotebookLM by Google, based on the recording of this event at this link.

You can watch the event in Portuguese here.

What Next?

If this resonates with you, we’ll be sharing more deep dives into the craft of treatment writing and design. Let us know if there’s a topic you’d like us to explore next.

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