I have not yet crossed the threshold into these big usage advertising jobs, but am starting to nibble at the edges from time to time. I've also been very active in ASMP, and discuss these issues regularly with other photographers. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.
The average cost to an advertiser to run a full page ad in a national consumer magazine is over $50k. So multiply that times your 300 insertions over two years and you get a total amount they are paying for advertising with your pictures of $15 Million dollars. (Adjust accordingly if they aren’t full page ads.) That’s a lot of money.
If they like your pictures enough that they will spend $15 million to run ads based on them, they like them enough to pay you a serious chunk of money to do so.
I sometimes do a really rough calculation just to put things in perspective. I figure if the “order takers”, uh… I mean “account executives”, at the advertising agency can charge a 15% commission on the amount of the advertising buy just to place the ads in magazines, the photographer ought to be able to get a measly 2% of the ad buy. So that comes to $300,000 in this case.
Don’t shy away from expecting these kinds of big payments. Despite what Paul joked about with his Star Wars thing (which I didn’t get at first either) if you are being hired by a big corporation to do a big shoot that will be used in a $15 Million ad campaign, you are, in fact, a professional advertising photographer.
Theoretical examples aside, here are a couple of real world cases I know of that are appropriate to your situation.
A colleague who has worked for me as an assistant is shooting a little bit on his own. He was asked to quote on a two day studio shoot, about six shots, very minimal production, with about another day of pre- and post-, for a product that was going to be advertised in consumer publications, unlimited use, two years. The AD at the ad agency, who he is friends with, advised him not to come in too low or he’d look like an amateur. She let it slip that the other photographers estimating the job were coming in at the $200,000 range. For a one day shoot. He didn’t end up getting the job, but he was in the running for it.
Another young colleague contacted me recently for help estimating a job. It was for a small consumer corporation that was doing national advertising in a real niche market. They wanted two pictures done in the studio, minimal production, in a one day shoot. I did some rough guess-timating with usage, etc., and suggested that since they wanted unlimited magazine use for a year, but in a limited number of appropriate magazines, to come in at about $20k. He ignored my advice, and came in at $30k, and got the job and everyone was happy. This is a guy with very limited previous experience shooting commercially, and he got $15k per image for a fraction of the usage you’re talking about.
How many images are we talking? If I understand correctly, it sounds like if you originally shot them for only $200 each. You should not use that as your basis for calculating a completely different usage, but should start from scratch ala FotoQuote. And the retouching should start over, too, if you need to re-do them for high-res.
Hope this helps. Good luck. You are about to enter the big time.
David
