CHAPTER 3

WHERE TO GET A JOB

There are many different kinds of advertising agencies.

The most significant difference is between the large shops, which tend to be part of an international “network” of agencies, and smaller ones, which service “local” business only, e.g. a “local” French agency means a firm that looks after brands that do not have a presence outside France, such as a French newspaper or department store chain.

It’s important that you develop an understanding of what the different agencies are like, because you may end up working there for several years, so it’s just as well to know what you’re getting into.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF AGENCIES

NETWORK VERSUS START-UP

Let’s talk first of all about the network agencies. These include names such as BBDO, DDB, TBWA, Saatchi, McCann, JWT, Ogilvy, Grey, Leo Burnett, Lowe, and Publicis. Each of these networks has agencies in many, many countries—in some cases that means 100 or even 150 offices. In turn, some of these networks are owned by giant “holding companies.” For example, BBDO, DDB, and TBWA are all owned by Omnicom, a New York-based firm, which had revenues of more than $12 billion in 2007. That’s a lot of dough.

These network agencies were built to service massive global brands. As you can imagine, it makes a degree of sense for a corporation like HSBC, a global bank operating in over 100 countries, to use an advertising agency that does too (at the time of writing, this is JWT).

If you like the idea of working on massive, famous brands like Ford, McDonald’s, American Express, or Pepsi, then a network agency could be for you. These brands have hefty budgets to throw at their advertising; foreign shoots are common. The network agencies often have strong, deep, and long relationships with their clients, so their business is less volatile than that of a local agency, which may be heavily reliant on just two or three accounts (it’s sometimes said that an ad agency is “never more than three phone calls away from disaster”).

The trade-off for their stability is that these behemoths can be staid.

Some of them feel more like investment banks inside than they do advertising agencies.

No point being angry with them, however. The stakes are high if you are looking after an account that spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A cash cow like that gives birth to a lot of conservatism. And the opportunity to do radical work is arguably reduced if you are producing advertising that has to run in 50 or 100 countries.

However, it would be too simple to state it as inevitable that advertising’s huge international corporations are more conservative than the young and hungry start-ups.

In fact, some of the world’s most creative agencies are network agencies. Examples would be BBDO New York, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO in London, TBWA Paris, and DDB London.

And whereas a few years ago there was a plethora of small creative start-ups all over the world, hungry to break the rules and produce stand-out work, a different business model has recently emerged—startups that produce mediocre, client-friendly advertising. Their true goal is not to be creative, but to make money for their founding partners when they sell their agency in five or ten years.

THE MICRO-NETWORK

In the last 20 years, a third agency model has emerged—the micro-network. Examples would be BBH and Wieden & Kennedy. These agencies aim to cover the world from a base of just one agency in each region, as opposed to one in each country. The idea is to have global scale and opportunities, but without the bureaucracy a network of 100+ offices can create.

IS THIS A COMPANY WHERE YOU CAN DO GOOD WORK?

AWARDS PER HEAD

What will affect you more than the agency’s size is its ethos. If it’s a local hotshop, are the founders keen to make their mark by doing truly outstanding work, or have they set up a cynical, profit-making enterprise? If international, is it a gray outpost of a gray global empire, or is it the flagship office of a network where creativity is part of their DNA?

In other words, what you need to know is—is this a company where you can do good work?

The easiest way to judge that is a measure I call Awards Per Head.

Of course, plenty of good work doesn’t win awards, and plenty of poor or “scam” work does. Nevertheless, number of awards won is the only semi-objective measure of success that we have in our industry. And rightly or wrongly, awards are the most common yardstick used to judge a creative’s merit. Nothing will help your career more than awards.

However, if you look only at the overall number of awards an agency has won, you could go wrong. You need to look at the ratio of awards to creatives. For example, let’s say Agency A wins 30 awards a year, and Agency B wins 10. At first sight, Agency A is the better career choice. However, what if Agency A has 60 creatives and Agency B has only 10? In this case, although Agency A wins more awards, Agency B wins twice as many Awards Per Head, so if you take a job there you should have a better chance of winning awards.

