• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, February 19, 2015

I'm not even going to try to paraphrase the brilliance that freelancer Alexandra Cain put to words in a piece about working with ad agencies for the Sydney Morning Herald. The story begins the usual way with Cain being called in at the 11th hour by a panicked assistant whose boss "suddenly" realized the agency didn't have the necessary skills in-house to complete a project. In Cain's own words...

"I question my sanity every time I agree to take on work through an advertising agency. They are universally terrible to deal with, so incompetent they couldn't organize a proverbial in a proverbial and the staff are so far up themselves they choke on their own self-importance."

"But it's the same old story every time an agency contacts me. They want work done yesterday, they clearly have no project management skills and they're really just operating on a whim and a prayer."

"I always quote my top rate when working with an agency because I know they will be impossible to work with: really, I try to price myself out of the market. If they do accept my quote, I tell myself I'm prepared to do the work because they're paying top dollar."

Having worked in many an agency, I can attest to the fact that Cains' assertions are 100 percent correct.