The argument, in a nutshell is that the deck is stacked unfairly against post production vendors due in part to the incentivizing of agency staff to use internal services as much as possible. These incentives can come in many forms, the most obvious of these being bonuses followed by recognition of said agency ‘saving their client money’ by taking certain parts of a project in-house.
Obsidian represents a wide range of talent underneath the post production umbrella and while we do [and always will] think that competition in any form is a good thing, the AICE’s call for advertising agencies to show increased levels of transparency in their practices should be laid out as clearly and concisely as possible not only for the benefit of their vendor relationships, but also to their own clients who trust agencies to use their best judgement on all things creative. This transparency will aid in the good kind of competition, i.e. the best idea wins, and who doesn't love that [hint: probably the ones with shitty ideas]?