A client of mine had a designer on a retainer. They're a mail order business and would sometimes get very last minute offers on ad space just as magazines were going to press - and the designer had to be available to crank out a print ad with their very latest offers at very short notice. Unfortunately they stopped print advertising in the end and he was let go.

They do send a lot of marketing emails but employ someone in-house to design those nowadays (who also handles the limited print ads that they still run).