If you follow any of the Twitter feeds of some of the bigger agencies you will be aware that some of them were on LinkedIn’s recently published ‘100 Most in Demand’ companies. For a few days there were self-congratulatory tweets here there and everywhere.
But lets look a little deeper into this list. Is that something you should be really shouting about? Of the agencies that made it we have Ogilvy (26), Leo Burnett (43), JWT (46), RazorFish (59), Saatchi & Saatchi (64), Digitas (87) and BBDO (98). Razorfish and Digitas were the only digital agencies. Are we to believe that given the chance a well suited digitally savvy employee wouldn’t rather work at somewhere like R/GA or AKQA? They are certainly the more creative of these types of network.
Google and Apple were Nos.1 and 2 on the list, but 3,4,5 were Unilever, P&G and Microsoft. Now despite what Unilever and P&G would have you think believe (and en masse trips to Cannes) they are still big marketing companies that do things by the book 99.9 percent of the time. For anyone with creative yearnings they are soul crushing places to work. And the stories you hear about Microsoft clients are so evil they would make Dick Cheney blush.
Let’s have a look at some of the other neighbors. Nearby to JWT and Razorfish we have Haliburton. Hey, the job at Haliburton didn’t work out so I’m going to go work in Advertising. It can’t be as bad as being gang-raped then imprisoned or killed in Iraq, right? Actually among the top 100 there are many more energy companies. Not clean energy companies. Dirty energy companies. Really, the most filthy and dirty companies. And then of course there is Goldman Sachs.
Lastly there is the fundamental question of who actually relies on LinkedIn for a job? I’ll give you a clue it begins with an L too. A big fat L on your forehead. It’s basically the place you go if you don’t have any real friends, a portfolio or all else has failed.
So, one way at looking at this would be to say, ‘Congrats guys, you are the most in demand agencies for money-grabbing, bottom-feeding, buy-the-book losers who can’t get a job anywhere else!’ But that’s just one way. I’m sure these are super-nice places to work! As someone once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
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