Advertising, P.R. industries increase use of freelancers.

Betsy Vavrin had the wrong job at what was definitely the wrong time. A vice president and senior brand manager in the marketing department at Chatsworth-based Great Western Financial Corp., she knew long before the folks at H.F. Ahmanson & Co. came sniffing around that her employer was about to be another thrift's dinner.

When a company gets acquired, it's a very bad idea to be working for the acquiree's marketing department.

So when Great Western offered an incentive package to employees willing to leave last August, Vavrin took it and went into business for herself. The story ends happily.

"I think I'm going to end up making a lot more this year than last year. I thank Great Western, on a regular basis, for giving me this opportunity," Vavrin said.

Los Angeles is home to hundreds of freelance advertising and P.R. professionals who work for a few weeks, months or years on individual projects and then look for work somewhere else. It's a sometimes stressful, often lucrative and increasingly common way to make a living in marketing.

Vavrin and her colleagues insist that the advertising industry is going the way of Hollywood studios, with agencies employing only a handful of management types while most of the creative work is done by contract employees.

"I think we're going through a kind of revolution," Vavrin said. "What's driving business right now is employee productivity. When you realize that during down times an employee is not producing for you, you understand the value of interim services."

Advertising executives agree that reliance on freelancers is increasing. To meet the demand, a new breed of temporary services firms has arisen. Companies like Createmps or the Paladin Cos. Inc. provide experienced marketing professionals to handle individual projects.

Chicago-based Paladin, which was founded in 1990, opened a seven-employee office in West L.A. in January. Currently, the company is actively recruiting freelancers to build up its employee roster: temp workers are actually employed by Paladin, which has a health care plan and other benefits for its workers and takes a fee every time it places someone on a project.

"The world is changing," said Paladin Chief Executive Michael Bay. "It's great."

Maybe for companies like Paladin, which have discovered a rapidly growing niche. But is it great for the new generation of freelancers?

The answer seems to depend on individual personality.

Vavrin is not alone in reporting greater financial success after setting off on her own. In fact, that seems to be a fairly common pattern.

Nine years ago, Jeff Weakley left a job as a junior copywriter with an L.A. ad agency because he wanted more time to write screen-plays. He hasn't had much luck as a screenwriter; none of his five feature film scripts or three sit-com scripts has been produced. But the first year after leaving the agency, he more than doubled his former $35,000-a-year salary by working freelance - plus he had a lot more time to spend on his Hollywood ambitions.

Nonetheless, the lure of a full-time job, with its sense of security and permanence, ultimately proved too attractive for Weakley to resist. On March 27, after nine years as a contract worker, Weakley took a full-time job at Suissa/Miller Advertising Inc., writing copy for the Acura account.

"Freelance has its downside, too," Weakley said. "Yon don't feel a part of anything, and it's kind of like starting a new job every few weeks, with all the stress that entails."

Stress is a feeling with which many freelancers are uncomfortably familiar. It can be hard to handle a lifestyle in which you don't know where your next paycheck is coming from, especially if you're not married to another wage-earner.

Jacqueline Chubirka left her job as an art director with a Houston ad agency in 1994 because she wanted to hit the big time, and L.A. seemed like the place to do it. Her first days in "Shakey Town" didn't seem too auspicious - she arrived two days after the Northridge earthquake struck.

Chubirka stuck it out, and it hasn't been an easy ride. She gave up on finding full-time work after discovering that prospective employers weren't willing to pay nearly as much as she could make as a freelancer.

She has made a pretty good career out of it since then, but recently the jobs have stopped coming in: Chubirka hasn't worked since January.

"You definitely have to adjust your mental being. Otherwise, you go absolutely crazy," Chubirka said. "But I know this (job drought) is not going to persist. I've been making a living at this for three years. I know this is just a setback."

Setbacks like that can be avoided, freelancers say, by signing on with a temp firm like Paladin, by marketing oneself effectively, and by constant networking.

Bay said most of Paladin's employees get about 30 percent of their work through the agency, and drum up the rest themselves. Weakley's secret for getting jobs was to send out sophisticated direct mail pieces to potential employers pitching himself as the product - he says he still gets responses to his mailings years later.

To Vavrin, it is crucial to keep up a strong network of contacts. She landed a three-month assignment soon after leaving Great Western through her personal network - which she built up after several years in the marketing business by meeting important people and then making a point of remaining in contact with them.

"I just think it's good business to stay in touch with your contact base," Vavrin said. 'Even if you're working for someone, you have to be in business for yourself.

Dan Turner is a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Business Journal who covers the advertising, public relations and entertainment industries.