A dicta.

Yesterday, a doe-eyed project manager came to me asking me to anticipate the number of hours a project would take. She showed me the spread sheet she had created which had 2X hours for writing the piece and 1X hours for revisions.

"Oh," I said, "your ratios are all wrong. These days it's 1X for writing and 4X for revisions."

Since that conversation I have been plumbing the depths of my memory, trying to discern if it were ever thus. If the amount of time to "tweak" the work was always the amount of time needed to create the work.

However, I think what's more important than my memory is this simple dicta. The more layers, the worse the work.

Of course substantive errors must be corrected. Of course there are client exigencies that need to be considered. Of course the CMO's nephew hates the word parsnip. Of course no one knows that "app" is accepted shorthand for application. Of course we need to mention our office in Turkey.

Most every client in the world complains about advertising agency fees. There's a simple way to remedy that. Remember: The more layers, the worse the work. And the more costly.