Chapter 1. How to choose the launchpad for your career in marketing? Agency vs. Client-side.

The perks, the caveats, the learnings.

So, here starts my ‘marketing for grads’ series, driven by my belief that marketing is not a fallback career for anyone and everyone. It’s a very exciting and challenging field that should be entered with consideration and excitement.

Tonight I’m heading off to Moscow for a campaign briefing (my favorite part!), so it means I will probably be too stretched for time to write for the rest of the week. I am, however, very keen to get the series going, so let’s kick off!

The first item on our agenda is the question every single grad considering a career in marketing should ponder on: should I start my path in an agency or client-side (aka in-house)! I have read A LOT of articles before sitting down to write this — mostly on LinkedIn, AdAge and Digiday. Sadly, the majority of them were written by recruiters who’ve never spent a day working in either environment. So I am offering my point of view — gathered from working on both sides of the fence, and having a network of friends of colleagues who have grown to be experts on either side.

Go client-side

if you want to go deep

1. You want to learn everything there is to know about a particular industry

Say, you have a passion for photography, beauty or music, but you don’t see yourself becoming a photographer, beautician or recording artist. The best thing to do here is go in-house. Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Google, Coca Cola and co. run excellent marketing grad schemes, where you rotate through different products, markets and teams - essentially, covering one industry from different angles. Those last 18–24 months, you get a lot of ‘classroom training’ with the other 10–20 grads enrolled alongside you, and, if you’re lucky, a good mentor.

You should start applying for those at the beginning of your final year at uni, i.e. now, as all grad schemes start in September/ October and the interview process is quite lengthy.

2. You crave control

Being part of a client marketing team teaches you responsibility. No matter how ‘glossy’ marketing may look to outsiders, it is a business of numbers (read: budgets): different departments / markets / products compete for the same pot of budget, then compete to spend it the best way then can, then compare results. And so on and so on. As a junior marketer, it will be your job to help your boss secure the budget. Ultimately, you will get to see the full cycle of a marketing campaign — budgeting, planning, execution, analysis and results (in the form of negative or positive ROI).

This ‘big picture’ vision tends to hook control freaks: marketing managers often feel in full control of the situation (of course, nobody is ever in full control of anything) — so if you get your jiggles from this kind of thing, client-side is for you. Mind you, for the first 2 years at a big corporate, you are very unlikely to make any (meaningful) decisions or meet anyone senior (unless you’re an absolute superstar).

3. You like structure

Big Co’s who hire marketing trainees would often have quite rigid corporate structures, set processes, progression schemes and roles & responsibilities. You will know exactly what’s expected of you and you will be given all the information to deliver on that, along with the resources necessary (read — money and people) to achieve your objectives.

Your outputs will not be judged all the time — when you’re in an agency, every plan and deck you produce is essentially graded. Plus, you can spend your day doing productive stuff, and not stuck in meetings trying to ‘align’ on the 25 projects you’re trying to stay on top of.

4. You want stability

This is a simple one — if you want a career path that’s clearly laid out — big consumer-facing companies are your new best friends. If you want, you can stay there and grow for 5, 10, 15 years quite comfortably. With that comes stability — mental and financial.

5. You will do the whole 9 yards of marketing

I’ll start with a negative here: the biggest downside of agency work is that you only get to work on the one of 4 P’s — promotion. When you’re in-house, you own the product, you can see how pricing works, where the audience insights come from and you’re generally much closer to your customers. This is pretty amazing and is often sighted as the main reason lots of agency folk go client-side.

Pros: lots of training, good name on CV, excellent industry knowledge, as a result, good pay.

Cons: limited hands-on experience for the first 6–12 months, menial(ish) tasks and you’re locked in for the duration of the program – if you hate it, it’s hard to leave.

