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As an Art Director we used three large agencies to cover needs, ranging $140-175/hr. Given this was a finance company, they didn't know creative as much. The is

As an Art Director we used three large agencies to cover needs, ranging $140-175/hr. Given this was a finance company, they didn't know creative as much. The issue I discovered was these agencies were inflating service hours. One example was the need to modify a four page powerpoint. Invoice came back as $6,800. So the issue wasn't rate, but durations..

jermaustin1 9y ago
Having worked with agencies through a client, I have seen their billing process. They might not have inflated hours. Assuming you have a creative, a project manager, delivery manager, and a sales manager in the agency, each task/project has to go through each of their hands. That's an hour each for the managers and how ever many hours for the actual work itself as the base delivery price. Then the internal back and forth between the delivery manager and the creative to insure that everything is "to spec". Then the project manager to report on status each day and the sales manager to take you to lunch and discuss the how amazing everything is with the project, and that the BEST people are working on it. So 3-4 hours of work can turn into 20 hours of billing (plus expenses).
- TaylorGood 9y ago
  Thanks for this. It's true. Our main agency had a process of the Account Exec telling the Art Director who delegated to his team of designers. That is at least three people at varied costs.
pwthornton 9y ago
People focus far too much one rate and far too little on output cost. Different companies are wildly more efficient per hour of work never mind that many just do much better work. Rates are kind of ethereal. Maybe they are padding. Maybe they are just slow. Maybe they are throwing several resources on it. I don't know. This is a big problem with procurement. People fixate on hourly costs and not total cost of project.
wastedhours 9y ago
Trying to nail this down can be a hair-pulling experience. I know estimations are a ridiculously hard thing to do, but that's kinda the reason I'm engaging them as an expert. I also know they want all the work you can throw at them, but just getting a sense of whether this is a 1 hour or 5 hour gig so I can evaluate the ROI before briefing it in is impossible. This is one of the things I want to address (my side-gig doing marketing consultancy) - one rate, whether that's strategy or design work, up to the client how to use it (and telling them to use someone else if not good value).

jermaustin1 9y ago

Having worked with agencies through a client, I have seen their billing process. They might not have inflated hours. Assuming you have a creative, a project manager, delivery manager, and a sales manager in the agency, each task/project has to go through each of their hands. That's an hour each for the managers and how ever many hours for the actual work itself as the base delivery price. Then the internal back and forth between the delivery manager and the creative to insure that everything is "to spec". Then the project manager to report on status each day and the sales manager to take you to lunch and discuss the how amazing everything is with the project, and that the BEST people are working on it. So 3-4 hours of work can turn into 20 hours of billing (plus expenses).

TaylorGood 9y ago
Thanks for this. It's true. Our main agency had a process of the Account Exec telling the Art Director who delegated to his team of designers. That is at least three people at varied costs.

pwthornton 9y ago

People focus far too much one rate and far too little on output cost. Different companies are wildly more efficient per hour of work never mind that many just do much better work. Rates are kind of ethereal. Maybe they are padding. Maybe they are just slow. Maybe they are throwing several resources on it. I don't know. This is a big problem with procurement. People fixate on hourly costs and not total cost of project.

wastedhours 9y ago

Trying to nail this down can be a hair-pulling experience. I know estimations are a ridiculously hard thing to do, but that's kinda the reason I'm engaging them as an expert. I also know they want all the work you can throw at them, but just getting a sense of whether this is a 1 hour or 5 hour gig so I can evaluate the ROI before briefing it in is impossible. This is one of the things I want to address (my side-gig doing marketing consultancy) - one rate, whether that's strategy or design work, up to the client how to use it (and telling them to use someone else if not good value).