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In what range does DBS Pay for Associate roles ?
Bowl Leader
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Rising Star
So why do company merges result in mass layoffs?
I'm so sick of this agency 🙄
Any thoughts on Analog Folk?
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I don’t know, but I’ll say this: If you are in a c-suite at an agency that plays scope games with client money and understaffs accounts, you (not AI, not digital) are the #1 reason this industry is collapsing.
If you can’t sell enough during the negotiation to increase margins, the game has firmly passed you by.
I feel like few people actually doing the work end up being involved in scope discussions
Because margins.
Chief
Among my greatest frustrations as an account lead in this business over the past few years has been to watch exec leadership consistently chop headcount on my teams over time — purely based on profitability issues, not based on any reductions in need or workload — and then panic at me and gaslight me about the quality of my leadership when things stop running smoothly, anything other than acknowledge they have recklessly (or is it necessarily) made the “business decision” to understaff the account. Happens again and again, like a sickness.
And to what end? To make margin in the short term to hit your quarter and hope and pray that your teams can pull a rabbit out of a hat so the client doesn’t feel it and you don’t wind up tanking the account over the longer term?
Chief
Because the creative agency business ain’t businessing anymore. As client budgets continue to shrink, lucrative long-term AOR engagements vanish and creative agency margin/profitability erodes, resourcing has become more about the exec team desperately throwing water out of the boat than anything else.
Because the work isn't priced properly. The resources required to achieve the scope at agency bill rates exceeds the fee. If a discount has been passed on to the client, the staffing should reflect the fee before discount. But, I imagine few agencies do this as it would impact margin. Basically, the staff needs to work their butts off to pass on discounts to clients. Also, in many agencies, account people are doing the pricing and staffing and they don't understand what it takes to deliver the work for teams other than account.