Does it make sense to stay in advertising?
This is a question that everyone in advertising, from Trainee to CEO is asking these days. True, every single industry is faced with a talent crunch but none have the problem of exodus that advertising is facing. As a search organization with a keen interest in the Communication space, we have a ringside view of the questions that are asked, the reasons that some people give for leaving or staying. Here are a selection of some facts, questions and opinions:
Questions
- Does it make sense for a creative, client servicing or media professional to stay on in advertising at all?
- Should a young bright fresher who while participating in college festivals felt he had the talent to create ads or dreamt of the ‘glamour’ of advertising look at the business at all or look at media, entertainment….
- Is the crisis of talent in advertising today unique or simply magnified given that newer sectors are opening every day and advertising people with their unique blend of experience and exposure get picked up for these sectors?
- Is advertising as an industry itself on the verge of extinction as we know it and the exodus natural fallout of this?
- Does advertising pay poorly?
- Does the profession have any ‘respect’ left?
- Is the industry run by people who are not in touch with new realities and therefore salaries, job definitions et all are out of synch?
Some Facts
- Advertising no longer features as a profession of choice for MBAs from the top 20 business schools
- More students from an institute like MICA (set up for advertising) take non-advertising jobs than in the profession, from the campus
- Creative Directors are finding jobs as Marketing Managers
- Media, Internet, Banks, Auto, Retail, Consulting, Telecom and many more sectors offer jobs to people with 6-14 years experience in advertising
Salary
- The advertising business is between a 2000-2500 cr industry. Profits would be between 300-400 crs. A single entity like HDFC Bank is bigger, makes more money and employs less people than the entire industry. It is just not capable of paying more.
- A client servicing person with 9-12 years experience would draw between 12-16 lacs as annual CTC. When he gets his break in Media or internet he would get 20+
- There are very few 1 cr plus salaries in advertising. Most corporates have between 5-20 people in that bracket.
Some of the softer issues that bother
– ‘Respect’. There is none from the clients. They knowingly treat agencies very badly and the agency heads also behave like they will do anything for the clients business. So there is no standing up for points of view or principles or demanding to be treated well
– Peers from similar class/batch generally seem to have higher salaries, bigger jobs
– No one is particularly bothered about training, mentoring, appraising..no HR practices at all
– Agency heads and creative heads are all chasing awards so blindly that they are ‘cheating’ all the time and justifying it as legitimate tactics
Some reasons to stay
– Ask yourself whether you are a ‘variety seeker’. If you are, unlikely you will be happy in a one or two product/service job
– Do you ‘love’ advertising? Do you seem to instinctively get that insight, feel the idea and get excited by it?
Do send in your comments to us. You can post a comment below. Your email address is safe with us and will only be used to know who you are the next time you visit us.
D5 Creation
Advertising or ‘marketing communication’ has to think seriously about how to create organisational structures that will be both cost effective and allow the agencies to provide great service, competitive salaries. I cant see the MNCs being able to do it in India as yet. It requires the larger Indian agencies to take the lead.Agency heads need to really understand that the crisis that is there will overtake them much sooner than they probably expect.
The fact that I’m no longer in advertising means I’ve found career opportunities which are more attractive than advertising. For me, money has not been the reason for leaving advertising. It has been the lack of professionalism and skills in handling people that drove me away.
There are too many incompetent people in responsible positions in advertising agencies. In a people business, they know very little about managing – or being responsive to – people who make up their teams. In a communication business, most advertising people cannot even communicate well… and that includes senior executives in the ‘creative’ department.
Most managers lack leadership skills. They move up the ladder not because of their ability to lead their teams to higher levels of achievement, but by default, typically, when their superiors leave to pursue better-paid jobs. Many are bullies (I once had a psychotic as a boss) running down their juniors and taking credit for others’ work.
Developing people doesn’t seem to be a priority in advertising agencies. There’s hardly any training provided by the agencies to make their executives better managers. What’s worse, the senior management totally ignores this vacuum in their HR systems… maybe because they themselves have grown up in the same ignorant manner.
Advertising as a job can be very exciting. It’s almost like weaving a story around a central theme [product / service] and convincing others to see it the way you do.
And i completely agree about the bit on HR practices in the industry. I think introducing good HR practices can go a long way to keep everyone motivated. After all, not everyone moves because they want a better salary. It should help in many ways – better motivation means better performance, lesser manpower delivering better results. Moreso for people excited about advertising. And as an organisation head, what could make me more happy than if I could have a small team that’s motivated, and delivers results at par with much larger teams elsewhere?
First to answer the question which is being asked- yes it makes sense to stay in advertising. If-
you are someone who has a passion for it, who wants to club creativity with earning money.
If the passion is not there then money will lure you away…and that’s true not only for advertising..its true for all industries. Bigger fishes do eat the smaller ones….bigger industries with more bottom line will obviously lure good talent from smaller industries.
If it is established that you have an inherent urge to be creative in your work, to work with fire in your belly and to deliver something which is tangible and earns you visibility with the masses then comes the question of how to make the journey more enjoyable and easier for the advertising professional.
