ad industry?

I am currently a part owner in an advertising agency firm in Palmer, Alaska. Lots of fun trying to come up with cool ways to sell the same old thing.

We do probably 1/2 of our business as TV and web and the other half is long form promotional and documentary.

Video department:
www.dcalaska.com

Agency:
www.stage2studios.com

I do however enjoy the job as there's nothing boring. Each day has a ton of challanges.
 
I have to ask this, please don't take it the wrong way- I did a quick Google of palmer, and found it has only 5,ooo people or so. How do you make a living in graphics? I mean, most folks ignore graphics in general, and that is a small town.
 
Alaska is a big place, where things are more expensive. And not much competition in his particular locale, I would assume. I have been to palmer :)

Jason
 
The thing that would kill you, isn't established competition, as much as somebody who has a PC and doing it on the side. They can do it for much less, since they have no overhead. I run into that sort of thing all the time. Folks who would rather have their friend's cousin Roy do something for close to free, than pay a fair price to have it done right. Like I said, most folks don't put much thought towards graphics. Or video, for that matter.
 
I'll chime in, even though Mr. Wade knows I'm in advertising. Just to up the count. However, I'm now out in the freelance world for the first time in 10 years. So far, so good. Making almost as much as my salary (enough to keep everyone happy), but with scads more time for actual work, like screenwriting. Hope it works out -- I'm freelancing onsite at an agency all week and just being there today (Monday) was freaking me out. :)

Fox
 
Capt Quirk said:
I run into that sort of thing all the time. Folks who would rather have their friend's cousin Roy do something for close to free, than pay a fair price to have it done right. Like I said, most folks don't put much thought towards graphics. Or video, for that matter.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and their graphics usually look amateurish (read: like ****)...If you want your stuff to look professional, you need to have a professional do it. :thumbsup:
 
Oh yeah, and I just remembered we used to play palmer in baseball, I think. Palmer isn't that far from Anchorage, which has about 350k people. Not too shabby of a market area. Especially since the next closest city that is less than days away has like 20k people

Jason
 
We actually do pretty good. We do a lot of business in Anchorage and have focused on becoming the "Suburb" video productions specialists. To be honest, I'd prefer to be the big fish in the small pond rather than the other way around. I go down to my sister's house in Denver and see the hundreds of video production companies and it's a little scary how many there are. Here there are about 4-5 really good companies and most of them charge ten times what I do but do about the same level of work. That being said, we've focused on keeping our prices high and providing excellent work. You can't pay, and I don't know where my camera is.

We actually got our start doing event work (Weddings, Graduations, Corporate parties) which I think is one of the best training on how to run and gun you can have. Very difficult to turn out an awesome product when you have absolutely no control. Anyway, we became leaders in that field and our average booking price was around $6,000. We are now mostly retired from that field but do a lot of commercials and handle the advertising for several local businesses.

Anyway, there's a lot of money floating around up here but most of the other production studios around here are horrible so that's really going for us.

To be honest, we've really set our sights high and have even done a couple of jobs for corporations out of state. With a location outside of Anchorage we actually don't do that much driving into town (About 30 mins away) but usually have our clients come to us as a destination. Kind of like what Belief does, create an oasis of creativity outside of the corporate downtown.

Anyway, it's a blast. Now back to editing.
 
It was a long time ago. I went to Ptarmigan Elementary and Clark Junior High. :) I was too young to appreciate AK for what it was then, but man I would sure love to get back there someday, when I have the money. Maybe have a summer home there or something :thumbsup:

Jason
 
yeah, a summer home would be nice up here. I do like the winter but about January when it's 20 below and blowing cold I could stand somewhere slightly warmer. You can't beat a good Alaskan summer though. Absolutely perfect.
 
Capt Quirk said:
The thing that would kill you, isn't established competition, as much as somebody who has a PC and doing it on the side. They can do it for much less, since they have no overhead. I run into that sort of thing all the time. Folks who would rather have their friend's cousin Roy do something for close to free, than pay a fair price to have it done right. Like I said, most folks don't put much thought towards graphics. Or video, for that matter.
Click to expand...

I hear that! LOL ;)

Art Director here... in-house agency for a large national company. Been doing graphics/art direction for over fifteen years. I'm more on the print and web side of things though, not much video. I absolutely love it.
 
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