Mexit?
It’s been an interesting week in our world but I don’t think it’s a scratch on what’s happening in the network agency space. This week we saw an “exodus” (Campaign’s words) from Havas as five senior departures were announced, in addition to four others at the same level in just over a year. Speaking as one of those individuals myself it’s always tempting to give my own view on why so many good people have left an organisation in such a short period, but in truth this is not only a Havas problem — it’s endemic across the network media agency world- WPP will no doubt be next to go through this as they merge MEC and Maxus.

Talent, senior talent at that, are increasingly finding themselves in the cross hairs of the need to rationalise the cost base of businesses that are rapidly having to come to terms with a significant reduction in margin. These business have to report top line growth and if they can’t grow they have to cut costs — starting with the expensive roles first. I’m personally so bored of the bullshit that we see in the press where senior executives are claiming that all of this is consistent with some form of ‘strategy’..whatever. The spin in our industry is a joke..Sometimes I think that the senior leaders are more like politicians than leaders of people.
However the thing that really gets me is that they are doing it all wrong. Senior people are expensive but I’d love to understand whether any of these organisations have ever thought to ask what their clients want? Automation is going to save a huge amount of headcount cost in any agency but alongside the machines businesses need experience. Ever since I crossed the line to the world of independence every single client I’ve met has said how important it is to have senior experienced people running their account. I can tell you for a fact that a team of mid-level media practitioners would have made some hideous mistakes working alongside a system as complex as Blackwood7 — reading data outputs and implications require experience and knowledge without it they can be used to inadvertently destroy a client’s business.
So with that in mind I am genuinely confused as to why the network groups believe that shedding their more experienced and (expensive) talent is the best thing to do.
I will be watching the impending bloodbath with an acute level of interest — one of the really nice things about being a new agency is that we don’t have a legacy workforce to manage into a ‘together’ or ‘less complicated’ strategy, but we do have access to one of the most advanced data and automation systems accompanied by some of the most powerful senior people to help our clients grow their businesses in today’s complex media and data driven world. I think that’s what our clients want, that’s what they’ve said they want and are paying us to do… I could be proven wrong, but let’s see.
