A couple weeks ago I had the luxury of getting behind-the-scenes access to one of the marketing communications holding companies' agency partner meetings (sorry, can't disclose which one). It quickly became extremely clear the one thing keeping these agencies up at night: how can we attract digital talent?!
Open to today's AdAge, and Lisa Sanders reports on the digital acquisition mania happening by the Madison Avenue holding companies: since last year, Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP have made investments in 18 interactive agencies, including Publicis's hefty $1.3 billion purchase of Digitas in January. Then flip to today's Adweek, which reports the hire of Jonathan Sackett as Arnold's new created role of Chief Digital Officer (following the other recent "CDO" hires at Ogilvy North America, Goodby, Silversetin, and Wieden + Kennedy). Ad agencies are salivating to suck up all the digital marrow they can get their hands on.
As a survivor of the late 90's irrational exhuberance, all this digital rage does start to induce flashbacks of those horrid fast-food "e-commerce degrees." Nevertheless, digital has finally arrived in a very real way, and talk to anyone in advertising right now and they'll tell you digital talent is the hottest commodity and the biggest shortage. There aren't enough of these graphic designing Flash-afficionados out there, and the ones who are have the upper hand: they're getting poached and offered the big bucks left and right.
Have you heard any of these wild poachng stories? What feeder pools are the next gen of digital talent coming from (universities, industries, companies, etc)? What innovative techniques are companies using to attract and hold on to this former geek squad? Which ad agencies are doing digitial right and which ones aren't?
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, advertising + PR, Publicis Groupe SA, Advertising and Related Services, Professional Services Sector, Media, Advertising |
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Recent Comments | 2 Total
May 15, 2007 at 1:42pm by Mikej
The interesting part is that hiring from universities will only get you so far. The market is moving at such a speed they can’t change their curriculum fast enough. It would be good to see an industry body start to really deliver some training and link with the universities to look after the current drought and future talent
Or we could just trawl the internet looking for people who are really good and offer them money on the spot
May 15, 2007 at 9:03pm by Perry
I agree, talent from universities might get you someone for less money, but they won't be experienced enough to provide the right solutions... and sometimes, they just don't have the work ethic to finish what they start. I would totally poach from my competitors in Los Angeles, but I'm friends with so many of the other agency leads.
People who are good out there intentionally maintain freelance status - they don't want full time jobs. We tried to hire someone away from his freelance life, and found out he is making 3x what we could offer him as salary. Sure his work hours are terrible, but money talks.
One of our solutions right now is finding good people - anywhere on the planet, and working with them. A high percentage of our work force is offsite now. From a project management standpoint this is can be a royal pain, but we're working with it.