Insights from my Leaders Listening Tour
August 12, 2024
I am fresh off my leadership tour of NYC. I met with eight advertising leaders over the course of a month to talk about trends they are seeing and to understand how the landscape might evolve considering AI’s rise in the public’s consciousness and the ways the pandemic permanently affected business positively and negatively.
Some Trends from my Leaders Tours:
AI’s Impact: Generally speaking, AI hasn’t affected headcount or the way these leaders are seeing creative services being delivered in the near future. AI serving as a co-pilot to employees seemed to resonate as the model for the foreseeable future. The diversity of how AI is currently being used was an eye opener. The efficacy and efficiency of AI tools received mixed reviews based on the case use. For instance, using AI to start a creative brief might actually send a creative team down the wrong path and add unwelcomed complexity to a project, but using AI to identify KOL’s quickly for instance, reduces the time to project completion.
That said, there was still a general consensus AI would eventually change things, pushing the deliverable more towards strategic services and away from creative production. At least one leader predicted a massive shift and a significant downsizing of creative services agencies with some unprepared large agencies looking at an extinction event.
Covid Impacts: Compensation and officing are the two cited lasting impacts of Covid. The demand for talent during the pandemic drove up the agency compensation across the board. The long-term impacts are still being felt today. Most leaders I spoke to still see officing flexibility as a competitive advantage vs. those requiring office time.
Cross Selling: A trend that emerged over the last few months is the need for account folks to be aware of cross-selling opportunities with their clients. The macro-trend of PE roll-ups and networks acquiring a diversity of services and digital product companies requires account folks who are capable of uncovering these larger cross selling opportunities.
Salmela has worked with Fred Petito, Executive Coach with Attain Leadership to develop a custom program to coach client service folks to be more effective at organic cross-selling by bringing an inquiry based coaching mindset to their client relationships.
A similar program at a leading financial planning firm saw advisors who integrated this approach into their client relationships generated 4X more revenue ($330K vs. $1.3M in cross sales) than of advisors who failed to adopt a coaching mindset.
Here is a link to the overview of our joint program, Client Partner Business Development Coaching Program. Let's chat if this might make sense for your team.
2023 Compensation Guide: We are excited to launch our first compensation guide. What makes it unique is it is based on real data; accepted offers. It is not based on surveys or self reported compensation. This guide is based on what agencies were willing to pay for talent. We think that’s pretty cool. Download your copy here. Medical Advertising & Communications Agency Compensation Guide
Mergers & Acquisitions + Collaborations: We would be interested in meeting the Founders of independent companies providing the following services. Salmela is helping Founders understand their options around M&A and agency to agency collaboration.
- True Omnichannel Healthcare agencies
- Primary Data Firms
- Creative Agencies
- HEOR and Market Access Consulting or Advertising
Links to Resources, Interviews, and Our Thinking
I will leave you with this question. If a PE roll-up never gets properly integrated or effectively cross-sold, was the roll-up worth it?
(My answer is a resounding YES. Even with these challenges there are still efficiencies and a strong network effect that is a value multiplier. But imagine if it is done correctly? Now that’s something special)
Let me know what you think. Drop me a line.
All the best,
Cory
Photo by Emiliano Bar on Unsplash