Kippy's posts with tag: agency
It's an odd image, I know. You can click on it and see it at full size if you want to read some of the info on it, but basically this was a promo that we sent out with our Media Kit a few years ago. Let me back up and explain a little about what I do for a living, and maybe that'll help explain where the hell today's rant is coming from.
In 1996, I came to work for an international motorcycle trade magazine. My boss said I could make my own title but he apparently didn't mean it as the masthead reads "Art Director" and not "Artistic Goddess". Over the years I've done a myriad of things at the company, but primarily I'm responsible for all marketing materials and putting together the magazines (there are now two publications - one motorcycle, one ATV) monthly. Sometimes I've had employees to manage, but sometimes not. The most fun part of the job, hands down, has been creating our annual Media Kits.
A Media Kit is an informational piece that is sent to advertisers and prospective advertisers, to let them know why they should advertise with us, and what our Editorial focus and rates for the following year are, etc. It's a Sales/Marketing piece, of sorts. And in years past we have done some incredibly fun things! About 7-8 years ago I decided to create each year's kit with a "theme". One year we had a theme of gambling ("Because putting together a marketing program is not a game of chance!") and I designed a custom deck of cards with employees' faces on the face cards. Another year, we had a theme of Big 5 sports, and we scheduled a photo shoot with the local high school football team, who pretended to be playing football while riding atop ATVs. In the case of the image above, we had a theme of history, where we had historical photos of motorcycles and such, and then on the ATV side, I went around northern NV/CA photographing ghost towns and superimposing ATVs into them in Photoshop. We rented costumes from a local shop, and everyone dressed up as an old-time character. Then I took everyones' photos, and I used some of them in the media kit, too. People in the industry used to really look forward to our kits every year, and it was really a fun deal.
Nowadays, the industry is slowing down and money is not flowing as freely, so some of the fun stuff has become fairly mundane. I really long for the day when I can have my freelance company running 100% of the time, rather than splitting my attention between it and the magazines. I want to be able to come up with projects like this for other companies, to help their image in their own respective industries. I want to design my own really fun and funky marketing items. I want to create!
Now, that brings me to my rant for today. Ad agencies. I've been working with them since 1996 and only once in all that time have I found one that I haven't found to be morally bankrupt! So many of the agencies I deal with are lazy, greedy organizations. They contact us trade magazines and would like us to do hours and hours of research for them so they can turn around and put it into a report and charge their clients tons of $ for work they didn't even do. They rip their clients off left and right. They pad their bills, charge thousands of dollars for ads I know I could put together in an hour or two, fake expenses and so much more. Case in point, we have one agency we work with who sends us two ads per month, for the same client, and they send the ads in 2 separate FedEx PRIORITY overnight packages. I can only presume that they tack an extra handling charge for each package they send, so of course, sending both ads separately, they make more money. And of course they send the information priority overnight, even though I have told people for years that we get one delivery per day, regardless of how it's shipped, because we are in "Horse country" (in UPS terms). Priority overnight to our area does nothing except make the delivery companies more money. Of course, the delivery companies could be good guys and let people know this when they ship their packages ... but that's a whole other rant now, isn't it?
Since when has it become ok to do the least amount of work possible and charge the greatest amount you can get away with? I really wish some of these companies who use agencies would demand more and not let themselves be taken advantage of so eagerly. It pisses me off every time I see someone getting raked over the coals, but the fact of the matter is, some people really don't seem to mind paying for the prestige of working with the agency with the right name, even if they're being told to bend over. What a shame.
My little freelance company is not a full-fledged ad agency, but it does offer photography, design, copy writing/editing, etc. I have never padded a bill. I never charge a client more than I quote them, unless something is added to the job after the original quote. I don't charge clients for minor changes that take less than 1/2 hour. A client recently contacted me to tell me he was going to have to hold off on a job because of lack of funds, and asked me how much he owed me for a photo shoot I arranged for him. I told him if he'd just provide my models with one of his products, as originally agreed-upon, we'd call it even. I'm not interested in taking advantage of anyone just so I can afford a nicer car or to eat out more often. I guess I'll never be rich, but at least I'll be able to sleep at night.
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