Close Encounters of the MBA Kind.

Three times last week I got an email telling me that something I either had or hadn't subscribed to was either renewing (automatically), going up in price, or renewing automatically and going up in price.

I'm not necessarily cheap but I do toss nickels around like manhole covers especially during these parsimonious times when paying clients are trying to become non-paying clients simply because so many purveyors, not me but like me (this includes giant global ad agencies or once-giant global ad agencies) are willing to work for legumes. 

That's my way of saying, spending-wise I look before I leap. And while the machinations of "subscription" "services" make it hard for you to know what you're subscribed to, how much it costs, or what you get for your expenditure, I do the best I can to keep an eye on my scheckels, especially since I plan to hang up my spikes in just over 1450 days, when the calendar turns to 2030.

If I earn money in the year 2030, it means I will have been gainfully employed by the sweat of my own wrinkled brow for parts of six decades. That surpasses my baseball hero, the Cuban Comet, Minnie Minoso, who played major-league horsehide in five decades-- the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. If I can earn my day rate in 2030, I'll have done so in the 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, 20s and 30s. A skein of six decades. A record, I believe. Or if not a record, good enough for me. I ain't under any circumcisions (that was intentional) going for a seventh decade.

But back to last week and the re-subscription emails I received.

The first was for something called YouTube Premium, which was raising their price from $12.95/month to $15.95. I got a woman on the blower and asked to cancel. (There was no link that would have made it simple--or I couldn't find one.)

"I can lower that price," she chirped "to $9.95." 

"I never signed up in the first place," I snapped. "I already pay god-knows-what for the YouTube TV streaming service that I never use and I don't want this."

"But I'll lower the price."

The next email I got was from the all-but-defunct trade magazine Advertising Age--the ones who stole the name of this blog for their magazine. 

They were charging me $199.99 for a digital subscription. Again, I don't remember signing up for one. And every thing I click on on their site--everything of any ostensible value--is paywalled. I can't have at it unless I subscribe at a higher-level, I think for $699.99. I'm sure at that point there's still more blocked content and they'll try to get me to spend $999.99.

Again, I could find no cancel button. So I suppose I spoke to someone in Myanmar which is somehow cheaper than having a cancel link.

She tried to upsell me to the $699.99 package for only $499.99. I said no, I just want out. At which point she offered the $199.99 package for $99.99.

Finally, I got an email from WeTransfer, a service that costs I think about $12.99/month that I use about once a year if I have a high-res MP4 to send to someone. They offered to lower my price to $9.99/month, and again I said, "no."

There's a point in this--a macro one about self-appreciation and self-belief. It pertains to all of us and our entire industry. Maybe our entire world.

Especially amid the word on the street that a certain holding company is growing because they give creative away while only charging for media, and another holding company is giving everything away to try to gain some account-win momentum.

If you lower you're prices every time someone barks or sneezes, if you can't charge what you believe you deserve and what you're worth, you're not a business-person, you're a charlatan. You're one step below or above a busker in 16th century England singing for your supper.

I'll admit, I've worked for five decades in this business and I've worked with a therapist for a similar amount of time. My experience, my acclaim, my success, my busy-ness, my self-belief and more have allowed me--not without some internal sturm und drang--to charge what I charge.

The demise of the advertising industry--on both the ecosystem-level and the individual-level--is that we've willingly allowed ourselves to be devalued. Somewhere along the way, it became easier to roll-over for $X than it was to fight for $XX.

I ain't doing that for now.

Hopefully, I won't have to over the next 125,630,782 seconds. 

In the meantime, if you have an Advertising Age log-in I can bum, HMU.