It’s widely known that the media industry skews young in Australia. But while a younger workforce can have benefits for organisations, a selection of independent media agency bosses have told B&T as part of the latest B&T x IMAA Roundtable that they are facing some significant hurdles in finding the right staff.
The average media agency staffer in Australia is just under 33 years old, with 7.9 years of experience and 3.8 years of tenure, up from 2.8 years, according to the MFA Census.
Those figures, of course, are the averages. But the younger generation, according to these agency leaders, expect different things from work than older generations. That may not be a bad thing in the long run, but the agency bosses believe it’s making the current situation of hiring and training harder to manage.
“When we’re interviewing for entry level roles, they aren’t even researching the company,” said Susie Michaels, founder and managing director of One Media Co.
“They want work from home flexibility. I want to be able to walk my dog, get paid for it and ‘who are you again?’. It’s frustrating that if they’re not prepared to take those initial steps, how are we going to be able to service our clients?”
Justin Ladmore, chief media officer and a partner at Enigma, added that while the search for senior staff has “always been hard” and particularly so in the performance sector, it has been harder in the last couple of years to find mid-level staff.
“The bulk of our staff are in a regional market, that has got benefits but it’s got some issues as well. What we’ve done is created an academy and got people trained up from coordinator to manager to fill that gap. Even the managers that go to the Sydney market, the agencies that take them are blown away because they can do everything.”
The longevity of specialists is a particular issue that Veronica Cremen, managing director of Vonnimedia, is facing.
“Whenever I have resumes landing on my desk, a particular issue for the younger demographic is the churn among different agencies. An area that we’ve found as helpful for our business and for our clients is hiring people that come from in-house. They have a keen focus on product and a hunger to be able to work on multiple things. They come from wanting more,” she said.
Stephen Leeds, CEO of The Media Store, said that soft skills were in short supply.
“Everybody is very good but managing an account is the skill we find hardest. They haven’t got the people skills. They don’t want to pick up the phone. We’re having to do a lot of training around presentation skills, account management skills because that is a lost art in our business. The old suit in full service agencies. I don’t know what full service agencies are like [now] but in media we always had those types of people and they’re hard to find. Everybody’s now very specialised,” he said.
“The worst response you can get to ‘Have you spoken to them?’ is ‘I’ve messaged them,'” said Phil Smith, CEO and founder of Apparent.
It’s a notion that is reflective of a generational shift in the way business is conducted. Many of the staffers entering the industry now, aged between 20 and 23, have had their formative experiences in COVID. Universities were online, for instance, and their early jobs—likely in more customer-facing roles—will have been waylaid by lockdown measures.
“The core of what we do is still relationships. They’re done best generally face-to-face but at the very least on the phone. With all the technology that exists in the world it’s not going to help that problem,” said Rene LeMerle general manager of growth at Perth-based Bonfire.
“Clients still want to be able to come in and eyeball you if things are not going well or high-five you if they’re going exceptionally well. I can’t see that changing. That’s the challenge for the new generation coming through because they’re not getting any of those fundamental skills because they’re after doing jobs that they can do online and they communicate with each other online.”
Leeds, meanwhile, believes the agency sector has to be “ready to adapt” to changing client expectations and ways of working.
“We can’t keep forcing on that generation that this is how we did it and we know that it works. There is going to be a new way of working. It’s probably going to be a hybrid and you’ll have to be flexible on what your clients need,” he said.
But for Cremen, the key point is to be friends with clients.
“Even if that does become more of a short-form, text or phone call, being able to do it often or come up with unique and innovative ways to still have that face-to-face or that touch, will help you stand out among the rest,” she said.
Structural Challenges
It would be wrong to depict the staffing challenges agency face as solely hangovers from COVID with working from, for instance. Instead, Leeds believes the market is facing several structural challenges that are the causes, not the symptoms, of agencies’ staffing headaches.
“If you take it as an industry, so not just agencies but publishers etc., there are more companies today than there has ever been. From a pure numbers perspective… there are more position requirements than there’s ever been and there’s only so many people to go around. That’s why we’ve got a shortage,” he said.
“No doubt COVID had an impact on the international market coming in and we are seeing fewer of them enter our market. The word is that there are benefits overseas and abroad in their home countries and it’s not as attractive to come here. And that’s had an impact on our industry in particular—particularly the English.
“We do have an ageism problem in our industry. I think the indies have been great at supporting that, for different reasons. The indies love experience, our models are different and therefore we see value in that versus maybe the bigger agencies who are on different KPIs, cost structures, whatever.”
In Leeds’ mind, the ageism problem in adland might be down to what clients are willing to pay.
“There’s an expense in experience. They say they want it but sometimes pitching suggests maybe they don’t,” he said.
Clients themselves are having to navigate difficult economic waters and this is being felt everywhere.
“I’d look at how the media is operating. I would say, based on the way they come to market, based on the opportunities, based on the trading that it’s a pretty tough short term market. There are certainly good trading deals to be had but it seems short-term and most sales directors are telling me they’ve had a tough first quarter,” said Leeds.
Ladmore said that the industry had one of its worst financial years last year.
“Clients were anxious and antsy… They’re thinking more short term. The change we’ve seen is not necessarily an increase in money or budgets but they’re starting to think a little bit longer-term now with more strategic projects briefed in, data and tech projects, audience segmentation projects. Things are still not quite right but we need to look towards the future,” he said.
“There’s a general consensus that there’s nervousness. Clients were making decisions based on small changes in fee structure last year, which is really a petty race to the bottom and no fun for anyone trying to run a decent agency,” added LeMerle.
Following the re-election of the Labor party locally and President Donald Trump’s seeming determination to thrust the world into a trade war, it seems uncertainty in the market will continue. Whether clients will continue to think short-term and staffing changes will make agency-client relationships more transactional, rather than partnerships, is something we’ll have to observe over years, not months.
But as is often said, advertising and media are people-based businesses. So maybe all of this will fall by the wayside. Or maybe all our days are numbered, if Mark Zuckerberg’s right.
If you’d like to be part of the next B&T x IMAA Roundtable, email [email protected].
