Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
The Great Agency Talent Crunch
The great agency talent crunch – It’s happening for two reasons:
1. Changed mindset of employees – As the attached article states, the events of the last 18 months have lead to ‘permanantly altered lifestyle changes.’ ie) In what I’ll call ‘the great awakening,’ many of us previously who had no time to contemplate our navels have had a chance to get life in to perspective and become clear about what we don’t want/what we can no longer tolerate, be it the commute or the lack of meritocracy, lack of diversity, or just the incessant meetings and pitching of new business.
2. Meaningful work/Positive use of time – Many of those that have left the agency world have left the business altogether but more have decided to freelance, they are waiting to see if the business will change/keeping their options open. They are waiting to see whether the agency world can become more sensitive to the needs of staff and their desire for personal growth and to have a positive daily experience versus being treated as expendible automatons in entities fixated on short term profit; They are hoping there will be more flexibility in working arrangements, more inclusive working environments, and hoping to find places that walk the talk of new business pitches, where the oft talked words, ‘our employees are our culture, are our business,’ are words that are lived and breathed. Time will tell.
bit.ly/3wsTZRj
#Talentcrunch #Awakening #Greaplacestowork
The number one reason strategists are leaving agencies
One key reason why employees are resigning in numbers is poor management, but what a difficult time to manage! And what truly exacerbates great managament is two agency dynamics that are putting strain on even the best leaders:
https://lnkd.in/d4tNMCKK
Agencies are financially too short term focused – Not just public owned agencies but many private ones too, that copy the public approach – there has not been enough reinvestment into the business. The employee experience has become way too transactional.
Agencies are pitching too much new business – Incessant new business pitching at agencies is a key reason why agencies lose so much business, which in turn needs to be replaced, versus focus on consistently bringing the best ideas to existing clients. This is bad for clients and overworked employees, whose jobs then become vulnerable. Constant uncertainty does not make for a great place to work and it makes it very difficult to make the investments that would help to
create an amazing place that individuals want to work in.
Many strategists, in the ‘great resignation,’ have through COVID 19, simply woken up with a clearer sense of what they will tolerate. And because of this, agencies have been hemorrhaging people.
Strategists deciding whether to work full time. Focus on two key things and you can have a decent experience:
Go to work for an agency that truly values what you do – Strategy
Go to an agency that has five quality people including a great: client, creative team, account lead and manager. If you have
those (whichever the agency) you can still have a good experience.
#strategyplanning #Careersuccess #Manager
The biggest Threat to Agencies and Your Jobs
Planners and strategists, “Agencies are scrambling to attract talent amid shortage.” The article summarizes that talent shortages exist because: https://bit.ly/37gVRkn
– Skills shortage – A lack of the right skills,
– Greater flexibility/virtual – ‘Talent’ wanting greater flexibility
– Burn out – employees wanting to get out of the business.
What the article doesn’t mention is the core reason for this talent shortage, a breakdown of the psychological contract,
a phrase coined decades past highlighting, ‘to maintain a positive employee-employer relationship employers pay particular attention to the ‘human side’ of a working relationship, rather than the purely commercial or transactional side.’
Yes, the problem for the business is short termism, which is why agencies increasingly use freelancers, treating people like commodities; Even when they are full time, (again due to short termism) there has been a chronic lack of willingness to train/invest in the next generation of strategists.
The good news – For any planner seeking their next career challenge, there are many great people in this business and some basic rules for identifying a great next career move for you, beyond that is, simply looking at the obvious names, this I’ll cover in my next newsletter.
Agency to Client-Side Means What?
