Springfield to Shelbyville - A guide to moving from agency to client side via 100+ people who’ve done just that…

The trickle has become a flood.?

In the last 18-24 months we’ve seen a lot of top talent take the leap from agency/consulting to client side.

The pandemic has created a 'perfect storm' of attrition and made talented marketers realign their values and in some cases has forced redundancy.

For a certain type of talent, agency land is the only place they’ll ever feel at home.

But for many, the traditional lure of agency has been slowly decreasing.?

WPP & Publicis have publicly spoken about the challenge of keeping top talent happy, motivated and engaged.

Earlier this year, the World Federation of Advertisers released a 'Global Media Talent' report outlining the significant brain drain in the out of the media agency industry. Overall 77% of organisations felt there was high / some scarcity of talent.

There's also been a surge of mid level adland talent moving into account management, sales or strategy roles in large tech or B2B companies, as well as talent ‘in housing’ (hiring agency talent to perform their roles within a company).??

At the Cannes festival this year Linkedin gave a presentation about the wave of job transitions in the ad industry, mainly flowing to large client side tech companies.?

The data says that taking the leap from agency to client side is an increasingly well worn path.

But while might seem like a simple move across the marketing world, it’s often a surprisingly challenging transition.

It's a bit like how the neighbouring towns of Springfield and Shelybville are portrayed in the Simpsons.

Two very similar places, full of similar people with much of the same politics, drama and sense of fun.?

Yet with subtle and perceptible cultural, operational differences that only reveal themselves once you study things a bit more closely.?

Those who do well in agency side often don’t do well on client side and vice versa, because they naively expect to bring the same approach and act the same way for the same results.

Agency side is typically fast pace, diverse, more stressful and specifically advertising/creativity focused while client side is typically slower with more control, broader commercial pressure and different stakeholder demands.?

Typically, client siders know their own business far better than any agency person could, but also suffer from the challenge of having blinkers on for their own category or customer.

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So why am I writing this?

Why for selfish reasons of course!

I’m officially one of the ‘wild swans’ making the move from agency side to client side. Having worked for various agencies for the past 10 years, I’m taking the leap from Accenture Song, leaving agency world for now and to Zoetis , the world's largest producer of medicine and vaccinations for pets.

Zoetis has a Centre Of Excellence here in Dublin and I’m massively excited be joining as their new Director DTC International, a fascinating role focused on the Zoetis Pets site mixing marketing strategy, media, CRM.

Of course it was a very tough choice to make with lots of soul searching.

Having worked a lot over the last three years with senior C-Suite clients, I think I understand the different working rhythm and commercial pressures of client side to a degree.

But it’s one thing looking from the outside, and a totally different experience when you’re the ‘man/woman in the arena’.?

To prepare myself for the jump across the fence, I decided to ask some smart people that had done likewise what advice they’d give about how to handle the change.?

I got back an avalanche of excellent, detailed and consistent advice (over 100 respondents across, Twitter, Linkedin, DM and email).

So I decided to stick it together into a sort of ‘jumping the fence’ guide for anyone making a similar move.?

Here are some 5 key mega themes that came up again and again.

- Persuade stakeholders or die trying?

I had assumed that politics and stakeholder management were a key part of client side, but the quantity of responses saying ‘you live and die by stakeholders, so get used to managing them' was fascinating.?

Colin Lewis has written widely and brilliantly on this topic and told me about the importance of the ‘2 Ps’ - politics and persuasion!

Jerry Daykin , a name that should be familiar to everyone reading this (and who made a similar agency -> client jump earlier in his career) advised that:

In order to get shit done that others can’t, you need to take a leaf out of Dale Carnegie’s book. You need to win friends while influencing people. One anonymous respondent advised that?

“If there are prickly characters, you need to make your decisions feel like their decisions.”

Overall, the importance of building rapport, networking, influencing and creating ‘psychological safety’ as well as credibility between yourself and key people within the organisation came out as one of the key ‘make or break’ criteria for making a good leap to client side.?

‘Managing upwards’ and being able to proactively merchandise success while sharing credit was also defined as a tricky but vital equilibrium to hit.?

As Niall O’Malley said on Twitter:

‘You’re moving from an ideas economy to a risk economy’.?

