Another columnist at AdAge.com bemoans the industry’s alleged lack of talent, and Hadji Williams strikes again (see Essay 4076). The crazy part is, the columnist is none other than Marc Brownstein, who was spotlighted in MultiCultClassics last October (click on the essay title above to review Essay 1222). First read Brownstein’s latest observations, then check out Williams’ response—and finish it all off with a MultiCultClassics commentary.
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Small Agencies Seek Good Help
How Do We Get the Kids Back?
By Marc Brownstein
This is a recruitment call on behalf of small agencies everywhere. It wasn’t long ago that it was pretty easy to find talented writers, art directors, project managers, public relations people and account executives. Headhunters needed us more than we needed them. Yet today, many talented people have left the business or have opted for a freelance career.
Where have they all gone? It’s pretty well documented that we (as an industry) chased many good people away after the dot-com implosion. We hired them, put them on accounts that never had a chance of being brands, and when the venture-capital money dried up, we fired them. Nice way to treat talented individuals. That was wave one.
Wave two has arrived seven years later. Only this time, good people are losing their passion for the business because the business has changed. Recently, a writer left our agency after many years because she lost her love for advertising. That pretty much summed up what’s going on.
How has the business changed? Clients are more demanding. They side-step branding and strategy for tactical execution. They demand results in unreasonable time frames. And they tighten the purse for agency compensation. You think that doesn’t have an impact on the people who work on their brands?
In addition, agencies are trying to figure out where the world is heading. So we’re integrating -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We’re cross-training those who were reared on the traditional side of the business because we all know the growth is on the digital side. Thing is, all this internal realignment causes disruption and process issues. We have it at our agency. And after talking with a well-known agency consultant, most small-to-mid-size agencies are dealing with the same issues. No agency is immune.
I can tell you that, at our agency, we have job openings in many departments. And that’s not just in our Philadelphia office. We’ve had a senior-level opening in our Seattle office for months now. We’ve interviewed many candidates; there’s just a shortage of good people out there right now -- especially mid-level people. Until we find them, we’ll rely on freelancers that we’ve worked with over the years.
So what do we do? As my dad, Berny (who is our founder and CEO), says: “We have to bring fun back to the business.”
Sure, clients are breathing fire more than ever. But there’s also a growing need for great ideas. With the massive clutter out there, it’s more important than ever to make your brand stand out. Those who can, will succeed in this business. Insisting on great thinking, and fostering a culture to incubate it, will help bring young talent back to our business. Doing outrageous work will inspire others to join up. And figuring out how to execute in both traditional and digital media in the advertising and public relations space will go further still in re-establishing marketing agencies as a good choice for a rewarding career.
I know there’s interest with the next generation. I have a daughter who’s graduating high school, and almost every day one of her friends asks her how to get an internship at our agency. Or if they’re graduating college, they ask about sending me a resume. Young people are still passionate about this business. That bodes well for the future. Until then, small agencies are going to continue to make headhunters rich.
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Just a note--akin to one left in another entry:
Agencies, both big and small, traditional and non-, along with PR and promotions, would do well to expand the pool of talent from which they currently draw from. Great ideas and unique perspectives are not wrapped in just one skin color. Sounds like a broken record or a remix of an old song, but it’s true and needs to be said until people listen.
It’s counterproductive to complain about a lack of talent and useless to make “try harder” HR speeches as long we as an industry continue to display such a stunning lack of will to recruit and respect talent from ALL sectors of society, including those which we aren’t members of ourselves.
The only people hurt by this long-standing construct of entrenched homogeny are our clients’ brands and our own agencies’ futures. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
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Well, it’s clear that Marc Brownstein has failed to make much progress on the Darwinian Chart of Cultural Cluelessness, assuming a simian stance somewhere between the late Al Campanis and Don Imus.
Last October, Brownstein wrote of dreams for a recruitment road show and minority student scholarships. Plus, he promised to regularly report on his achievements. Not sure about the man’s level of victory, as MultiCultClassics editors rarely read Brownstein’s online drivel. But it would be interesting to learn how many non-Whites were interviewed for his shop’s numerous job openings.
