Advertising, once a high-profile and glamorous profession, is increasingly becoming an unattractive career option. With FMCG companies, media houses and entertainment firms offer ing B-school graduates from top schools a starting package of Rs 8 lakh (Rs 800,000) a year, the ad agency business which offers a measly Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) has been losing out.
Even low-ranking B-school grads are not keen to join an ad agency as their campus placements fetch them an average salary of Rs 2.5 lakh (Rs 250,000) to Rs 3 lakh (Rs 300,000).
"B-schools as a source of advertising talent have dried up," accepts Pranesh Misra, president and COO, Lowe Lintas India. Retaining experienced personnel is also becoming difficult in an industry that stands out because of either account shifts or people movements.
To compound that, ad agencies have more glamorous businesses competing for the same source of talent- online media, radio, retail and so on.
How are ad agencies coping? At the industry level, the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) announced that it would launch a publicity campaign to portray advertising as an exciting profession.
The campaign is still under production. Individual agencies are also doing their bit. Lowe Lintas runs its own institute, and Grey Worldwide has begun bypassing B-schools and going to top colleges like St Stephen's in Delhi.
Says Anju Kurien, general manager- HR, Grey WorldWide: "With booming sectors offering attractive salaries to B-school graduates, the industry gets only talent which is genuinely interested in communication as a profession."
She adds that there is no guarantee that even they are going to stay- because, as soon as they learn that their batchmates in other industries are earning a lot more, they move on to other sectors.
Grey is open to hiring graduates from economics, maths and literature instead of focusing only on management graduates. Last year it hired graduates from Delhi's St Stephen College. This year it plans to look at other cities as well.
Ogilvy has started an initiative called "Ogilvy on Campus", where the agency will present case studies of iconic brands it has built over the years.
The first initiative is in partnership with IIM Bangalore at the Vista 2006- a B-school festival. Lowe Lintas has started its institute, Northpoint Centre of Learning, at Khandala on Mumbai's outskirts.
Lowe executives claim that the institute helps them handpick talent that is trained by agency executives having practical experience (most faculty in the institute are agency staffers).
On the retention front, some agencies are doing extensive work. JWT says it has dedicated 2,400 manhours of training over the past year. Training sessions spanning 6-8 days are held in hot spots ranging from Goa to Thailand, where the best talent from JWT is selected from across disciplines and skills.
Sapna Srivastava, vice-president, HRD says, "We have workshops planned for the entire year. Participants are identified by the management stating that they are good and with training would be the best. It also motivates the rest to get invited."
Grey Worldwide also ropes in executives from across the globe to inculcate best practices and next practices among its employees.
Its India office, for instance, has hired a French client servicing executive from a rival agency which has won the Agency of the Year awards at Cannes, to share her previous experience with Grey's Mumbai operations.
For a new pitch, executives from global offices are sometimes roped in for an expert's perspective. Professionals from Germany were flown in to work on a pitch to Deutsche Bank, a client.
Arvind Sharma, chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett says that as metros get saturated, agencies will look at smaller towns. "Nagpur, Kanpur, Lucknow should to be tapped as there are no good ad agencies in these cities and graduates don't look at advertising as a career option due to lack of awareness," he says, adding: "We retain talent by giving them challenging assignments. This year, as an industry, we are planning to visit IIMs and hire graduates".