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No Ad Agency Job and no it’s not going to turn around.

February 8, 2009

“I’ve been out of work for about 5 months now and it’s very frustrating. I spend most of my days submitting my resume to the various online job boards, directly to Agencies and talking to recruiters, but nothing. I love advertising and I don’t want to give it up, but I have a family to feed, clothed, housed etc. I’ve applied to other jobs outside of advertising/marketing and still nothing. I am at my wits end and I have to keep a positive attitude otherwise I don’t know where I would be. I hope the economy bounced back sooner rather than later, because otherwise most of us will be out on the streets.” — was a reply to Matt @ Media Bistro’s post regarding “You’re Out of Work”

We feel for this guy and other several dozen that have replied to that post. We told you back in 2006 that this was going to happen. With our initial press release.

It’s not going to “turn around” ad agencies are not going to “start hiring” again… in fact it looks like it’s a structural problem… not just a purely economic one. Structural unemployment is long-term and chronic unemployment arising from imbalances between the skills and other characteristics of workers in the market and the needs of employers. It involves a mismatch between workers looking for jobs and the vacancies available often despite the number of vacancies being similar to the number of unemployed people. (wikipedia)

The reason I am saying that that Advertising Agency model is broken, and it is a structural problem. Much of the Advertising Agency resources are geared towards TV, Yellowpages, inserts in your newspaper, full page ads in the trade magazines. These are dying industries… literally dying. The Tribune filed bankruptcy, the other papers are virtually on their last year`or two before they follow suit… they resorted to shrinking the size of their paper because the limited advertising their clients are buying. Even Google dropped the traditional print buys from Adwords… meaning that Google feels there is no money in this.

Advertising Agencies are getting a double whammy right now. The first being the overall economy is horrific to say the least, the second is this massive structural problem where 90% of the individuals that work at advertising agencies work on the above listed media (making print inserts, full page color ads in magazines.. etc etc).

I’m trying to be as clear as possible, these layoffs will not stop for quite some time… and when they finally end.. the ad agency model won’t look even close to what it does today. The chances are this poor guy will never get his job back… and the problem is this isn’t his fault.

We make fun of BDA’s and their downfall, but guys like the one initially quoted are the ones feeling the pain. I personally would suggest to him to find another industry. Not because his work isn’t good… that’s not why he is on the unemployment line.. it’s because the model is broken that was working for. Somewhat similar to the .com crash… only their problem was all these services and no billing… whereas with the ad agencies it’s all these bills.. but no services.

This is almost like being a dialup internet provider when everyone is watching video’s on YouTube… there is a serious lack of bandwidth.

But this isn’t a “we told you so” … this is a very real problem affecting everyone… not just us individuals in Advertising. The overall unemployment rate in the United States is just shy of 14%. That’s right, 14% unemployment in this country. So what are your options? With an unemployment rate like that… the chances are that hundreds of people will apply to every job open.

Does this picture make sense to you?

Written by TheFounder · Filed Under Advertising Agency News 


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