When Admen leave the agency womb

The world of advertising is a world where youth is valued like gold. Every year, a new herd of young, prospective advertising students rush out of the gates of tertiary education, desperately sniffing and digging for an agency job. Who knows which of these young creatives might be the next big thing? Each newly hired youngling is an investment in elevating one’s own agency, and is one less piece of talent for rivals to claim. As this youth churns throughout the industry, it’s natural that older professionals may be discarded like fat from a steak — and mere youth is not the only reason.

The media climate is changing drastically. Where, once, television and newspapers wielded the attention of the populous, social media and the digital world now rule with an iron, emoji fist. With this constant change and emphasis on the digital, agencies are inclined to search for fresh young talent, who have been birthed and moulded in a world where technology is almost a second language.

One American agency named Deutsche decided to forego even searching for the newest talent out of advertising and marketing courses. Instead, they scoured the depths of the internet for creatives who had never even considered advertising as a career.

But what happens to an experienced advertising worker who’s been deemed too old and has been handed the dreaded pink-slip? Of course, they could polish off their resume and portfolio and go job hunting, but then the process might just repeat. It’s at this point that many in the industry pull the entrepreneurial trigger and go solo.

Shuchi Bansal cites a number of other reasons why advertising has taken a liking to entrepreneurship. One reason that I haven’t explored yet is the attractiveness of shaking off the corporate shackles and building a brand from scratch, which is according to Bansal a key reason. In addition to this, there are more and more start-up success stories, which likely influence the decision of those who decide to start their own agency. There is inherent risk in fleeing the routine of working for someone else, but this risk can be both freeing and exciting.

When admen leave the womb of an established agency or company, whether at the behest of economic turmoil or a redundancy wielding boss, and slide out into the cold, risky world of the entrepreneur, what happens?

Let’s look at The Basement, a digital marketing agency based in Indianapolis. They’re an innovative bunch. Solicited by KFC to do some online campaign work for the company, they partnered the fast food giant with the video-game company Activision in order to create an integrated campaign with ‘code-based sweepstakes, display ads, updates to KFC.com and a custom online video game.’ Some of the agency’s other clients include Verizon, the State of Indiana, and K-Mart. Yet, nine years ago Jacob Leffler and Brian Phillips, having just started this new digital marketing firm, were broke and without clients.

In 2002, Leffler was working at McDonalds, cooking up marketing solutions in the regional office. Phillips approached him with his entrepreneurial proposal. Leffler accepted, though he knew it would be ‘a big gamble.’ It was a gamble that’s paid off. As of 2014, it was expected that the basement would see revenue increase 25%-30% over 2015 and 2016.

Appetite for enterprise and entrepreneurship may also be dependent on economic factors. Leffler was willing to take the leap and leave McDonalds, so it’s likely that the economy was chugging along strongly. But when the economy is suffering people tend to cling to their jobs with a survivalist desperation. According to Lisa Colantuono of AAR Partners, during the 2009 economic recession, nobody wanted to be entrepreneurial and embark on the risky adventure of starting an agency.

When the economy recovers, however, the admen go wild, and the entrepreneurial spirit is ‘contagious,’ according to AnneMarie Marcus from Marcus St. Jean, a recruiting firm. This idea exists in a similar vein to Bansal’s assertion that when startups see success, the world sees more startups.

Another example of an entrepreneurial advertising agency is Graham Stanley Advertising, started by Larry Woodard, an African-American advertising heavyweight who is often best known for devising Oprah’s wild 2004 car giveaway, which you can watch below. Mr. Woodard, after working for Vigilante, decided he’d had enough, for reasons that are arguably far more important than simply chasing a creative dream. Woodard’s grandfather sharecropped, working a piece of land for a year, picking cotton and tobacco, only to be given $20 by the landowner. Woodard came to a realisation — ‘I was working the land for someone else. I spent the past 10 years building an advertising agency for a holding company.’ From this realisation, Graham Stanley Advertising was born, which is an entirely minority-owned agency.

There may be one problem with this discussion of entrepreneurism in advertising. If an individual decides they’ve had enough working in a large agency, and so they start their own agency, is that really entrepreneurial? Peter Drucker argues that if this new agency operates in the same manner as all the others, it isn’t entrepreneurial, it’s just a new business.

On the other hand, Carsrud and Brännback define entrepreneurism as ‘the process by which individuals, either on their own or inside organizations, pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control.’ Under this definition, the examples of agencies I’ve explored would be considered entrepreneurial. This same paper that noted Carsrud and Brännback’s definition also notes the positive economic outcome of entrepreneurship. When someone leaves their corporate position and starts a new business, they create a new source of jobs, and more people are employed. In the field of advertising, an industry pulsating with young people searching for jobs, this surely has a positive effect. Though, the case could be made that if too many startups emerge, the market for advertising and marketing prowess will be saturated.

At the same time as entrepreneurship might be benefiting the advertising sector through the creation of jobs, some who leave the industry to pursue their own enterprise may say goodbye to the agency life altogether. Arvind Sharma, the former CEO of Leo Burnett in India, decided to start an e-commerce site selling Indian saris.

Throughout this piece I’ve primarily focussed on people leaving the advertising establishment to follow their entrepreneurial dreams. However there are also instances where career entrepreneurs have tackled the world of advertising. Australian entrepreneur Dale Carr created a company called LeadBolt, a mobile advertising firm, which has an annual revenue of $30 million. Carr claims that 75% of this revenue is returned to app developers, and that where most rival companies are in the game for short term gain while the mobile advertising world is new and lightly-regulated, LeadBolt has long term interest and strategy.

The advertising industry is rife with entrepreneurship. This encourages innovation, and helps ensure competition in an already competitive industry. Like the spores from a thriving plant being thrust out into the world, as industry professionals break off from major agencies to start their own, or take their skills into other fields, they spread ideas, success, and economic growth.