Area advertising agencies feeling a job revival
Hiring shows a rebound amid new business, growing economy
By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent, 6/6/04
The job market is picking up for local advertising and marketing professionals after a four-year spell of consolidations and layoffs at area agencies.
The increase in hiring activity comes as a reviving economy spurs the creation of new business and the expansion of existing accounts by clients.
Ad executives emphasize that the industry has no illusions about the business of the late 1990s being replicated. Those dot-com boom years were ''a fairy tale. Now, it's back to normal growth,'' said Ed Eskandarian, the chief executive of Boston's Arnold Worldwide, the largest ad agency in New England.
Although it was reported last week that Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos of Boston said had shed 20 jobs in recent weeks, Arnold and the region's third largest agency, Mullen of Wenham, are in a hiring mode with nearly 75 job openings between them. The pay range of these jobs runs from more than $20,000 to over $100,000.
It's not just the larger shops that are hunting for talent. Smaller shops like Modernista! of Boston, Boathouse Inc. of Needham, and Foster Design Group of Natick are also hiring. They are collectively seeking more than a half-dozen people.
Arnold and the region's two other biggest agencies, Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos of Boston and Mullen of Wenham, are all in a hiring mode with more than 75 job openings between them. The pay range of these jobs runs from more than $20,000 to over $100,000.
It's not just the larger shops that are hunting for talent. Smaller shops like Boathouse Inc. of Needham and Foster Design Group of Natick are also hiring. Each is seeking three people.
The hiring climate is ''the best it's been in years because companies are now much more interested in having dialogues about new business,'' said Ed Foster, who founded the Natick firm 20 years ago with his wife, Cindy.
Indeed, as ''more people see the economy improving, clients are putting more money in advertising,'' said Lisa Unsworth, the president of the 5,000-member Advertising Club of Greater Boston. And more spending on ads means more jobs, she said, noting that there about 30 agencies in Boston and its suburbs.
National data support Unsworth's observations. Spending on advertising in the United States this year is expected to total $266.4 billion, a 6.9 percent increase over last year, according to Universal McCann, a New York media marketing firm.
As a result, ad agencies are ratcheting up recruiting efforts to meet increased demand for their services. A recent national survey conducted for The Creative Group, a staffing service that specializes in creative professionals, revealed that 57 percent of the advertising and marketing executives polled were planning to increase their workforces in the next 12 months, compared to 44 percent a year ago.
Three ad agencies and two marketing firms in Massachusetts were part of the survey but they are not being identified, said a spokeswoman for the Menlo Park, Calif. firm, a division of Robert Half International.
In some cases, agencies only have to look in-house, to freelancers, for added workers, said Jessica George, head of The Creative Group's Boston division. ''I can think of 12 freelancers who have become permanent employees since the beginning of the year.''
Large advertising firms tap some freelance talent for permanent positions but also look widely for the right people. Executives say the talent pool is deep as the industry emerges from the last recession.
''We're seeing the best people we've seen in some time,'' said Eskandarian, individuals who are needed to service new Arnold accounts such as Goodyear Tire, Tyson Foods, and Pfizer, and existing clients like Citizens Bank that are expanding.
The agency hired 45 people during the last two months, from copywriters to account group directors. It is seeking 40 additional workers, according to Eskandarian.
Arnold is owned by a French company, Havas Advertising. It laid off about 200 workers from 2001 to 2003, Eskandarian said, adding that there are now some 800 employees. Offices are in Boston, New York, Washington, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.
''We're coming back because business and the economy are strong,'' Eskandarian said.
"Our growth has been consistent; we haven't experienced a downturn," added Clift Jones, president of Modernista!, which was founded in 2000. His agency, he said, has hired 10 people in the last year and is looking for a few more specialists currently to handle large accounts like Anheuser-Busch. There are now 60 employees.
Assisting ad agencies with their recruiting efforts is a division of Boston's Pile and Co., The Collaborative Cos. "We have from 60 to 70 ad agencies as clients, and the searches we are doing for some of them are increasing all the time," said Matt Gill, the division's director of operations.
So far this year, he said, his division has conducted 34 searches, versus 21 searches over the same period last year. ''Agencies are needing new people to help new clients as well as old clients that are ordering more work,'' said Gill.
Mullen is ''seeing clients that are invigorating their businesses and, as a result, are creating additional opportunities for us. So, we're hiring people again,'' said chief executive Joseph Grimaldi.
The agency's largest accounts are General Motors Corp., XM Satellite Radio Inc., LendingTree, and the US Department of Defense. Mullen is part of The Interpublic Group of Cos., based in New York.
GM is an example of an existing account whose growth means more hires. Workers are also needed to handle new accounts like Eastern Bank of Boston and Sealy Mattress Co., said Kitty Bartholomew, Mullen's vice president of human resources.
In the last two months, Mullen has hired 25 staffers and is now looking for 33 additional workers, 10 to 12 on the ad side, the remainder in marketing and public relations, said Bartholomew.
Salaries being offered range from the low $30,000s to $100,000, a creative director's pay, she said.
A year ago, the agency laid off 16 percent of its 342 Wenham workforce after losing the Nextel Communications Inc. account. Today's workforce totals 511, ''close to 300'' of them in Wenham, Bartholomew said. Other offices are in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Winston-Salem, N.C.
One of the new hires, who joined Mullen last week as an assistant media planner, is Jessica Richards, 21, of Beverly. She is a graduate of Endicott College, also in Beverly.
''This was the only agency I sent a résumé to,'' Richards said. She suggested that an internship she had with the agency in the fourth quarter of 2003 probably helped her cause.
Boathouse executive John Connors, a son of Hill Holliday principal Jack Connors, said he's ''looking for growth we want to have'' by seeking to increase his workforce. ''We need experienced people for marketing and account management positions,'' said Connors.
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