Category: Benchmarking Resources

The industry conversation about in-housing agency services continues with the protagonists proposing the pros and cons. Let’s dive in and compare the pair.

uis Loizou, a Freelance creative Director in the UK recently shared on Linkedin his thoughts “I’m not 54. I’m 22 with 32 years experience”.  It is a passionate and considered argument for why older advertising creative professionals have not passed their used by date, but are actually “still passionate but with pragmatism and discipline”.

Any work related death is a tragedy. But the death of a young woman at Dentsu Inc in Tokyo on Christmas Day, 2015 was shocking. Even more so because the official cause of death was overwork. Her sad demise has resulted in a major rethink of the culture at the agency and contributed to the CEO announcing his resignation early this year. But this is not an isolated incident with a young copywriter dying from heart failure due to overwork and an overdose of energy drinks in Indonesia at the end of 2013. This culture of working often ridiculously long hours is not new to the advertising industry. I remember as a copywriter and especially as a creative director often working 12 hour days and longer, including weekends if we were working on new business pitches.

Many remuneration agreements, be they project fees or retainers, are based on the head hour resources required to undertake the task multiplied […]