The Reason Behind the Pitiful (and Steep) Decline in the Value of Creativity

If you’re any kind of creative professional, but one in advertising, marketing, writing, or design in particular, then you’re in the same boat as I am. And my heart goes out to you. I cannot think of a point in my career that I have been more fearful of my future, and that of my colleagues. We are living in a brutal time to be doing what we do, and I believe it is only going to get worse.

First, a little background.

I started as a junior copywriter in London back in 1996. To say I was green would be an understatement. After working on hole-proof socks and alcohol-free beer campaigns in university, my first real brief was a 2-inch square black-and-white recruitment ad for WeightWatchers. “There’s still time to get slim for summer.” Groundbreaking.

Of course, that was to be understood...

You don’t let a young kid with a fresh driver’s license behind the wheel of a Ferrari. It takes time to learn to know what you’re doing; time, and a wealth of experience.

Within a year my art director and I had ditched our junior titles and actually produced work for a national print campaign for the same client. It was great.

Over the years, we had many failures. We slept at the agency, showered there, fell asleep at our desks from exhaustion, and drank more than our fair share of beer. But it was all experience that was shaping us in much the same way a sculptor hammers away at marble. A lot of knocks, a lot of debris, but something special was forming.

Cut to five years later, and we have learned a lot.

Briefs that used to make us sweat buckets were no longer feared but eagerly anticipated. Projects that had once taken us two weeks to crack were sometimes solved in the same day. We had learned. We had grown. And we had become more valuable to our agency.

In 2001, I moved to Denver. At that time, with my roughly 5-6 years of experience, I met with a headhunter that told me to set my hourly rate at $60. “If you had 10+ years and a creative director title, it would be $100+, but you’re not there yet.”

Well, today I am, and then some. I now have over 20 years under my belt, 10 of those as a creative director, and I consider myself to be very good at what I do. As Malcolm Gladwell has said, among others, it takes around 10,000 hours (or 10 years) of practice and experience to become excellent in your chosen discipline. And yet, what is this worth today, accounting for inflation? $150 per hour? $300 per hour?

No. Today, I am charging about the same rate. In some cases, $50 an hour. I’m not devaluing my services. I am not doing it to undercut the competition. The sad fact is, that is all the current market is willing to pay. To be honest, even that figure makes the average client groan.

So why has this incredible downturn happened?

Well, it can be blamed on numerous issues, but the biggest one falls squarely in the laps of clients that look solely at the hourly rate and nothing more. I have been looking through freelance job boards for writing and creative gigs.

There are people out there, many based in other countries, offering their services for $5-10 per hour. To put that into perspective, I walked past a sign today that said, “sandwich delivery drivers needed, $18/hour.”

It appears that a job anyone with a car and a GPS unit can do is 2-3 times more valued than someone with creative ideas and the ability to persuade. How can any decent professional compete with that on paper?

What so few clients fail to appreciate is what they’re actually getting for that money. Will it be acceptable work? Maybe. Will it be done in a timely fashion? Doubtful. Will it take many rounds and rounds of revisions to get it where it needs to be? Absolutely.

Here's what I would like to drum into the heads of clients everywhere.

It’s an old cliché, but it’s true. Time is money. So, if nothing else has stuck, please consider the following. Let’s say you have a project to deliver the best ad your company has ever done. It will be viral. It will turn heads. It will have your product or service on the lips of millions of people around the world.

Two professionals offer to take on this challenge for you. One charges $2,000 a day. The other, $300. The former will have exactly the ad you need concepted and ready to be produced the very same day. The other is going to need a week, some re-direction, and a kick in the pants to deliver the finals to you.

Whom do you choose?

If you’re smart, you leap on the $2,000 a day creative professional and hope he or she isn’t booked. You’ll get ahead of schedule, you’ll look great to your boss, you’ll get killer work, and you won’t have to spend hours, or even days, banging your head against the wall trying to guide the work in the right direction.

Sadly, corporate America is choosing the latter. $300/day looks great on the books, and maybe they’ll crack it in the first day (fingers crossed). After spending $2,100, 6 more days, and countless sleepless nights, they get what they paid for. $100 more for weaker work that puts them way behind schedule.

This is the situation facing us all today. I can do in one hour what it takes most of these cheap suppliers a whole day to do, and it will be quality. Does that matter? No.

We are living in a time when “content” is about quantity, not quality.

Over-paid marketing vice presidents and CMOs are looking to flood the Internet with it, hoping the shotgun approach will work. It doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be out there. The trouble is, 90% of it is ignored. As the great Dave Trott has said, 90% of ads go unnoticed. This is the bizarre state of affairs we see ourselves in today. We are devalued, ignored, and after 20 years refining our craft, we are seen as overpriced.

Can we turn this around? I hope so. I hope someone in a huge glass tower has an epiphany and starts paying for quality again. But as long as the mighty dollar gets in the way of common sense and sharp business acumen, this is going to be one hell of a tough decade ahead.

Photo with kind permission of Dan Cristian.