How an Advertising Manager can save money

On this occasion, I’m going to share a decision I made to save money when producing advertising brochures: Making it absolutely clear that the ownership of the brochures belongs to the company that paid the creatives (whether freelancers or an advertising agency) and the printers. Because what happens in almost every company? 

The company commissions an external designer or an agency to design a brochure… and pays them for it. Then, it hires a printer or the same agency that designed it to print the brochure… and pays for that too. After some time, the company needs more copies of the brochure, requiring a reprint. And what happens then? They ask the agency or the printer that handled it the first time to do the reprint. In doing so, the ownership of that brochure has effectively been left in the hands of the agency or the printer, and the company—if it wants a reprint later—has to go back to them for it, without the chance to request quotes from other printers. Perhaps, if they sought quotes from other printers for this second round, they’d find the reprint would be cheaper, but they can’t because they don’t have the necessary printing plates (photoliths) for the reprint—the original printer kept them after the first job. 

Therefore, it’s essential to make it clear to agencies and printers that, once they’ve been chosen to produce those brochures and the job is complete, they must hand over the printing plates to the company. If a reprint is needed later, it’s logical to request a quote from them, but not only from them. Isn’t it standard practice to always get three quotes for comparison? So why isn’t this done for reprints? Simply because the commissioning company hasn’t demanded that the printing plates be handed over once the job is finished. 

This way, every time we needed a new reprint, we requested quotes from three printers, and the job went to the one offering the lowest price on that occasion. 

And there’s even another advantage. Often, when deciding to create a new brochure, we reuse the cover, interior, or a specific page from a previous one. In this case, the designer or agency only needs to create the artwork for the new pages, because we already have the final artwork and printing plates for the repeated sections. We can then pass these along to the printer handling the new job. 

Of course, it’s more convenient for the Advertising Manager to have a single point of contact (the advertising agency) that takes care of everything, with the manager simply giving approvals along the way… but this is more expensive than if the Advertising Manager takes charge and oversees every step. 

And this doesn’t mean doing away with advertising agencies—do you know why? 
Because the savings achieved with this approach aren’t just “saved” money—they’re funds that can be reinvested into more advertising. And part of that money will end up back with the advertising agencies for other campaigns.

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