Some 200 years ago, one American newspaper ad salesman was making money hand-over-fist at his clients’ expense. How far we haven’t come, writes Eric Faulkner, partner and chairman of Madclarity.
At the age of 19, Volney B. Palmer started to work in his father’s newly launched newspaper, The Burlington Mirror, based in central New Jersey.
It was 1818 and making a living in the newspaper business wasn’t easy.
In 1841, Volney and his wife, Eliza, headed to Philadelphia. He tried to get a real estate business going, but most of the country was in the middle of a depression, the State government was on the verge of bankruptcy, and credit was almost impossible to get. So, he tried something new… to become a sales agent for a series of New Jersey and Philadelphia newspapers.
It was a tough and slow journey.
But eight years later, Volney had started referring to himself as an ‘advertising agency’ and the sole agency for over a thousand American newspapers.
“Advertisements are inserted in any number of papers, at the lowest cash price, without extra charge…”
As his business grew, he advised his ‘clients’ how to produce the best results…
“To avoid unnecessary expense, concise forms of advertising are written without charge, and valuable practical suggestions made for improvement in style…”
Volney took a reputed 25 per cent commission from the newspapers for his sales services.
I was joking with a friend over the weekend, that it’s taken 160 years, in the US, but, the Confederates have finally won… and it’s taken 170 years for advertising agencies to return to their roots… being agents for the media… not for their clients.
But… unlike in Volney’s day… not “without extra charge”.
And also… unlike those days… being encouraged to buy media that is in the agencies’ interests… not the clients’.
Yes, now, just about all the big agencies are making money from both sides… the media owners… and their clients.
And if that’s not bad enough, many clients struggle to work out exactly how much they are actually paying their agency. Seems crazy, but it’s true.
We have had two discussions with clients in the past week about how much they had actually been paying their media agency. Both clients were shocked to find out.
Maybe you should check too.
