We need to make a public list of agencies who treated people well, and horribly, so when these same agencies desperately need people, we can go to the good ones and leave the horrible ones to fall apart.

As someone who’s been full time at a handful of agencies for a long time, and then freelanced at another dozen, I’m going to say this: the list of agencies who treat people like billable hours with a name is long, and the list of agencies that treat people like people fits on a post-it note.

Leo Burnett Chicago did pretty well so far. I may be wrong but it seems like Publicis as a whole was on a scale of pretty good to great on their response.

Pretty fast on social distancing to begin with, shipped all my hardware to my home, and my client has been reasonable (our leadership set expectations properly back in Feb/ March to allow fluctuations in timing). No layoffs yet, and I haven’t seen a pay cut.

We also receive weekly updates from Publicis, and biweekly from our own leadership.

Overall I have a better opinion of Publicis and LB after this than I did prior to Covid, which is surprising.

There are agencies where the executive team is taking 20% pay cuts and there have been no layoffs, and there are agencies where the executive team collected a march bonus, took no pay cuts, and fired staff. Both of these groups include major and smaller agencies. You would be surprised. And it should be public.

To build on this, clients (both brands and individual CMOs) deserve to have their reputations open to scrutiny the way agencies do. Why are there no report cards for brands? In this era of radical transparency and social media criticism I say their time has come. And if you are a cheap, stupid amateurish client that doesn’t really know what they are doing then there should be a forum where this can be laid bare for all the world to see.

I get that a lot of agencies behave like shit and very few act decent but I think what is going on in this industry is unacceptable. We never stop working, we give up our lives, our physical health, our sanity, in return for what?!
We need to start holding this places accountable.

Anomaly bad

GS&P has handled the situation extremely well and continues to be transparent and communicative with everyone. Very happy to be here right now compared to where I’ve been in the past...

Someone should start a spreadsheet similar to the ad industry salary spreadsheet.

Agency name, city, what was the agency work from home response, what was the personnel response?

For instance, I would love to anonymously report that my agency asked every employee to take a cut, but didn’t offer any details on what exec leadership was doing beyond that they took “a larger cut.” Did they give back bonuses from last year? How much larger of a cut is appropriate for C-level positions vs the plebes on the floor? Idk...I’d like to know what percentage cut they took, and what bonuses or other compensation they gave back though...

Ueno just laid off 35% of staff - one year after sinking a million dollars into a brand new shiny office in IS and holding a costly ‘un-conference’. Short sighted decisions from leadership (read CEO) weren’t cited as a cause, rather new biz pipeline and Covid were scapegoated. We’ll see if another round comes this year...

Agencies that have to let people go to to finances are not to blame. It’s how they do it. If leadership is taking bonuses. If they extend health benefits or if they don’t. If their layoffs target people over 40 or minorities. If their leaders are complete hypocrites with what they are saying in the trades and to clients, versus what’s actually happening. Today, clients want to work with partners and vendors they can standby. There is a culture of doing the right thing at many major companies. When the brand teams learned of how their agency partners have been treated, which is how they are really being treated in terms of the staff left to service them, they will call reviews. So the spreadsheet should be done in a very readable info graphic kind of way suitable for sending to the Fortune 500 CMOs, and posting on a million business community sites.

Madwell has been nothing short of amazing during this time. Full transparency. Reassurance. Will not be leaving this company for a while.

VpCD: check this out didtheyhelp.com

Publicis Groupe as a whole is doing a great job so far. Weekly updates from the top and also from leaders. Transparency and a focus on our people first.

Was just talking about this with my non advertising friends. Consumers are definitely taking notice.

Mindshare (and as far as I know, GroupM as well) has been absolutely fabulous. No layoffs that I have heard of, no pay cuts for general staff, great transparency and weekly check ins from local, national and global leadership. Feeling extremely lucky - this is how a great company is run.

What a horrible, typical “progressive” idea. Do you have enough insight in every agency’s situation to know why the decisions were made, the way they were made? It’s a free country with free enterprise and this makes this country unique and so strong. That’s what brought a lot of us immigrants here, the ability to run your business freely as long as you not breaking any laws. You want to blacklist agencies started and run by people, not the government. They are free to do whatever fits their business model and whatever is necessary to keep their firm alive. I had zero layoffs and so far everyone gets the same salary as before the crusis but I’d defend the right of every agency owner to make their business decisions on their own, without involvement of a mob.

The Community. They think they have slaves instead of creatives

Small market agency, but HLK has been killing it. Releasing fully transparent numbers. Zero reductions in salary or staff as of yet.

Doing a spreadsheet and chances of being tracked can literally eliminate someone from this industry. The method should insure privacy as well as authenticate its validity.