"Hey Buddy, Can You Spare Five Grand?"

I can't get this out of my head and maybe once you read it you'll go "over the edge" too.  A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation to members of the Urbandale Chamber of Commerce called "No Bull Marketing - 2010".  After the meeting, one of the people who came up to chat introduced herself as the marketing person for a large business in Des Moines.  She wanted to talk about marketing campaigns and professional advertising agencies. 

During the conversation she said, "We recently worked with an agency that did a newspaper ad for us.  The effort cost us $10,000 and we received zero response." 

I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same thing and asked her, "Are you talking about a full blown marketing campaign?"  "No.", she said, "The agency charged us $5,000 to create one quarter page, color newspaper ad and another $5,000 to run the ad in the Des Moines Register."

OK...  I've got to take this as the truth, it's too easy to check out.  That the ad placement cost her company $5,000 isn't surprising.  I don't know how often she ran the ad. That her company received "zero response" is questionable, I'm not sure how well they are tracking responses.  

But...CREATIVE for ONE COLOR NEWSPAPER AD billed at $5,000?

Speechless...this is Des Moines, Iowa  not New York City...

OK, I feel better now.  The monkey is on your back...