If you’re in the marketing business, chances are you’ve seen the dust-up surrounding WPP CEO Mark Read’s recent comments related to the average age of WPP employees. While I’m sure Mr. Read would love a do-over, the trend toward younger and cheaper talent in the agency world isn’t news. Mr. Read just said it out loud.
For years, stronger client procurement departments, pressure on margins, and increasing price competition have been pushing agencies to staff up with younger, cheaper talent, and quietly (sometimes not so quietly), say goodbye to their more experienced and more expensive talent.
At the same time, those agencies continue to grapple with a loss of relevance in their clients’ board room and C-suite.
Think these phenomena might be related? Our research says yes.
When we recently surveyed marketers, many said their biggest frustration when dealing with agencies is, well, false advertising – being pitched by senior management and never seeing them again. Instead, working with a huge team of nothing but junior people.
If you want strategic leadership, you need strategic leaders. Marketers know the toughest and most impactful strategic challenges are solved by small teams with decades of experience; true experts who can create solutions that work and sell those breakthrough ideas to the board of directors.
At Brand Federation we’ve built an international network of over 250 of the world’s best independent marketing strategists. Every one of them is a proven pro in their discipline with experience with some of the world’s best brands and, so whether you’re looking for brand strategists, digital strategists, naming experts, fractional CMOs, or data analytics leaders, you’ll find them here. And the flexibility of our network means we can assemble and manage the perfect team of experts for the exact scope of any strategic challenge.
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