I was in a meeting this week and someone asked me how long did I work for my first agency.
“Eight years,” I said.
Everyone looked up.
Judging by the expressions around the conference table, you would’ve thought I was the 2,000-year-old man.
(with a Mel Brooks old man accent): Let me tell you about 1999! Oy! The black sketch books we carried around! People listened to music on CDs! Oh boy, were they shiny! You would stack them on your desk like waffles! We didn’t know any better!
Eight years in advertising is an eternity. My next job lasted two. As a freelancer, I now count work cycles in weeks. Sometimes, in days. I guess the next logical step would be to work at a place for eight hours before moving on somewhere else.
Longevity used to be celebrated. End of year holiday parties would call out people who worked at an agency for 10, 20, 30, 40(!) years. It’s one thing to read a book by David Ogilvy. It’s another to have actually reported to him.
Ad people like to move around. We all know that many agencies don’t do much to encourage longevity any more. There’s kind of a natural flow of hirings and layoffs to keep agency culture fluid. This is not necessarily a bad thing until you realize that no one at in your department knows anyone above a certain level on the org chart, or where the damn toner cartridge is.
I once read that people under 40 in today’s workforce will change careers seven to eight times in their lifetime. I’m starting to see why.
They aren’t given much of a choice.
Unless they don’t want to eat.
Brad Mislow is a regular contributor for this site and an irregular person overall. If you see him, say hello.
5 Comments
Imagine if we mentored our junior staff, and trained them to be the future partners, instead of the future competition. Here, we can learn from fields of medicine, law, and engineering, where longevity isn’t just the norm, but part of a multi-generational tradition within the profession.
Brad:
I did the same thing- first job 8 years at a boutique design agency (probably 2 years too long), then went in-house for 2 and 4 year stints. Now I’m freelance as well. I definitely couldn’t do what I’m doing now without the time spent full-time, working and eventually mentoring at team. However, I think we will continue to see this decentralized model grow and for some flourish. There are benefits for both the creative and the client. It will be difficult to develop young talent in this model…
So, I guess I sort of represent the new-generation of ad-douches. Funny how that makes me sound old.
I’ve been in the game almost 4 years, and have been at twice as many agencies, freelance and full time. I’ve done full time gigs as long as a year, as short as 2 months. Mentoring is as rare as Amish porn (the authentic stuff), and positions conjure up a relationship straight out of Das Kapital (Note: obligatory obscure alienation of labor reference).
I remember the stories of being taken under the proverbial wing and learning stuff. With rare exceptions (Like working with Brad and learning all sorts of body grooming techniques) the relationship is more, you, copywriter, write this, make it good, and then write this. What, you’ve never written stuff for this before? Well, looks like you’ll be staying late, I hope you like sushi. Oh, you don’t like sushi? Well, that sucks, anyway, you’re gonna figure that out for yourself sport, sushi or not.
It makes me sad.
It’s funny, but when I was in ad school (back in the early 90s), I thought I would someday secure a position at a prestigious ad agency somewhere and stay there for the long haul. It’s now 15 years later in my career and I’ve worked for 9 different agencies in that amount of time. Why? It’s simple, really. When times are good, competing agencies will offer you a $10-15K raise and a title promotion if you leave your current gig and come work for them. When times are bad, you are being let go with a paltry severance check amounting to 1 week for each year served. In my 15 years, I’ve left for better paying jobs (and sometimes a promotion) 6 times and have now been laid-off 3 times. I am currently on a lay-off as I type this. It is sad to me that our industry is so callous when it comes to cultivating talent and seeing it grow. The problem is that agencies don’t provide a career path for anyone these days. You’re basically treading water for as long as you can stand to be in that particular swimming pool. And then you jump to another pool, or they pull the plug and flush you out. I love advertising, but knowing what I know now, I’d definitely have chosen a different career.
Good article. Pretty much the same situation here in the UK. It’s rare for anyone in any private industry to stay a long time in one job – and rarer still in agencies.
The last agency I worked at full time – a large one and part of a large group – employees seemed to last around 18 months on average. All except for the three or four human resources people, who had mostly been there many years. Work that one out.
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