I believe Awards Per Head is how all creatives rank agencies, albeit unconsciously. So it can’t do any harm to be consciously aware of it, when deciding where you want to work.

There are other measures though. Ask yourself “What portion of an agency’s creative output would get you hired at that agency?” If the answer is “not much,” then the portfolios of creatives at that agency are going back-wards, year-on-year.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Age is a factor worth taking into account. Not the age of the agency—that makes no difference—but your own. If you are young and like to have fun, you may be drawn to an agency that’s in a cool part of town, with young and good-looking staff, and funky décor. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You’re living your life first; your career is just an aspect of your life.

On the other hand, if you are older, you may be drawn to an agency that is convenient for you to com-mute to, that is near good schools, or that offers a high level of job security. Same comment applies as in the previous paragraph.

You may start (or end) your career at an agency in a less fashionable city. Some countries—such as the US, Australia, and Germany—have more than one center of advertising excellence. In other countries—examples would be the UK, France, and Thailand—all the best agencies are concentrated in a single city. There are many advantages to working outside of the metropolis, however, in the so-called “regional” agencies. You’ll often have a better standard of living and less pressure. On the other hand, you will have fewer creative opportun-ities, smaller budgets, and probably a smaller income. If you want to do great work, you will sooner or later have to move to where the great work is being done.

WHAT’S THE VIBE?

Also vital is the agency’s style of work. Some agencies have strong styles, or philosophies, that you may be particularly drawn to (or repelled by).

Then there’s the question of the media you want to work in. If you are a specialist in digital or direct, then you may want to work in an agency with that specialism. If you are a digital or direct specialist but are interested in expanding to other media, then it may be worth trying to get hired as a digital or direct team within a “traditional” agency. Once inside, you’ll find the walls are pretty porous.

Advertising agencies are describing themselves with a confusing variety of terms nowadays. These include above-the-line (TV, print, and radio only), below-the-line (direct only), through-the-line (everything from TV to point-of-sale), and integrated (same as through-the-line). Some aren’t even calling themselves advertising agencies; they are calling themselves 360-degree communications companies, brand content creators, or just ideas companies. In real terms, there’s not much difference in how you go about getting hired at these different types of agencies, and they won’t feel that much different once you’re inside.

But the nuclear proliferation of buzzwords does make it hard for the poor creative to understand what is going on sometimes. It certainly means you have to do your research. Every company has a website, and every agency’s website will feature a run-down of their work. Just make sure that, whatever they call themselves, the type of work they are actually doing is the type of work you want to do.

Some people have a theory that the secret of happiness is working somewhere you like the people. Others will tell you that the people are pretty much the same whatever agency you go to.

Whichever of those statements is true, it’s undeniable that every ad agency has its own “vibe.” The atmosphere, feel, or spirit of an agency depends on many factors. The most important is the personalities of the people in charge, since they make the decisions that shape the place.

Some agencies are funky environments—open-plan, with brightly colored furniture, the latest hip album blasting out…a pool table…maybe even a swimming pool if they’re located somewhere warm.

Some are more austere. “Yes, this place looks like sh*t but that’s because all we care about is the work.”

It’s pretty easy to get a feel for the vibe just by going into the agency and sitting in reception. When I was first looking for a job, my then-partner and I swore that you could tell everything you needed to know about an agency from its toilets. Marble toilets meant expensive but ultimately shallow advertising. Utilitarian toilets meant workmanlike advertising, and characterful toilets meant interesting work.

UP OR DOWN?

Another factor you should take into account is whether the agency is on the way up or the way down. There’s no question that it’s more fun and better for your career to work at an agency with forward momentum.

A shop that is still churning out the occasional good ad, but whose great days are some distance in the past, can be one of the most depressing of all places to work—where everyone lives in the past, complains constantly about the present, and may not have much of a future.