At some point many of you consider a client-side move very often hoping for decision making authority or the ability to impact brand beyond comms’, Some of your peers that have made the move to the client-side kindly told me what the key difference is working for corporate America.. A few common themes emerged:
Ownership of work – “This isn’t a business I’m dipping my toe in to for a second, I’m responsible.” (Jackie Jantos, Spotify)
Skill Recognition/Proving Yourself – “Once client-side, planning speciates pretty quickly and is very different for a number of reasons not least because of an understanding of what planners do.” (Magnus Bair, HP Enterprise)
Iterative Nature of Work v Discrete projects – “On the client-side things never seem to be done” (Scott Reddick, Charles Schwab)
Broader more complex work focus – “You need to be able to work with big business and big processes.” (Julian Cohen, Constellation Brands)
That said, what do you think?
Stuart
Articles and commentary that might be of interest…
- Marketing Careers. Should you be an agency or a brand marketer?”
- Going In-House. Why You Should Take Your Agency Expertise In-House. AdAge – 09/17
- Developing your skill set on the other side of the tracks – CMO 08/17
- Hell on Earth or Nirvana? Client-Side Strategic Planning – Stuart Parkin 10/16
- From agency to Client. Making the switch – Campaign 07/16
- Working for a marketing agency versus client-side – Smart Insights 12/15
- Client Side Versus Agency Side marketing Careers – Morgan McKinley 06/16
- Instability and lack of calibrated pay among the key reasons agency folk head in-house – Marketing 01/17
www.sparkinsearch.com
Stuart: 646-280-5147
Strategic Planning Jobs – Where are they going?
As communications move from mass to personalized, data specialists and consultancies have been gaining ascendancy but it’s unclear exactly how things will play out. There is in fact risk that most agencies, as well as consultancies, are to some extent failing, “The big consultancies have underestimated the value of creativity while agencies have under exploited the value of business analytics” (Ivan Pollard, SVP Coca Cola).
Agencies have for some time now been adjusting their models to incorporate data analytics in an attempt to ensure that creative insight provides measurable benefits.
Clients meanwhile, increasingly are moving to control their data, which will create more strategic opportunities on the client-side.
As the agency business is reintegrating its offering opportunity will exist increasingly for generalists.
What do you think? For more on the trends, some articles to provide context.
Stuart
Articles and commentary that might be of interest…
- How marketing is changing and why agencies are not keeping pace 5/17
- Consultancies – The race is on! 4/17
- Consultancies are buying agencies. What does it mean for marketing?
- New business trends. How they affect digital agencies
- Programmatic trends: Advertisers still relying on agencies
- Creative industry report 4/17
- Combating the rise of in-house agencies
- A CMO’s view: How Intel head of creative is building the brand in-house
Agency Vs. Client-Side Planning
Companies that no longer work with outside marketing agencies continue to rise, reaching 27%, up from 13% a few years ago.
Do agencies really fail to provide sufficient value? Look closer and significant trends are at play. Certainly, some of the larger agencies are too slow and seemingly entrenched with traditional media. Clients that want to be faster moving can sometimes find speed by keeping/bringing things in-house.
More telling, the type of work being conducted client-side is changing, with a preference for strategy being pulled back in-house. Clients certainly seem to be hiring more strategic problem solvers from the consulting side of the business. There appears to be a recognition, in large part because of the importance of data, that the strategic conversation is something they really should stop outsourcing and better still, actively develop in-house. This in turn requires a re-tooling of talent.
From your perspective, agency or client, big brand picture or activation focus, how do you see things playing out? Hoping some of the attached reading clarifies things for you.
Enjoy!
Stuart
Articles and commentary that might be of interest…
- 6 Reasons Marketing is Moving In-House
- How Agencies Are Wooing Ex-staffers To Return
- Agency Versus Client-side. Is The Grass Greener?
- Working For A Marketing Agency Vs. Client-side Marketer
- Agency-side Vs. Client-side. Should You Make The Switch?
- Chapter 1 How To Choose The Launch Pad For Your Career In Marketing
- Shifting From The Client-side To The Agency-side –Is It Really ‘The Dark Side’?
- Three Top Marketers With Agency Backgrounds Reveal Why They Switched Roles
- Client-side Vs. Agency-side
- Living On The Other Side Of Moving From Client To Agency
- How To Retain Top Agency Talent