Advertisers Bristle as Charges Balloon for Splashy TV Spots
THE STATE OF WASHINGTON seems like an ideal place to film a beer commercial involving lumberjacks. Or at least, that's what executives at Stroh Brewery Co. figured. But Washington wasn't the setting originally proposed for a coming ad. "The ad agency was going to shoot it in northern California and have some logs trucked in," says Hunter Hastings, vice president, brand management, at Stroh. He quickly vetoed that idea and insisted that the location be switched to Washington to avoid the expense of simulating a logging operation.</br></br>Such a change might not have been demanded a year or two ago. But Stroh and other big advertisers have recently begun reining in their ad agencies in an attempt to control the volatile costs of producing TV commercials. "The ad agencies are very much at fault," says Mr. Hastings. "They want to win prizes for creativity and think the way to do that is to spend as much money as possible."</br></br>On average, the cost of making commercials surged 99% between 1979 and 1984, more than double the growth rate of the consumer price index, according to a recent study by the Association of National Advertisers. Fueling the increase: Elaborate special effects, greater use of music, more expensive cameras and lighting equipment and longer shooting schedules. The time required to produce a typical ad increased to 13.3 hours in 1984 from 10.1 hours in 1979, and most of that increase was charged as overtime. "It's a constant tug of war," says Spencer Plavoukos, chief executive officer of the SSC&B ad agency. "Clients want to spend less money for commercials, but they also want extravaganzas to stay ahead of one another visually." SSC&B last month hired a production manager to help select directors and production houses that provide the best value for the money.</br></br>PRODUCTION COSTS vary widely, but $100,000 to $200,000 isn't unusual for a 30-second commercial. So this month, American Cyanamid Co. executives visited two of their ad agencies -- Ted Bates and Dancer Fitzgerald Sample -- to show what they call "the good-enough reel." That's a tape of about a dozen commercials, the most expensive of which is $50,000. Miner Raymond, a TV production consultant in Cincinnati, assembled the reel so the company could explain more clearly the level of quality it is willing to accept in ads for such brands as Old Spice and Breck.</br></br>Industry sources say that Procter & Gamble Co., the biggest TV advertiser of all, wants at least 10% of its commercials filmed outside New York and Los Angeles. Hot directors in those cities command $10,000 to $12,000 a day, but some companies believe that for far less, they can get the same quality elsewhere.