It's no secret that "Talent" is - if not THE - one of THE most critical focus areas for companies in the marketing communications space right now - specifically the agencies. You're not going to attend a single conference without an entire panel being dedicated to talent or a high ranking executive talking about talent is one of the primary challenges, concerns or focus areas on his or her agenda.
ATTRACTING digital talent has become increasingly difficult for the agencies. This is a global phenomenon and is applicably pretty much across the board. In recent time, this had been worse in the mid-level range, due to a void vacated by the exodus caused by the dot com bust. Nowadays however, it's pretty pervasive in all areas of the business.
Of course this is now compounded by the fact that digital talent is not enough to cover the expanding consideration set of "colors" in the box of crayons, including - but not limited to - social media, word-of-mouth, co-creation, consumer generated content and social networking (to name a few)
And as if this wasn't enough of a conundrum, it's become glaringly apparent in the past few weeks that the agency world cannot hold on to its existing talent either - particularly in the leadership category.
This list includes my friends (know 'em and love 'em all) Denuo's Nick Pahade, OMD's Sean Finnegan, Tribal's Paran Johar, Mediavest's Adam Gerber (his new venture just raised some fresh new money) and Ogilvy's Eric Wheeler and underscores the push-pull reality of the business at the moment.
PULL: The easier of the two forces. Digital industry "vets" or old-timers want new challenges. They also want to cash-in or cash-out and who can blame 'em. They've worked too hard, been paid too little only to see 25-year old millionaires created at times overnight. The lure of start-ups in the technology and social media/networking space is just too great at the moment. They are well-funded and can offer the one thing that agencies cannot - EQUITY (substantial). They desperately need to figure out how to court, woo and win over both Madison Avenue and the brand marketers. First of course, they need to figure out their business models...and who better than to work with those who acted as purse string arbiters.
PUSH: As per the earlier point, agencies are infamous for overworking and underpaying. That however, is probably a bit outdated in terms of current applicability. Agencies have lost the spark that once had employees willingly staying until witching hour. Today people work late under duress...if at all. And it really doesn't matter how much money is being thrown at execs....because the VC world can come up with more.
Perhaps the more important PUSH point is the ephemeral one that is associated with being respected, trusted and empowered to effect change and innovation. Commitment to digital is either still superficial and/or not bought into across the board. Perhaps Carat's experiment will buck this trend i.e. promoting digital stars to the ultimate leadership position and helping infuse digital commitment across the cultural board. Carat does need to score a big win to prove this new working model (they recently lost a large auto client) and I'm crossing fingers for Scott Sorokin and Sarah Fay (and indirectly David Verklin) who are both great, talented stars.
It's a 1-2 punch of ATTRACTING and RETAINING talent that could conceivably become a knock-out punch that causes the kind of tipping point that will revolutionize and restructure the agency world and its importance and role with brand marketers.
Until then, I would caution brand marketers at the moment to really do their due diligence when it comes to partnering with an agency that needs to demonstrate acute digital and social media strategic leadership. The market is filling up with too many Houses of Cards.
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