On this episode of #MediaSnack Tom and David mark the 50th episode by taking a look at recent reporting by Campaign after a survey into staff morale at agencies, both Creative and Media. It highlights a worrying downward trend of morale amongst staff at different levels. About a third of the respondents work in media agencies, in the USA which is the area the study covers.
The most worrying element of the data is that amongst the more senior media agency staffers (who are the cohort most likely to state they have low morale) state that the main driver of their low morale is "lack of leadership".
Is this indicative of media agencies lacking vision and ambition? Or is this simply burn out? We consider whether just being worked hard leads to low morale and conclude that working hard without purpose is what leads to negative thinking. Have media agencies lost their vision and purpose? If they had more vision from their leadership would things change?
This comes coincidentally alongside news that global media agency network MEC announces that their long-serving global CEO Charles Courtier is stepping down in 2017, his replacement is Tim Castree, most recently running video ad sales platform Videology. Will be interesting to see how the narrative in that agency evolves in new leadership hands.
A few week's ago Tom wrote an OpEd for Campaign called "Its Time For A Change of Guard at Media Agencies" which posed the question whether existing media agency leadership have the skills and appetite for the next five years battle which is much different as the nature of media agencies and their business model evolves. Some will become more transparent, some less, some will specialize some will diversify further.
Laura Desmond, long time CEO of Starcom has recently resigned and we've seen a change of leadership at GroupM, with Kelly Clark taking the reins again.
We wish Charles the best for his next adventure.