Capturing attention in the midst of Advertising Week New York, new research from the Advertising Educational Foundation is flagging a bigger crisis for the industry than engaging consumers—feeding its own talent pipeline.
The AEF’s new report, “Bridging the Talent Disconnect: Charting the Pathways to Future Growth,” reveals that marketers and ad agencies are facing a growing talent shortage.
It’s not just that college graduates are being wooed away by Silicon Valley, Wall Street—and launching their own big idea to disrupt existing businesses and sectors. The advertising and marketing industry also needs to do a better job of advertising and marketing itself, it seems.
The report by the non-profit foundation—the educational arm of America’s Association of National Advertisers—cites “a looming marketing and advertising talent crisis,” attributable in part to “a lack of common vision, vocabulary and perceived relevance among marketers, young professionals and the colleges and universities where they matriculate.”
Innovation and an outdated curriculum have created a talent crisis in marketing. New @AEFNYC research: https://t.co/wueAMaESLb #TalentFWD pic.twitter.com/C7gn7LXq7X
— ANAmarketers (@ANAmarketers) September 22, 2017
Among the three groups surveyed, the ANA spoke with a range of CMOs, agency executives, HR executives and line managers; on the academic side, university professors, deans and career counselors; and among the target audience of young talent, the researchers spoke to college students and new hires, a pattern of disconnect about what defines a career in marketing or advertising emerged. In addition, there’s a lack of clarity about whether these careers are meaningful and purposeful enough to convince young people to pursue them.
“Finding and retaining talent has been a serious problem in our industry for some time,” says ANA CEO Bob Liodice. “But this pioneering new study has revealed that the system to create our next generation of marketing and advertising talent is strained to a breaking point. Immediate action is required, and the AEF has developed the necessary steps to address this critical issue by bridging the gap between the core constituents.”
The report identified four key reasons for the talent recruitment crisis:
• Digital transformation complicates new marketing and advertising career paths
• Marketers and agencies now directly compete with technology companies for highly skilled talent
• The expectations of today’s crop of young talent differ from previous generations
• College and university curricula cannot keep pace with the rapid change going on in the industry.
“Marketers and agencies must take the lead, but we know from experience that whenever we get together with the academic community the most important players—the students themselves—benefit,” says AEF President and CEO Gord McLean. “Our next generation of talent will be the single most important driver of industry growth,” said
With the exponential growth of digital, social media and data-based roles, universities are finding it difficult to stay abreast of the rapid changes in the marketing and advertising industries. That creates a challenge of what to teach, as traditional resources and reference materials, textbooks and curricula are “out of date almost as soon as they’re published.”
And then there’s the lure of tech, consulting and finance. The study finds that Google, Facebook, Apple and the Boston Consulting Group provide “more generous compensation packages to new hires, both in terms of salary and perks,” as compared to their advertising/marketing peers.
What’s more, “different generational expectations for job responsibilities, quality of life, and career advancement” is divisive for upcoming talent that prizes “purpose” in work and “creative” job environments above all else.
The AEF and ANA identifies a remedy it’s calling Pathways 2020, to “make the case for what a creative, innovative and rewarding career in marketing can be.”
Recommendations include:
· Send 1,000 marketing and advertising executives on campus visits by 2020 and “create a formalized toolkit for industry representatives to ensure professional consistency of content and engagement.”
· Expand the AEF’s ‘Visiting Professors’ program, giving academics a chance to spend time at an advertising or marketing firm, with a goal of 1,000 professors having on-site experiences by 2020.
· Launch an internship program called ‘M/Ade’ to leverage participating organizations’ academic relationships and place students with internships.
· Address the industry’s diversity crisis (a hot topic at Advertising Week) by partnering with the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive & Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) to ensure “a healthy pipeline of diverse talent” and an internship path.
· Create accredited guidelines for internship programs.
There's a role for every skillset in marketing. These are just a few examples. Learn more with @AEFNYC: https://t.co/8s0rvcAHAr#TalentFWD pic.twitter.com/lkpVrIhIC3
— ANAmarketers (@ANAmarketers) September 26, 2017
A broader mindset of the skill sets and experience parameters for hiring talent comes from Jason DeLand, founding partner of Anomaly, who told Ad Age that a liberal arts education, not specialized marketing classes, is arguably the “greatest foundation for this business.”
“My advice to incoming kids in this year’s freshmen class is to cast a wide net. I don’t care if you can write a clever Insta post, or a headline or design a logo or an app. I care deeply how you think. If you can solve problems and if you have a POV based on something real. If you can write, if you can think of ideas that power businesses and if you’re willing to work your ass off and learn too, then you’ll have my complete attention.”
The post Advertising Week New York: A Roadmap to Fix the Talent Crisis appeared first on brandchannel:.
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