A blueprint for reducing your advertising production costs

After media, advertising production is usually the single biggest expense marketers and advertisers manage. Yet we hear horror stories of budgets being blown out with production over-runs and changes.  Darren Woolley managing director, of marketing consultancy, TrinityP3 outlines how to build an ad campaign without blowing the budget. 

 We generally find that these production blowouts are more likely due to poor supplier management rather than the naked greed of the suppliers. Of course, this does not mean there are no longer sharks in the advertising waters, it just means armed with knowledge on costs and processes, you are less likely to get attacked, or worse still, eaten alive.

Interestingly, the building industry suffers the same cost perceptions as the advertising industry. By way of demonstration, let’s use the building industry as a metaphor for advertising production. Both advertising and the building industry have a creative / design element, in both cases the production is undertaken by a third party supplier under the direction of the designer and in both cases the client ends up paying, often more than they allowed.

In this scenario the architect represents the advertising agency or design company. The builders are the production houses in film and print and the subcontractors are the smaller suppliers such as photographers and the like.

Let's proceed step-by-step through a production to see where the parallels exist and to identify the ways to reduce the overall cost of the project.

1. Who knows what you want better than you? 
2. Rome wasn’t built in a day on your budget
3. Three quotes does not make a competition
4. What is this cost for?
5. Can we have granite instead of marble?
6. If you want something done.
7. It’s just a contingency - right?
8. Get the approvals before you start
9. What do you mean extras?
10. Contact TrinityP3

This blog can also be viewed as a presentation.

Darren Woolley is the managing director of TrinityP3, an independent strategic marketing management consultancy that assists marketers, advertisers and procurement with agency search & selection, agency engagement & alignment and agency monitoring & benchmarking. Darren’s role is to ensure maximum performance in efficiency and effectiveness of their advertising and marketing budgets, across Asia-Pacific including Australia, China and SE Asia with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, Auckland and London.