Most agencies would bill someone at my level out at anywhere from $250-400/hour. No, seriously. I guess you've gotta pay for that prime rental space and flashy decor somehow.

Of course, given that my office is in the basement of my house, my support staff consists of, well, me, and I don't have to supply muffins for meetings, I'm appreciably cheaper than that.

How much cheaper?

It depends.

I'm not trying to be coy. It depends on whether you want to pay for an hour, a week, or by the job. I'm partial to the latter, because it means that there are no nasty surprises for anyone. It also recognizes the inherent worth of an advertising idea, whether you come up with it in 3 hours or 3 weeks. But having said all that, hey, I'm a freelancer. I'm flexible.

What's the budget? Chances are, you don't want to pay me tons of dough for a radio spot that's going to be produced by the station and that they'd write for free anyhow. Only got $500 for production? Well, you'll have less than $0 in the budget by the time you've paid me.

How complicated is the process going to be? Is there one person who can say yes? Or are we dealing with a committee? All of whom can say no, but none of whom can say yes? As a rule, the smaller the group, the easier the process and the cheaper the job. And most of the time, the better the advertising.

How good do you want your advertising to be? Good creative people are kinda funny about this. We'll bend over backwards for clients who give us the opportunity to do good work. Or even better, demand good work. Needless to say, that gets reflected in the cost. Want the same old stuff your competitors are doing? That gets reflected in the cost as well.

Is the work likely to be ongoing? It's just like Costco. You can save some dough buying in bulk.

So if you're a one-man operation, committed to doing great advertising over the long term with good budgets, I'll basically work for you for free :-)

Not that it would do you much good. Mythical creatures rarely need advertising.

Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.

I remember seeing this posted in a producer's office years ago, and thought it was a beautifully simple distillation of some of the realities of this business.

You can have advertising that's good and fast, but it won't be cheap. You can have it good and cheap, but it won't be fast. Or you can have it fast and cheap, but it's not going to be very good. And oh yeah, you'll have to get someone else to do it.

Life's too short to do work you know is going to be crap.

How I can really save you some money.

Everybody complains about the cost of production these days. And no, broadcast and print production aren't cheap, And if they are, well, you get what you pay for.

But I'll let you in on a secret. The production company isn't the one that's going to determine how expensive your advertising is going to be.

The writer is.

A good, experienced writer knows what a budget of a certain value will buy and writes to that. You've got $5K for a television commercial? Well, it's going to be a pretty bare bones commercial. It'll be shot on video instead of film. There probably won't be any talent on camera. And I can pretty much guarantee you that you won't be hearing the soundtrack from Chariots of Fire in the background.

But that's fine. There are some pretty good $5K ideas out there. Not to mention some pretty good $15K ideas out there. And there's nothing in the rule book that says that those ideas can't be every bit as good as a $5M idea. Matter of fact, they probably need to be better. Because you're not going to be impressing anyone with production values.

The same is true of every medium. I can sell you a print ad with a herd of elephants chasing the new car you're selling through Times Square, but you'd better have a heck of a photography budget. Plus a retouching budget.

But I can also sell you an idea that costs 1/10th of that, one that uses existing photography of your product combined with a real, honest-to-goodness idea. You'd be amazed how effective a little production budget can be when combined with a little thinking.

So if you're paying too much to get your advertising made, don't blame the production houses.

Blame your creative people.

Guarantees

There aren't any.

I'd love to tell you otherwise, but I'd be blowing smoke up...well, you get the general idea.

No one can guarantee you that an advertising idea is going to work. Anyone who does is lying. There are just too many variables in the marketing mix. All you can do is go with someone with a track record of doing high quality, effective work. And even they're going to miss occasionally.

So I can't make any guarantees. I can, however, make some promises.

I promise to do the best job I possibly can.

I promise that anything I do will be not only be interesting creatively, but will be solid strategically. Much as it pains a creative guy to say this, saying the right thing is usually more important than how you say it.

I promise not to come back to you with the same stuff all your competitors are doing. If they're doing it, you have to find a new direction. Sorry, those are the rules.

I promise not to indulge in the kind of creative wankery that gets the writer noticed but not the product. I kinda pride myself on straight talk. Not only to you, but to your potential customers.