At Digiday’s Media Buying Summit, challenges with talent recruitment bubble to the surface

The rising use of AI for entry-level and sometimes menial tasks has started to jeopardize the ability of young people to break into the agency business. At a Town Hall discussion held during the Digiday Media Buying Summit in Nashville on March 12 — a meeting that was held under Chatham House Rules, which guarantees anonymity for the agency attendees — some media agency folks spoke of that very problem. 

“The one phrase that irks me the most is when the C-suite says that … that, because of AI solutions, it’ll help us think more strategically,” said one attendee. “With entry level employees. You still need to have those junior team members get in the weeds to understand how the plant grows. Otherwise, you’re not going to have a forest. Pretty soon all you going to have is just snapping buds from 100-year-old trees when there are no saplings anywhere to be seen.”

But when they do get in the door, the learning curve is just different than it used to be — for both junior talent and senior. 

“We still really heavily invest in junior people, but what I see now, what we expect from a junior person, is so different than what I would’ve expected five years ago,” explained another Town Hall attendee. “I expect that every tedious part of their job they want to figure out how to make AI do it for them.

Another more senior attendee noted that there’s almost a language barrier with entry-level talent. “What I’ve learned is some of the ways in which we are trying to train them is [generationally] not native to their language anymore,” they said. “So maybe you [shouldn’t be] writing them a 10 page email or even three paragraphs versus videoing them. It’s simple stuff, but it’s not, because we’re just not intuitive to it, and we sort of have to listen. Our agency has been doing a lot more of the training in their language to help them get some of those skills.”

Education, notably in an era where DEI has become a more complicated solve to figure out in light of a changed political climate, agencies like Kepler want to make it a business priority to develop talent and retention programs, as well as provide training for upcoming talent to break into the digital advertising industry. 

In an onstage session addressing DEI and talent retention issues for agency, Justin Roberts, global head of culture and inclusion at marketing agency Kepler, spelled out what’s gone into Kepler U. Started in 2020, Kepler U provides a free eight-week training program on Google Ads and other programmatic or paid media topics to individuals from underrepresented communities and lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

“It’s not just having DEI initiatives, it’s having successful ones,” said Roberts. “What can we do to give back to our communities, and what can we do to make our industry a more diverse and representative place?

To gauge effectiveness on these investments across a global company of 600, Kepler also started employing tools like client surveys and employee health checks in recent years to understand where the company needs to actually dedicate resources.

“Are they feeling included in a sense of belonging within their team, within their department?” Roberts said. “More broadly, do they feel seen? Do they feel valued? Because when you measure those things against the demographic or identity characteristics within the company … across different offices, across different regions, you can get a really, really in-depth understanding of where maybe you need to put more investment.”

In a separate onstage discussion about influencers and creators, Amy Choi, executive director of creator strategy and marketing at agency Trade School, echoed a greater need for hiring diverse talent on her team in order to bring a wider perspective to creator partnerships – as it mirrors the diverse interests of creators and brands.

“It’s important when you build teams, especially in this kind of evolving creative marketing industry as an agency,” Choi told Digiday. “Because [different people] might be following different creators based on personal interests as well.”