Holy hell’s bells. Today made my head hurt. I
returned from one day off to discover 130 emails in my inbox (sadly, not surprising),
and (real surprise) we are suddenly in the midst of multiple ad campaigns, with a few ads due to newspapers as soon as, you guessed it, today. Damn. Miss a little,
miss a lot. No problem, I’ve done this countless times, I’ve got this. Yes, I was
dumb enough to think that.
Traditionally and not that long ago, newspapers published
and distributed annual rate cards containing all sort of useful info like how
much ads cost, what sizes they should be, and any discounts. I learned all about
this stuff at my old marketing agency job and did a decent amount of media planning and placements while there.
It used to be pretty straightforward (like it should
be), but suddenly, newspapers are acting like their ad sizes are freeking
top secret. It should have taken about six minutes each to find the necessary
info for several papers by looking it up on the rate cards. Hah! The digital rate
cards in our files were consulted. Publication websites were visited. Ad reps
were emailed after calls went straight to voicemail (two newspapers) and one automated recording
telling callers to “use email for best service” which in today’s case was no
service at all.
One rate card on file had 3 pages of rates for
various daily and weekly publications covering many different towns and cities,
followed by three pages of demographic info (number of residents and average
income) for quite possible every town in Massachusetts. There was not one single
dimension provided that would give our designer the tiniest clue about what size
the ad should be.
One media group has their 2020 rates in
their rate card from 2018. OK, so rates haven’t changed, but would it be that hard to change the year on your
file so advertisers don’t think it’s outdated info? It took several emails back
and forth before our rep finally understood that there are no ad specs in the
magical outdated file and we were provided the 2015 rate card for the specs.
Because, sure. Wait, is Punk’d back in production? Because that’s what
it started to feel like.
Overall, it took a period of four hours to get the info
needed for three out of four ads to be placed with four papers under three different newspaper
groups. One was never heard from.
It was exhausting. It should not be this hard
to spend thousands of dollars. Don’t even get me started on how we usually have
to beg for an invoice so we can pay it. That adventure will be coming up in a few weeks.
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| Today's high point was lunch. |
Through all the muttering and swearing, the dogs were
mostly content and snoring nearby. Maybe they had the luxury of being bored,
which is something I am really eager to explore for myself. I don’t think I’ve
been bored for the past 20, maybe 30 years. I hope to live long enough to be
able to afford retirement so that someday I can find out what boredom is like.
At least lunch was free of grief and angst. It was a green pepper stuffed with yesterday's leftover chili and rice. Tonight is going to involve some sort of award for surviving today. It might involve the finishing off of the sea salt potato chips and the ice cream. There is no chocolate here, but there is bacon ...
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