Ask any advertising and media agency head what their single most pressing issue is currently, and the topic of young talent will be raised. Not so much the problem of attracting Gen Y talent into the industry, but retaining it. The latest crop of young agency talent is feeling restless. In many cases overworked, underpaid and frustrated with the slow career progress, these young people are looking for new opportunities outside the traditional agency life. And while retaining strong creative talent has always been an issue for agencies, failure to address the growing Gen Y talent gap could have a seminal impact on the industry.
“Talent is our biggest asset and interestingly, our biggest assets walk out the door every night,” says PHD’s Asia-Pacific CEO Cheuk Chiang. “If we don’t continue to motivate, inspire, recognise and reward them then we will soon lose the talent we need to future-proof our industry.”
The brutal truth is that creative and media agencies are no longer seen as attractive career options for the so-called ‘millennials’.
Advertising has lost much of its glamour and perhaps even its credibility as a career option for young people, who are much more sophisticated and sceptical about brands and who do not see marketing as attractive a proposition for them as it may have been five or more years ago.
Rob Fanshawe, managing director of Xpand Asia, specialising in talent for technology, media and communications, says he faces constant requests from young people to go from the agency to the client side. More often than not, the easiest transition is to the industry they have previously serviced, so the volume is naturally higher in the bigger industries that use agencies such as banking and pharmaceuticals.
At the same time, advertising and media agencies now have more competitors for creative talent, says Sapna Srivastava, chief talent officer, JWT Asia-Pacific. “With the proliferation of new media and new economy sectors, there are many more opportunities available to people. Younger people are prone to risk-taking and experimenting and thus explore more. The other big reason is money, which increases with every job hop and for the youngsters is a huge draw.”
Other creative industries, such as film, design, TV, animation, web, mobile and digital development are all much more accessible to younger job-seekers, and are themselves hungrier for larger and larger numbers of young talent.
“In addition, there is the appeal of higher paying starter roles in the likes of finance, banking, media and marketing as competitive choices,” adds Richard Bleasdale, regional managing partner at The Observatory Asia-Pacific.
But there is also a Generation Y-specific element at play - entry-level employees these days are more impatient, more likely to seek new opportunities far sooner and more frequently. This is especially true as the economy improves and the job market expands. Young people are looking for a number of priorities to be met - personal development, fast advancement and career opportunities, to name a few - and if their expectations are not met, they are more than happy to move to other places where they feel they have a better chance of being met.
Angelina Ng, human resources director at Mediabrands Asia-Pacific, believes that the retention problem is a combination of factors.
“Generation Y is eager to get more professional exposure, and will also change jobs if this means higher compensation, especially for those who are just starting out their careers,” she explains.
“Those who have been in the industry for sometime, meanwhile, may be eager to to seek employment that will provide them with greater work/life balance. We are competing with each other for a small talent pool who have skills and experience in media agencies.”
Agencies themselves need to also shoulder much of the responsibility. Advertising for too long was resting on its laurels as the place where creatives would naturally migrate. Publicis Asia-Pacific CEO Kevin Ramsey lays the blame for the current talent problems very squarely at the industry’s door. “The reality of our industry too often for young people is long hours, thankless work and not a whole lot of fun in the equation,” he says. “Young people today think life’s too short; if they’re not getting the satisfaction they want then they will leave.”
Media agencies face the pressure of talent churn more than most. One recruitment professional working with agencies says turnover in media agencies in Singapore is significantly higher than in other parts of the agency eco-system due to the long hours and low pay at the bottom of the pyramid. The more monotonous jobs in large networked agencies can lack the sparkle of a creative account management role.
“Planner buyers spend their whole day optimising media plans to save their clients a dollar or two here and there, and to get them additional coverage or awareness for that dollar,” the source notes. “It only makes sense that they would apply the same logic to their own jobs and move to a new role for a few more dollars.”
The talent churn problem remains an immediate one across the board. And according to ZenithOptimedia chief executive worldwide Steve King, the problem is very much a global one, and one specific to the advertising and media industries, which were so badly impacted by the recent global economic downturn. “During the latter half of 2008 into 2009, all the big advertising groups were in serious decline,” he notes. “Say an agency would normally recruit over 5,000 people in a year, during that time they probably took on around 10 per cent of that. So now that business has picked up we are all suffering a shortage of good young talent coming through.”
Indeed, training budgets were one of the first areas to be cut. “Post sub-prime we all got jaded. During that time we were less focused on teaching and learning,” says Tim Love, CEO Omnicom APIMA.