HR has a big role to play in this. And it’s not that advertising does not realise this. They are nascent in HR but it would be wrong to say that senior management does not understand the importance.
But yes emphasis should be more on retaining than attracting talent. We are creating a hue and cry about the fact that we cannot pay as much as a telecom or BFSI can pay but we are not systematically trying to plan careers, do appraisals objectively, do training analysis and map skills and competencies. They are still happening in pockets and are not imbibed into the system.
If we concentrate more on the retaining of talent, I am sure we can reduce the attrition and make every advertising agency a ‘fun place to be in’…
Nothing like ‘enjoying your work and earning money at the same time’
I loved advertising since i was a kid and still do but my education was an mba and i landed up in sales.I have been in sales and retail the last 6 years of my life in so called blue chips. Now i want to join advertising but dont have the experience. Can someone advise how to join an ad agency??
just becoz u people have left advertising that does not give you the right to speak bad about it..i am an advertising person & i will be in this profession till i die….till the time you dont have passion for your work, you will never be able to justify it…people who leave advertising & bitch about are criminals of the profession..its gud that u guys have left this profession because u would have harmed it more than doing any gud..thanks a lot!!!!
Advertising cannot be termed as unattractive field today. Inspite of talent crunch and rising attrocratic behaviour of Clients Advertising is yet a fun field for learning and most importantly building brands. Howsover lucrative other fields maybe yet advertising is still the most exciting one because only advertising has the power to make or break a brand fortunes. Nothing gives a satisfaction as a successful campaign does.
Over the time we have seen lot of advertising professionals moving on the other side of the table and then returning back to advertising simply because advertising is not a plain job but a passion that is lived by people. I do agree that these days people don’t invest so much in learning as they invest in seraching for better prospects. But at the end of the day its not money alone that matter but job satisfaction too. It feels good when we see the advertising work on hutch, SBI, happydent, nokia, coke, motorola etc.
I have been in this field for the last six years and I am still in love with my profession. Yeah, many a times the idea of changing my line occured but still my passion won over my desires.
Hope this continues and I don’t leave this profession because of lacking professionalism in advertising professionals and Clients.
Hope for the best.
So nice to read about so many people talk about enjoying their work. It seems that all of you have read Alyque Padamsee’s autobiography ” A double life” where he tries to explain how he walked tightrope in two professions theatre and advertising(One(advertising) funding the other(theatre-passion)
The other book that comes to mind is Billiard champion’s “Success v/s Joy” where he gives one example from advertisement. Following the “enjoy your work theme”, Mr Sethi was of the view that a copywriter is like an artist and it is not necessary that a person who enjoys copywriting will be a good man manager at higher levels as that is subjective and can be extremely taxing.
For those interested, my 12 published articles and links on “Enjoy your work ” theme on my blog- Make your passion your profession By the way, how is the blog as an ad for the theme? Any suggestions for improvement?
Being a bit of a poet myself, I had looked upon advertising as a career option once upon a time as Mr Padamsee has mentioned poets in his above book but was curtly told that we are not looking for poets. I am unlikely to meet so many adverising people in my life again. I had once written a poem on “Expansion and Diversification” in our company. Just wanted some feedack on how it would have been as an advertisement. My personal opinions is that nobody can really gauge the public response to something unconventional as many film makers would vouch.
Since some of you seem skeptical about the ad Industry’s future, it would not be out of place to mention here that former cricket captains Kapil Dev and Steve Waugh said during the telecast of the recent world cup ” Ads are there to promote cricket and not the other way around” which implies that critical moments on the field should not be interrupted by ads. That spoils the impression for the laymen as well.
I read somewhere that Advertisment is like legalized lying. If true, it may not augur well in the long run.
I once heard a senior advertising professional declare – “every client deserves the agency & the advertising he gets” – and I have come to agree. This is not to just deposit all the blame of the current state of affairs in the industry on the client’s doorstep, because I have also believed that the 1st & the largest credit for a great ad / idea must also go to the client, even before the agency. It cuts both ways.
It’s amazing how often people in the industry are heard lamenting the slide in talent in the marketing departments at some of the most reputed companies – and this is not just because they have shot down their best ‘ideas’. There is little trust in relationships with the agencies, leave alone a true spirit of partnership. Agencies are treated as ‘suppliers’, who must always be at beck & call, and every year the ‘tender negotiations’ look to hammering the price down, rather than of extracting more value by investing in the team & the relationship.
Sure the agencies have also done a lot of it to themselves. Many a times they don’t have enough respect for their own talent & trade, for them to command any from the other side. And all this talk of ‘one must have love & passion for the profession’ sometimes sounds like in lieu of decent compensation. No wonder none of the top MBA institutes even invite them anymore. So, with little or no real talent coming into the industry, and much of the talent taking flight out of it, it’s anybody’s guess as to what’s left within. My guess is the pressure on the few good men left there is getting crazier by the day. And the people at the very top in the agencies, are still not doing anything close to enough to address the issue. Wake up guys, this is gangrene!!