Eleven cents will get you ten.

I don't think there's a client anywhere that doesn't think their agency is too expensive. In fact, the cost of advertising has been decried as too high by clients since at least the days of John Wanamaker, 100-plus years ago.

Yet here's what's happening every day, everywhere.

We sit in meeting rooms with a dozen or half a dozen people and we build "experiences" that will never be experienced.

Just doing the math in my head, these "experiences" must cost more to create than TV commercials. They certainly demand more man power and more time.

And who uses them? And what impression do they make?

Such projects seem to me to be an effort to get every last dime from customers even if it costs 11 cents to get that dime.

So, for once, I agree with clients.

Agencies are too expensive.

We are encouraging, promulgating, pr-ing things of dubious efficacy. Expensive things of dubious efficacy.

We have not, as stewards of companies, said "hey wait a minute. What will all that extra get you? Why not be like Apple and focus on media that deliver the most bang for the buck. Not every single incremental buck."

Sorry if this is gloomy. It's only Wednesday. But it already feels like Friday.

Next Friday.