The good news is that it looks like agencies are once again investing in talent. According to Omnicom Media Group (OMG), training budgets have increased 300 per cent over the past three years, across both the OMD and PHD brands. Likewise, GroupM Singapore director of talent and development Leela Nair says that training will account for some 30 per cent of the agency’s overall budget this year, led by its investment in the Media Masters programme with Singapore WDA (Workplace Development Authority), in partnership with the Singapore Media Academy (SMA), and the Continuing Education and Training Centre (CET).
Toby Hayward, CEO GroupM Singapore, says the partnership will become a catalyst for the industry, providing successful applicants the chance to fast-track their careers and become future leaders. “The media industry stands on the cusp of great change,” Hayward predicts.
But training programmes aside, what can the industry do to ensure it can attract and keep the very best new talent? For Fanshawe, the key is to offer greater substance.
“One thing agencies have always been very good at is creating a great work environment for their staff and this legacy still holds true,” he says. “However, although this has worked in the past, it is a fast- fading prop. To be successful in today’s ‘war for talent’ you need to have more substance than free soft drinks and a pool table.”
With this in mind, it is clear that agencies should be doing more to build talent rather than buy it. PHD’s Chiang says the industry needs to look inward and make sure it is doing enough to convince talent that it cares.
“To be highly sought after, staff need multiple skill sets which, unfortunately they are gaining by doing short stints at different employers,” he adds. “Hence there is less loyalty, and the thought of staying in one job or one industry is increasingly outdated. As managers, we therefore owe it to our people to make sure they are properly trained and given experience in the various facets of our business.”
This is a theme that the majority of senior agency heads agree on. “All we have is our people plus a rented office and some computers,” says Ian Thubron, group president of TBWA Greater China. “Yet we spend very little time on people, and particularly grooming the next generation of leaders - bonding them to us, making them ambassadors for our culture, incentivising them, and retaining them.”
One potential way forward in this respect would be for agencies to develop industry-wide standards, rather than what it stands for at present - a mix of competing and conflicting interests.
Although a formalised code of ethics and operating principles may be too much to ask at this stage, the introduction of recognised and transferable standards around education and professional qualifications would be a good start.
Similarly, agencies need to work more closely than at present with education institutions to make sure the next generation of talent is not only capable, but is also attracted enough to the job to want to stay in the industry.
While it is difficult to provide endless opportunities for career development and training, it is nevertheless important for young talent to be working for a business that they believe in.
“They should be heavy contributors to creating the company vision, something that is meaningful to them,” says Fanshawe. “Young talent, well everyone really, wants to contribute and gets a lot of satisfaction from the success of businesses that they have played a meaningful part in helping.”
At Starcom MediaVest Group Singapore, associate director, talent management and organisation development Tang Seok Hian believes that effectiveness and follow-through are critical to successful staff retention. Staff talent management in agencies has to operate on broad principles or values, not at a process level.
“Talent managers in other industries can afford to set up tight structures, frameworks, processes and protocols,” says Tang. “But in agencies, where our business is fluid and dynamic, we need to focus on key principles and contextual situations.”
Agencies need to assess the potential of youngsters and then focus on developing the ones who show maximum potential so as to retain them. “To make sure that the talent pipeline is fully stocked at all times,” Tang adds.
Beyond training initiatives and retention strategies, a more obvious, but an equally important
solution is to simply reward people better, in other words the industry needs to address its
compensation issues.
“There is a very real pressure coming from clients for agencies to actually do more for less,” says Ramsey, adding that the situation was exacerbated by the recession. “It’s a vicious circle that the industry has got itself into by being too willing to sell a premium product for a bargain price.”
In today’s media landscape, more complex and fragmented than ever before, the industry’s workload is even greater, which, Ramsey says, makes it even more inexcusable that agencies are not demanding higher compensation. The solution is straight forward enough: for the industry to be more focused on getting properly paid for the service it provides, so that it can be adequately resourced rather than overburdening its young talent.
The biggest concern remains though, and that is that the next generation of talented leaders is by no means guaranteed. If the Gen Y churn is not tackled immediately, agencies could find themselves facing an irreversible shortage of skilled personnel in the near future. “‘People’ isn’t a science, but it is vitally important for the health of our agencies today, and our future health, which is in the hands of those who will ultimately come after,” concludes Thubron.
This article was originally published in the March 2011 issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.