Of course, Brownstein seeks guidance from agency founder and CEO Berny Brownstein—who just happens to be his dad. You can bet the B-Boys have tapped all available relatives for the employment slots. Brownstein even admits to collecting referrals and resumes from his daughter’s pals. White-skin privilege is a terrible thing to waste.
According to Brownstein, “…agencies are trying to figure out where the world is heading. So we’re integrating—sometimes successfully, sometimes not.” Too bad his definition of integration doesn’t include diversity.
Brownstein also typed, “Insisting on great thinking, and fostering a culture to incubate it, will help bring young talent back to our business.” The question is, whose culture does the man really plan on fostering?
I see articles like this and I wanna pound on something.
ReplyDelete“...fostering a culture...”
This fucking idea that there are no good people out there they can find. Hooooo-boy. Where do I start...
I know, start with eliminating HR.
These creative shit filters of the agency world are like that government tank that cost 100 trillion to develop, never worked in the first place and ended up still going into production all because it had the backing of a powerful senator.
And yet, we still use it find talent. All they do is scan resumes for the following ‘Crispin, Fallon W+K’ and ‘Clio, Effie and One Show.’ Period end of story.
That totally works against the idea of having a farm system to develop talent.
This idea that EVERY person coming in must be a major award-winning creative hitting the ground running has done its fair share of damage and added to the problem.
Why? LISTEN UP AGENCY FUCKWADS: BECAUSE NOT ALL OF YOU ARE CRISPIN OR FALLON, YET YOU ACT LIKE IT.
Trust me, you're not. A Draft or a Gray is gonna say there's no talent out there? Please.
If your standards for employees are almost certainly that unrealistic, well of course you'll say there's nobody out there in the talent pool that fits. No shit. Not everybody can work at Crispin. Considering Jordan never made his high school hoops team, it's safe to say he did develop into somebody pretty good.
So why do we overlook the person with just a few awards and stints art local shops? Maybe too if those agencies bemoaning the lack of talent would step back and realize that an average agency contributes to how a person does.
I'd taker anybody halfway decent and put them in a room with W+K"s planners and account team and I'll bet they come up with decent stuff.
To say agencies need to foster ideas and new thinking is bullshit. WHen faced with it, they resort to their old ways. They only want 'new' thinking if it comes from a22-year old Mt. Dew-drinking Portfolio Center grad.
To the race thing, this also is something they could easily fix by actively going out and teaching ad/marketing programs/workshops to high schoolers.
Why not? They superstars they choose to follow and market are all young or in high school. Why not teach the same kids to be hip to how they're marketed to?
Oh I forgot. $illy me.
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ReplyDelete(to Hadji’s point, the fostering going on is agenda-driven, hardly teh positive kind needed to mentor talent. The fostering I do see is more like perpetuating.)
ReplyDelete;-p)
Wow Bill. A lot of (justifiable) anger there.
ReplyDeleteDon't blame the book-lookers though. They're just reacting to the CDs and others who think that the answer to an agency culture that fosters mediocre creative is to hire people who've worked at FallonGoodbyCrispin. Only to find that those people are only human and can't budge a big packaged goods client either. And quit in frustration because P&G doesn't "get it" the way Nike does.
I've posted about this before: the fact that the main differences between those at the hot shops and the rest are luck, circumstance and, often as not, a trust fund or generous parent who's willing to subsidize the first few years.
But try and understand the other side of the coin. When I look at books from say a packaged goods or direct shop, too often all I see are a bunch of mediocre ads that got produced. And I have to take it at face value that this is what the applicant considers to be great work. There's no spec in there, or if there is, it's clearly something that was done in school 6 years earlier.
So how can I know that this person is any good?
And it's not the planners and account team that make the Wieden's so good. It's the clients. They hire shops like that with the expectation of getting breakthrough creative. One assumes Gray's clients hire them for a different reason.
Note too that many of the creative directors I see at BDAs these days are journeymen, people who are more responsible than most or who are good at meetings or passionate speakers or something- but they don't have the stellar resumes you'd expect from people in such positions. Those people are all freelancing.
As to minority hires... that's a tough one. The salary structure in our industry doesn't make it attractive to ambitious young people anymore. And the entry level salaries of course gave rise to the expression "Advertising's a great gig if your parents can afford to send you."