- Balance your valuable external perspective with company culture & realities

A considerable number of respondents, including Colm Woods (who crossed the divide in the PR/Comms world) spoke about the need to understand and adapt to your new company culture, while also avoiding the lure of dogma and insular thinking.?

Joanne O’Sullivan said something similar:

“Those first couple of months when you still have one foot outside the business and can critically analyse things with an almost external view are a fantastic opportunity to bring a new perspective.”

For every new company you join, there’ll be a written or implied code of ‘how we do things around here’ and ‘what we believe to be true’. If you’re naive enough to believe you can (or should want to) change all of that, then you’ll fail.

However, you also need to find a way to bring in your valuable external perspective and to subtly embed new processes, thoughts and approaches to your new team.

It seems the people who bridge the divide best manage to avoid blinkers and embrace the outside world, but can also work within the parameters of an existing culture.?

One anonymous responder gave me this brilliant advice:

“Question everything and lean on 'I’m new' for as long as possible to introduce change in a way that’s refreshing rather than threatening. Look at workflows, processes and tooling. Almost all of it will be the way it is because that’s “how we’ve always done things”. They’re all ripe to be significantly improved and can help you make a very early impact.”

- Learn to change your metabolism

“Running for distance can be frustrating when you know how to sprint.”

"Things move slowly. So very very slowly. This gives you an opportunity to pay attention to stuff you wouldn’t have otherwise in agency world."

The phrase ‘dont be a busy fool’ was used by Cathal Gillen , who has also made the jump across from agency to client side a few years back. Unlike in agencies, where task switching is almost a required skill, on client side there’s often a need to focus and to run a marathon instead of sprinting. This requires deeper work, prioritisation on ‘lighthouse’ projects and a small number of key initiatives to ensure you don’t get sucked into an organisational vacuum.?

Piers Scott , an ex colleague who has made the move to a tech company, told me that ‘everyone says that the pace is slower, it's not; it's that the rhythm is different’. This really resonated and tallied with another idea that ‘metabolism’ of client side is different.?

On Twitter, Matt spoke about frustration over lack of progress or speed at times and gave some great advice:

- Deeply understand the wider commercial and business context?

This might sound like a trite thing to say, but it came up consistently in feedback.?

On Linkedin, Dave Curran (who has jumped across the divide) said that

"spending time getting to really understand the business and how it works is the key thing"

Namrata Balwani spoke about the tremendous learning opportunity around how big businesses operate and how each function contributes that wouldn't be available on agency side, while Howie Thomas advised on the importance of 'becoming knowledgable about the whole business, not just the marketing side and gaining wider operational experience that can serve down the line.?

Enda Conway of BBDO spoke about the opportunity to ‘expand your knowledge to every part of the business you go into’ and a number of other respondents spoke about the importance of interacting with non marketing parts of the business and being able to translate/understand accordingly.?

As a client side person, you’re at a totally different corporate altitude than an agency person. This gives a far greater chance to be strategic and expose yourself to different parts of the corporate world, but it also means you need to build that credibility and extract yourself from the tactical weeds.?

- Build mutual respect with agencies and external partners

Jokingly (or perhaps not!), I outlined on the Twitter thread that I want to be a certain type of client:

But in truth, another key takeaway from the responses was the importance of mutual respect between client and agency.?

In agency land, we’re often conditioned to believe that clients are blockers to getting good work done who don’t really understand creativity.?

But as Ian Fitzpatrick said in the thread:

“Client side people are far smarter and more capable than you’ve been conditioned to believe they are.”

This also works both ways. We know that one of the biggest wastes of agency time and client budget is bad briefing, so having clarity and being explicit with what you expect, while also being fair and empathetic with your external partners goes a long way.?

Creating collegiality and shared understanding isn’t easy, but it’s absolutely vital to getting the most from the relationship.?

Also, remember the tyranny of timesheets and pitch stress and cut agency people some slack if they look like they haven’t slept in 5 days!

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Those were 5 of the key mega themes that I took from the responses, but feel free to take a look yourself here and here .?

If you’ve any other advice on taking the leap please feel free to get in touch and I look forward to reflecting on this advice 6-12 months down the line as I acclimatise to my new role at Zoetis .?

Shane O'Leary

@shaneoleary1

[email protected]