Go agency-side

if you want to become the ‘Jack of all trades’

1. You want to get your hands dirty from day one

Most agencies (unless it’s Ogilvy in Canary Wharf, but they’re not a real agency anymore IMHO) hire when they have a desperate need for people: they either got a new client, a massive brief from an existing client or someone left and there is a gap. Since agencies operate on a fee model, they are usually borderline understaffed, if not very understaffed, meaning the day you are hired is the day you are expected to start being useful.

Expect to get most of your training ‘on the job’, with some ‘classroom’ time squeezed in — to learn planning tools like Mintel, Comscore, GWI and any proprietary tech / methodology your agency has developed (if they haven’t got any — this should be a concern). Because marketing agencies are always short of time, you will spend a good month or so learning all the abbreviations and general jargon that is used to make up for this lost time (as if it helps!).

2. You like to get a taste of everything

One agency often services 10's of clients, from all kinds of sectors, markets, and geographies — as a fresh grad, you will be thrown wherever hands are needed, and that can be literally anywhere. You will be expected to gain basic working knowledge of the industry in which your client(s) operate(s) — and to do it quickly. If your agency has to pitch for a new client, this knowledge will have to be amplified 10x in depth, 10x as quickly.

Because agencies move at lightning pace on many projects simultaneously, seasoned agency professionals become expert jugglers. I recently realised, that when I come into the Essence offices in the morning, I can only predict about 20% of my tasks for the day — the rest can — and does — change quite drastically. So, if you’re a born multitasker - agency life is the place to be.

3. You want to become a great ‘people person’

I am not being sarcastic here, there is just no better way to describe what agencies teach you. Because there will be 10's of internal and external stakeholders involved in literally everything you do, the best thing you will learn is to communicate and to be able to work well with all kinds of people. I am stressing ‘work well’, because just ‘getting along’ won’t do when the shit hits the fan. Breakdowns in communication are the most common cause of client / supplier / agency conflicts, and the better you are at communicating, the better agency marketer you are going to be.

You will learn to be diplomatic with clients and you will learn to listen — if you don’t understand what the client wants (and it’s not always explicit) you will do a shit job and you will get shouted at. You will also learn to be convincing with colleagues — if you’re not clear or convincing enough, nobody will take care of your campaign, as everyone will be too busy doing a thousand other things (see point above about under-resourcing). Finally, you will learn not to be a pussy — you will get a fair share of negative feedback, tough deadlines and plenty other niceties thrown at you, and you will learn to deal with it.

So, if you don’t like people — do not under any circumstances join an agency, as you will hate every minute of it. I went into the agency world with quite poor communication skills (which I now realise retrospectively), accompanied by a mild stammer, and the training I had doing all the above has been invaluable.

4. You get a kick out of generating ideas

You will learn to formulate, express and sell your ideas in spoken, email and deck form — to anyone and everyone. As well as part-taking in brainstorms and pitches, you will have to be able to generate ideas on the spot for existing and potential clients — so if you love improvisation — welcome to the agency life!

5. You want to learn how the marketing ecosystem works

Where clients are wary about their competitors in the market, agencies are wary of other agencies and even suppliers. Being inside the agency, you end up right in the middle of it — you talk to publishers, suppliers, other agencies that collaborate with you and clients, you get a great feel of where marketing as a discipline is going. Plus, the specialist marketing talent pool (esp. digital) is not that big, so people tend to circulate between agencies, publishers and other suppliers — hence, whatever you share outside your office can and may be used against you.

Pros: lots of hands-on experience, variety of clients on CV, broad industry knowledge, deep knowledge of marketing, you become a communication Jedi.

Cons: limited classroom training, lack of focus, pay is not great, very competitive internally and externally.

Last thought: learning is key

In my humble opinion, the ultimate answer should be based on what you would like to learn in the first 2–3 years of your career, not where you want to end up in 10 years.

Marketing (and especially digital marketing) is a field that experiences minor changes every day and seismic changes every year — so where you will end up in 10 years is quite unpredictable. More importantly, as a grad, you don’t really have anything to offer, apart from your energy, desire and ability to learn — so pick what you learn carefully.