Dear Tig: Content Development Rates, Dissing Competitors, and Do Brands Have a Shelf Life?
by Tig Tillinghast
** Tig's weekly column fields questions from and for marketers. **
Dear Tig,
I was wondering if there are some established rates for web content development. I need to submit a quote to a client who wants me to maintain their content.
Regards, Mystery Bidder
Dear Bidder,
If you are running one of your first projects in this area, I strongly recommend billing a client at an hourly rate, with frequent updates of time used. Only after a lot of experience can you begin to make price quotes based on the scope of the task or the level of service.
In addition to learning about your own time requirements and staff needs, the particular client--and the client's working habits--will have a great deal of influence on what you will need to charge to make a fair profit.
That said, the rates vary a great deal from region to region and firm to firm. In Boston, a copywriter will charge $120 an hour for what would cost someone $60 in Kansas City. A larger firm that is able to have people with more focused specializations might charge 50% more than a freelancer doing everything on his or her own.
Rates will often vary greatly depending on the scope of the project. If a freelancer is employed for three months, he might charge half the rate he would if he were being hired for a single day.
After you compete against other vendors a few times, you will get a sense of where the marketplace stands in your region. Fortunately, the heady “bubble” days have ended, where we had to bid against startups that weren't worried about profits and sustainable rates.
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Dear Tig,
Do brands have a life expectancy? Or should we assume that they last forever?
Thanks, Long-term Brand Caregiver
Dear Long-term,
In terms of longevity, brands are sort of like literature. It all depends. If brands are based on deeply human values and wants, they can last virtually forever. If they're based on more temporal concerns, then they can be as fleeting as the fads they follow.
McDonald's bases its brand on family interaction, something hard-wired into our brains at birth. Jack-in-the-Box, a competing chain, bases its brand on appearing smart, sassy and funny, taking advantage of current trends, catch-phrases and modern-day humor. I'd bet that McDonald's will be around in fifty years, but I'm not sure Jack-in-the-Box will last in its current incarnation.
Brand managers need to beware the tendency of agencies to want to change branding for the sake of putting their mark on things. Like a girlfriend moving into your apartment, there will likely be numerous suggestions for new furniture--a problem I've discovered can be solved only by marriage.
The example that comes to mind--and still makes me cringe--was when my old agency lost the United Airlines account (“Fly the friendly skies” put to the Gershwin tune), and the new agency decided to reject all previous brand elements and start from scratch.
Perhaps the oldest brands in the world are religions, and it's not surprising that these systems of intimate beliefs are the ones that last longest.
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Dear Tig,
I would like to know what you think of mentioning competitors in a business-to-business print ad? Does this have pros and cons? Are you offering free promotion to competitors by doing this?
Thanks, Dazed and Confused
Dear Dazed,
I'm a big fan of competitive ads. They are very, very useful and often cut down the amount of media dollars required to get a message across.
You might have to buy 20 impressions per person to effectively get across the message “Our baby carriages are the safest.” But it probably takes just one impression to get the message across “Our competition's baby carriage occasionally sets its occupant aflame.”
Of course, advertisers need to use care that they don't give themselves the brand equivalent of the politician who “goes negative.” And, as you mentioned, you do give a bit of awareness to your competitor (see “all publicity is good publicity” letter in previous column).
The mentioning of competitors is more likely to be useful under these circumstances:
- The competitor has the brunt of the market share that your brand does not.
- Your product is demonstrably superior.
- You don't live in one of those persnickety European countries, where comparative advertising has been made illegal.
There is less risk of appearing mean-spirited in the business-to-business context. In that realm most purchasers already know most, if not all, the brand options.
