On the changing economics of creativity.

Okay, here’s the thing: I envy the very talented people getting into the ad and design business right now. They can do so much. They have so much cool tech at their fingertips and zero expectations around the concept of cost and value.

To them, everything is free.
Tools are free. Code is free. Music is free. Media is free. Distribution is free. Research is free. Images are free. And if it’s not free, it’s so close to free that it’s not really even worth mentioning. $9 for a professionally scored commercial music track? $5 for a crowd-sourced logo? $12 for a sponsored ad that reaches 20,000 targeted souls on Facebook?

“Whatevs.”

At the risk of sounding like a cranky, old “you-kids-get-the-hell-off-my-lawn” guy, I must note there was a time when the economics of this business were dramatically different. In my career, I have worked on radio spots with $10,000 music budgets. I have penned brochures for which we spent $50,000 on photography. And I have been on location shoots where the bar tab exceeded the out-of-pocket total of the two TV spots my team produced last week by $50.

This sounds like a wild exaggeration stated for effect. I assure you, it is not. It’s merely a…