RATING THE CD

Another idea, which I have some sympathy with, is to choose an agency based on how you rate the creative director.

A good CD can improve an average agency quite quickly. But a creative director who is a politician, time-server, or “account man CD” can quickly turn a good agency into a slag-heap.

Whether your CD rates you will have a huge effect on your likely success (the same goes for any boss, in any field). If you don’t click at the interview you probably never will. If you already know him to be a royal pain in the arse, don’t go to his agency hoping this won’t matter, hoping you can just keep your head down and get on with the work. He’ll get to you. I once spent a year at a small agency with a bad CD, and had to take two ibuprofen every afternoon—I was getting a headache every single day, without fail. The CD was that headache. He’d got to me.

MATTERS OF MONEY

Some agencies pay better than others. Usually, the best agencies don’t pay the most. They don’t have to—they know they can attract good staff by offering them the opportunity to do great work. But if you are in a situation or stage of your life where it’s crucial that you maximize your income, then you may have to compromise on the quality of agency you work at. There’s no shame in that.

Assuming you keep the quality of your work up, you can always make the reverse move later—trading down in money, and up in agency. Alternatively, you may decide you’re happy at an agency where they pay well, and you don’t have to bust your guts with all that cutting-edge creativity. That’s fine too. Don’t let other people’s ideas of what you ought to do dictate what you do.

“Match your personality, goals, financial ambitions, and career-stage to the right agency.” That, unsurprisingly, is the formula for career happiness. However, all this advice makes one rather large assumption—that you have a choice. But what if you don’t have a choice? What if you can’t get a job at the agency of your dreams? Should you take a job in a not-so-good agency, or tough it out until you can get hired somewhere great?

The answer is that it depends on your individual financial circumstances. If your internal organs are about to be called in by loan sharks, then obviously you have to take the job. But if you have some money squirreled away, or a cushy part-time job, then it’s better to wait.

At the beginning of their careers, a lot of teams find they have to take a job working somewhere that isn’t their ideal agency. And that’s fine—plenty of great teams started in not-so-good agencies. The really important thing is what you do when you get there. Don’t settle. Don’t sit on your arse. If there’s one good CD there, stick to them like a limpet and suck them dry for their knowledge. If there’s one good account there, spend all your spare time working on that one account; it could be your ticket out. And spend the rest of your time on your spec book. When my partner and I were at a rubbish agency, we spent every night working on our book. Not once or twice a week. Every night. And some weekends too.

DON’T GET SUCKERED

If you are in a not-so-good agency, where the account teams are not able to sell good work, and the clients are not able to buy it, it’s crucial that you make things happen for yourself. Every year at Cannes, a multitude of awards are won by creatives doing ads for dog obedience schools, toy model cars, anti-racism charities, and the like. Maybe it’s not the highest ethical standards to pretend these were ads for real clients that actually ran, but at least those creatives are making the effort to put themselves in the shop window (more on these “scam” ads in Chapter 7).

The worst thing is to get comfortable in a bad agency.

It’s easily done. There will be lots of nice people there, maybe a few good creatives, and a lot of people talking about doing nice work. But don’t get suckered in. If the agency isn’t regularly doing good work, then your career can’t progress.

I knew one highly talented creative at college who was snapped up by one of the first agencies he saw. The agency never did good work, but they were lovely people and they liked my friend a lot. He started to do well there—learning to bury his creative ambition and do the kind of work they liked—and gradually earned a better and better living. After a few years, he was even put on the board. However, when the agency got taken over by another firm, and he was made redundant, he was unable to get another job anywhere, because he didn’t have any good work to put in his portfolio. So someone who could have been a creative director at a top agency ended up leaving the industry.

If you do find yourself at a bad agency, stay focused on getting out. Because the vast majority of great work is done by the great agencies. And sooner or later, you want to get into one of those.