There is such a thing as a free lunch
Strange though it may be, there are occasions when it is more economical to employ someone to do a job for you, do it well, and not only save you the time – allowing you to get on with what you do best – but save you money in the process.
Not convinced? Consider this: at the risk of being accused of shameless self-promotion, we buy print for our clients, handle all the briefs, pitfalls and inevitable hassles yet our mark-up is usually less, and never more, than the trade discount secured from the printer. Therefore, as a rule, having us handle the whole kit and caboodle usually costs the client 10% less than if they had to liaise directly with the printer themselves.
How is this possible? Because we buy for many clients, the printers we use effectively save money on business development; Big Red Moose is doing that for them. That saving is passed on to us, our mark-up is less than their discount, and we’re not greedy. This also has the happy result of making our services ever more attractive, meaning we end up buying more print. Happy days all round.
Media
Savings are to be had in other areas too, not least of all in media buying. Prior to the launch of what eventually became Big Red Moose, your author was media director at a specialist media buying agency responsible for a media spend from my clients alone of anywhere between £250k - £300k per month.
Now, the traditional modus operandi for media buyers is that they will negotiate the advertisements on behalf of their clients with the media owners, the media commission would be deducted, and the agency would be billed for the nett figure, re-invoicing the client for the original gross figure, thereby taking their agency commission.
Whilst in principle this sounds a logical way of doing things, it does rely on the agency revealing what level of a discount they had achieved on behalf of their client. Suffice it to say, when this operation was at its height, some of our clients were, let’s say, refugees from other agencies that hadn’t seen the necessity to reveal said discounts. The clients concerned quite rightly felt more than a bit miffed once they found out.
Big Red Moose functions in a similar way for exactly the same reasons. We will negotiate hard on behalf of the client, and once the rate had been reached, the agency commission would be removed, and then the media owners would be instructed to invoice the client for the nett figure, and then we would invoice the client for ten per cent of the nett figure. Everybody sleeps at night, everybody knows what’s going on, and the client saves at least 1% for not having the hassle of doing it all themselves.
So there we are, you see; use whatever foodie analogy you want. You can have your cake and eat it, or at least, there is such a thing as a free lunch.