15350: Downsizing, DE&I And Downright Deception.

 

At More About Advertising, Stephen Foster pondered pandemic-related proceedings, with IPG and Omnicom quietly recording 10,000 job cuts in 2020. And yet, White advertising agencies continue to post job listings as if there’s a market boom—and Omnicom recently boasted about its DE&I hiring spree. Meanwhile, Advertising Age reported U.S. advertising saw a gain of 3,500 jobs; however, jobs at advertising agencies experienced a sharp decline in January, while Internet media employment is at a record high. Sure, everyone is bringing on social media directors at Mickey D’s salary levels—and that’s Mickey D’s crew versus corporate.

 

Oh, and check out the stock illustrations above and below that accurately symbolize the advertising industry. A boss angrily terminates a White employee—yet becomes more aggressive when firing a Black employee.

 

Pandemic job cuts another sign of reduced role for agencies

 

By Stephen Foster

 

Campaign has been doing some digging into the small print of Interpublic’s and Omnicom’s annual reports for 2020, to discover that the two ad holding companies have cut 10,000 roles over last year’s course of the pandemic.

 

The cost of such exits usually comes under “restructuring,” a handy euphemism.

 

This isn’t surprising (and there may be more to come) but it still comes as a bit of a shock — if that’s not a contradiction in terms. WPP, still to report, employs many more — around 100,000. Or did.

 

It’s not just the pandemic of course. The shift of media expenditure to Google, Facebook and, latterly, Amazon has driven a coach and horses through ad holding companies’ revenues and margins. Yet media buying is still where they make most of their money and most of their people work. Working in an agency of any ilk these days must be akin to lodging on the edge of a cliff.

 

Big ad holding creative agencies are, if anything, in an even worse state. WPP CEO Mark Read, who said recently that none of his big agencies had grown for five years, has sought to remedy this by merging them — Y&R with VML, JWT with Wunderman, Grey with AKQA — with the former digital elements firmly in the driving seat.

 

Clients are in-housing or demanding more for less — or both. Creative advertising has lost ground to ‘content,’ as former WPP CEO (and founder) Sir Martin Sorrell has realised with MediaMonks as the foundation of his new S4 Capital empire.

 

So is it all doom and gloom? Mostly. The latest wave of creative agencies may remind clients that to cut through you need more than technique. Facebook and Google may be reined in (don’t bank on it) but automation is certain to remain the driver of the media market with lots of small ads on zillions of websites (some of whom may even exist.)

 

The pandemic just made things happen sooner — and not in a good way.