Amnet’s Anna Chan answers: does the marketing industry have a marketing problem?

Anna Chan, regional managing director at Amnet Asia answers The Drum’s regular Q&A, in which industry leaders, new talent and everyone in between, will cast their opinions on whether the marketing industry has, when talent is concerned, got its own marketing problem.

Do you think young people want to work in the marketing industry now?

Yes, I believe there is an interest in the marketing industry and that there is growing interest but particularly in the area of digital marketing, such as with larger technology companies; Google, Facebook and the like. The most recent example of this was the results of a survey conducted by a Sweden-based global employer-branding company Universum. The survey showed that Google was the top ideal employer for Hong Kong university students compared to results from 2014 whereby the company was ranked as the fifth choice.

While employers such as Google are attracting talent, there is also positivity in that as graduates begin to comprehend the whole advertising and marketing ecosystem and realise the vast opportunities at agencies. In fact, at Dentsu Aegis Network we work with Google and the Singapore Economic Development Board for their Digitize programme that aims to add to the talent pool in the ad tech space. At Amnet, we have a Digitize graduate trainee attached to the team, who is given close mentorship in the areas of account management and trading. She actually made a transition from the client side to the agency and I think it’s fair to say she seems to be enjoying her time here so far.

With new technologies being introduced, we are also getting younger people-wise at Dentsu Aegis Network. Artificial intelligence and how it powers digital for one plays a significant role within agencies, bringing about the growth of teams; we set up a Global Data Innovation Centre (GDIC) last year in response to this, where the team augments human expertise with intelligent technology to develop next generation technologies. Similarly, the Amnet team relies on such automation for the programmatic campaigns that we manage. The average age in these teams is around 27 to 28 years old.

A Robert Walters 2017 salary survey has also shown that there will be increasing demand globally for digital marketing talent and with the education sector responding to that by creating more relevant courses, I believe there will be an increased supply of talent.

Are marketing businesses, or the marketing functions of businesses, retaining talent enough?

Turnover in the marketing industry in general is much faster than others, and part of this is due to the nature of the work whereby marketers are constantly hungry to learn. New trends, new media types, and new strategies are constantly introduced and at the same time the industry is extremely competitive. The minute a marketer feels like a role is monotonous, he or she is likely to start to get restless and look externally for new challenges. Businesses who keep up to date with these changes, as well as provide an avenue for marketers to upgrade themselves with the latest marketing know-how, are likely to be able to lessen the potential turnover.

For Amnet, our account servicing and trading teams have crossover functions, which means that an account manager has the ability to launch and manage the optimisation of campaigns while a trader gets involved in client conversations. This gives each team member a greater sense of involvement and also enhances their capabilities and definitely breaks any potential monotony in their respective roles. Additionally, we develop career roadmaps for our employees, such as with an internal career acceleration platform called Route 500 which aims to develop the next generation of leaders for the organisation. The Route 500 gives employees with high potential move towards their next role within two years of joining the programme, as well as helps us to ensure a good pipeline for our critical leadership roles. We also encourage mobility within the network, which has seen employees transit from one agency to another, encouraging the retention of talent.

On top of this, businesses also need to understand that the marketing functions are expanding and therefore the teams need to expand with it, otherwise external help is necessary. At Dentsu Aegis Network for example, we have incorporated various capabilities from content to programmatic either through acquisitions or through setting up new teams, such as Amnet which is the programmatic arm for the group. In doing so, marketers will not be overwhelmed with new responsibilities and be able to focus on their core role.

What issues do you think are creating talent shortages? Where are the shortages?

Rapid changes in the industry versus education

The industry is constantly evolving and we need to step up the training of staff to match the pace of the developments. Within Amnet for example, we host publisher and vendor sessions that we call “PubVen – Lunch and Learn” almost weekly to learn about the latest technology and media in the programmatic space. In turn, we are able to transfer this knowledge to the larger Dentsu Aegis Network group as we work with the agency partners within the network. In addition to this we work with industry partners to continuously provide advanced programmatic and analytics certification opportunities to all Amnet employees, to enhance their portfolios.

Preconceived notions of stressful, long hours in agencies

We’ve either seen or heard concerns over the long hours in the industry which most certainly scares talent away. Fortunately, this is not something we practise. Rather, we are moving towards an agile-based working model where our employees are given the flexibility and trust to work from anywhere. We encourage work-life balance and are moving past the mindset of having to see our employees from 9 to 6 to ensure they are performing.

In terms of stressful environments, I would be lying if I said that there was no such thing. Rather in any workplace, agency or client side, there are different types of stress triggers. For the agency, we focus on delivering results for more than one client and often within tight deadlines. The rewards however far outweigh the stress. In gathering experience on different industries, we develop deep expertise and transferable skills. We also like to think we have more fun usually having first access to the latest trends, as well as the numerous industry events with vast networking opportunities.

Do you think the marketing industry has a marketing problem?

The marketing problem that we have is when we get caught up in having conversations within the industry and not outside of it. If you ask someone outside of the marketing industry what programmatic is, they are bound to stare blankly at you. However, marketing is involved in our lives in so many ways that it should be more widely understood than it is.

What can and should be done about it?

Marketing discussions should be shared beyond the marketing teams. For businesses, C-level executives need to get involved in the conversations and understand the impact on their organisations.

For consumers, we need to listen more to what they want from us rather than jumping at every opportunity to reach them. Connections with customers are more than just about having them see an ad. They need to be relevant enough to engage them, and make them want to hear more from us. In being able to forge closer relationships rather than being intrusive or disruptive, we can build trust and potentially drive interest in what we do. That would certainly propel the understanding of today’s media environment.

Read PHD’s Susana Tsui , Ultimate Asset’s James Lyon, Sojern's Russell Young and Dataxu's James Sampson's views on the topic from previous weeks.

Anna Chan is a judge at the Drum Digital Trading Awards APAC in 2017. Find out more about the awards on the website.