Even though a fair amount of my professional lifetime has been spent in doing prepress production for the advertising industry, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the large dollar amounts involved in advertising. It’s like professional sports salaries or oceanfront real estate; too many zeroes and too hard to correlate the dollar figure with the perceived value of the product.
I saw an item in Advertising Age about GM’s projected advertising budget during bankruptcy: $40-$50 million per month. This is the same amount the automaker was spending before filing for Chapter 11. GM was not asked by the government’s auto task force to make cuts in this area, unlike Chrysler, whose advertising budget was cut by approximately half.
Still having a hard time wrapping my head around the dollar amount, especially when the advertising that is supposed to make me want to buy a GM vehicle is like this:
Sorry. Didn’t grab me. You know what would grab me? And remember, these are my… and your… advertising dollars at work now. Less advertising of concepts and warm fuzzy “we can do it” crap, and more advertising of affordability, rebates, special pricing, or “free” upgrades to a higher accessory package. Or how about less advertising and more spending on making a better quality product that would draw us back from Japanese and German vehicles (or in my case, a different American automaker).
On a related note, and one that could have been related to me but is not since the only auto-related project we’ve been involved with in recent years was not for GM or Chrysler, is a word on how most ad agencies handle payment. The “pay when paid” policy means that the agency pays its vendors when their client pays them. Imagine the situation for a vendor to Chrysler’s agency, BBDO Detroit, who is owed $58 million by Chrysler. Very bad situation for BBDO, a really bad situation for a small business (again, imagining a small prepress shop like my own business) working on any part of the Chrysler account for BBDO too.
(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 21 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 148 of 274)