Where to find your first advertising job, or your next one.

When I gave a speech at New York’s Yale Club called The Past, Present, and Future of Marketing, I made what was, at the time, a bold prediction (at least to me), pointing out the big advertising agencies – the Ogilvys, JWTSs, and BBDOs of the world –  

“are playing a losing hand. Caught between the avarice of their holding company parents and the savings-at-all-costs procurement people, they will be forced to cut their staffs, reduce investment in the people they do keep, and watch as more senior clients grow frustrated with their junior agency counterparts, and put their accounts into revolving-door reviews.” 

If the situation sounded dire back then, it was because it was dire. Things were bad before but even worse now, confirmed by a Media Post story claiming that, according to analysts at the respected research company Forrester, U.S. agencies will shed an estimated 52,000 jobs in just this year alone. Dire indeed. 

The holding companies will of course point to the pandemic as the root cause, but my view is Covid isn’t the source of job reduction, it simply is an accelerant to it. Needless to say, a disproportionate share of the pain will be borne by the people who (once) worked for Omnicom, WPP, IPG, and the other holding-company agencies, many of them experienced, expert, knowledgeable, and of course older, more expensive, and discardable. 

As sad, disappointed, and disillusioned as I am about the now-diminished state of these once-storied shops, I bring this up because I realized universities are on the cusp of declaring their Spring semesters concluded, which means some of you either in the midst of or about to begin a quest for that first post-graduation job. Others, out of necessity or (I hope) opportunity, are looking for that next job in a career possibly cut short too soon.   

When I went looking for my first job in this business, I wasn’t smart enough to look at one of the New York-based, well-recognized agency brands. Instead, I traveled from Washington DC to a place not New York, to join an anonymous entrepreneurial start-up that, at the time, didn’t even know it was an advertising agency.   

The venture was called Eastern Exclusives. Today you know it as Digitas, which for me was a serendipitous if terrifying accident of good fortune, given I became an integral, early part of an organization that would evolve to a formidable international player. It was a long way from New York. It was not like other well-known shops. And yet, over time it likely will outperform (and possibly outlast) all of them.

If you’re searching for that next job, be it your first or fifteenth, I suspect your inclination is to think of those big agency brands, but I would urge you to think instead of shops that are digitally native rather than analog, specialized rather than generalized, entrepreneurially inclined and independent rather than indentured to a holding company, in a location other than New York, Chicago, or some other advertising mecca.   

It could be an agency like PMG Digital in Ft. Worth, Level in Pittsburgh,  Fingerpaint in Conshohocken (most people don’t even know how to pronounce or spell “Conshohocken,” let alone know where it is), Rain in Portland, or hundreds of other, similar shops with names you need to look up rather than already know. 

Why do I suggest this? Forrester analysts see “a minimum of a 5% increase in small and mid-sized boutiques and start-ups that deliver marketing, ad tech and martech solutions.”  What does this mean? While the big shops are progressively diminished, fighting rear-guard actions to cling to profits at all costs, small- and medium-sized agencies are expanding, pandemic, social distancing, and working remotely be damned.

I predicted as much eight years ago, but then it was one person’s opinion. Today, if you’re inclined to believe Forrester, it’s a fact.

The future of advertising likely lies with those “small and mid-sized boutiques and start-ups.” I realize none of us would reject out-of-hand an offer from a big, established, holding company-owned agency, nor would I suggest you do so, but if I were in the market for a job, I would search elsewhere, knowing that the future will follow you.