Episode #30: Agency or Client Side?

In their 30^th episode, Kelly and Julia are tackling the age-old question for marketing and advertising professionals – what’s better, agency side or in-house? There are pros and cons for both sides, so join in on the conversation to figure out what’s your best next move.

Julia

Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. This is our 30th episode. Kelly and I are kind of amazed at ourselves that we’ve gotten this far. And today, Kelly and I are discussing the age-old question. Should you go agency side? Or client side? And can you flip? And when’s the best time to do either one? We will take deep dive on that subject.

Kelly

And the pros and cons?

Julia 

Yes. Both of us are very good at a pros and cons.

Kelly

That’s definitely true. Well, Julia, why don’t you start? You spent a couple years client side.

Julia 

I did. But I feel like it’s different maybe from your experience, because I didn’t when I was in a client situation, I wasn’t managing an agency or there was not an agency partner as part of the picture, if that makes sense. I say, um, so like, my first job, I was in real estate sales. And then my second job, I was a corporate concierge. So I was, I was kind of directly working with clients, in a sense, because both were very sales oriented. But when I decided to leave that my second job and go to an agency, it was because I had interned there. And he knew it well, and felt very comfortable there and knew the energy of the agency and felt like that was my thing. So, my path led me there. I think maybe if the agency Job had not been an option, who knows what I would have done. I certainly applied for lots of, you know, client side in house marketing jobs, you, on the other hand, have more traditional, like agency client and going back and forth experience,

Kelly

Yes, I had the agency/client/agency sandwich. I started agency side in Los Angeles and in San Francisco. And then, when I was on the agency side, one of my clients asked me to come client side and be their director of marketing. And at the time, weren’t non competes for some reason. And so, I remember going into the head of the agency’s office and saying, the client offered me a job, and I want to take it, and he was very upset about it. And I felt bad about it. But it was one of those scenarios where I wanted to, I wanted to grow, and I wanted to try something new. And I wanted to see what it was like to go client side. So, once I jumped over, I stayed on client side for about 10 years. And then I jumped back. So that’s why I’m calling it the agency/client/agency sandwich. And I think it was a really good experience, to be able to see both sides of the story. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about that today in terms of what the pros and cons are of each, because there really are big differences. And you know, a lot of it might have to do with your personality. And you know, does your personality fit? I mean, it’s funny, because they used to talk about — Apple would talk about the misfits, right? They would always say the misfits are the ones that are in advertising the people they are the square pegs, right, the people that don’t necessarily fit. That may be true, because that’s kind of a stereotype of agency people. But those are my people. Right?

Julia 

Right. Agree. Those are my people. So maybe we are the misfits. Well, when we talk about like pros and cons, I’m sure you’ll talk about your experience in your in your sandwich. I mean, who doesn’t like a sandwich? Once we go through pros and cons, we’ll talk about like what is the best path and obviously, you as a listener, that’s for you to figure out, we’re trying to put out the information so that you can decide, because there is no perfect path? I do think it’s very cool to have both experiences. I don’t know if I’ll ever go inside ever. I mean, it might not be in the cards for me, and I’m totally okay with that. I’ve certainly gotten so many offers along the years, but you know, I don’t know I guess I’m a square peg.

Kelly

Do you not know that TV show from the 90s? You’ll have to Google it. Sarah Jessica Parker was in it.

Julia 

What’s the show?

Kelly

It’s called Square Pegs. That’s a Gen X reference. That was before she was Sarah Jessica, before she was married. And before she was cool.

Julia 

Oh my gosh, I love her. Okay, so let’s talk about being in house. And now of course, you have experience in this. So, you’re going to speak from experience, and I am going to speak from the experience that I experience through my clients. And the things that they tell me. I’m, so let’s start off with the pros of being in house because there are some good ones. Do you want to go Kelly, you could start?

Kelly

I think the biggest thing that is a surprise when you go client side is, when your agency side you think advertising is everything. And when you go client side, you realize advertising is just a small piece of the pie. On the client side, there’s so many other things that you need to do on the client side. And usually, especially if you’re if you’re at a larger organization, or a larger company, they have some form of in-house marketing department and your job is really to service everyone within the organization. You have people coming to you on a daily basis to approve — I want to use the logo on this billboard or this flyer, or how should I do XYZ or, you know, asking for all sorts of things. And so, advertising and working with the advertising agency, I would say is probably less than 25% of your time. Because there’s so many other things to deal with. And so, the positive on that is, is there’s greater and greater access to all sides of the business and you see a lot more of what’s going on, you understand what’s happening with legal and those hurdles and research and senior management, you have access to subject matter experts, and all those things that we don’t see now that we’re on the agency side, are a lot obviously more transparent when you’re on the client side and have greater access to things. There’s also a lot more structure and boundaries. On the client side. There’s, there’s a variety of different jobs that people can take on the client side from, a marketing manager to a marketing director to a brand manager or a digital marketer or market research, business development, sales, PR, etc. And I think the biggest pro is usually there’s a lot more money on the marketing side versus the agency side, they pay more generally.

Julia 

Well, to add on to what you were saying was like you go, you can go deep on one thing, like you could be an email marketing manager, and you could just literally be the person who knows everything about email, and how it affects every function of the business. And so, you can be deep, you can be focused. And as an agency partner, I see this right, we it’s our job as the agency to pull out those like little nuggets of insights, the most important things from those in house experts, so that we can then help them execute whatever, you know, deliverable or thing they’re trying to accomplish. So, I think that’s really cool, because you can really focus on one thing, and go deep. I also, I think another thing is, like ownership. It’s so funny. Have you seen the articles about the Super Bowl ad for coin base? Yes, QR code. There’s this where the client is taking all the credit and the ad agency, Martin agency is very mad, because they’re saying we pitched you this idea. But at the end of the and that’s like a whole different issue. Right, when we should say that we should save that for another podcast, right? What do you really own? What ideas do you really own, especially when you pitch right? But at the heart of it is the client gets to take all the credit agencies try to take credit. Some of them tried to be very responsible and humble about it. Some of the bigger agencies don’t. But the client gets to own it. The client gets to win the awards, the client gets to speak to the media, first about whatever that whatever that thing is, and so that’s kind of a cool thing. I’m Flipside on the agency side. I’m totally cool with that. But not everyone is…

Kelly

That’s a benefit, there’s more — guess you would call it power and control, right? Because you have more ownership — you have that deep knowledge of your client. But you also have a bigger focus on what are the business goals of the company? What are the sales goals? What are the KPIs and a much bigger part of the picture that the agency may not know. And so, there’s this balance there in terms of, of knowledge, which is, which is very different on both sides.

I think one of the bigger, the biggest benefits, honestly, on the client side is they generally have much stronger benefits. In terms of a much greater focus on continuous learning. The companies that I work for always brought in speakers on a regular basis, they had regular lunch and learns, I had to give lunch and learns, I had to do branding 101 sessions to a whole room of franchisees, for example, there are a lot more retreats, they have their own exercise gyms and workout programs. And so, there’s a lot of that aspect. At the same time, there’s probably a little bit more, I guess, you’d call it bed checks, where you know, you need to be in by 8:30, and stay till six o’clock. But you’re not necessarily working those late hours that you are on the agency side, there are long hours for sure, but not as unpredictable as the agency side. So, if you’re working mom, it’s probably a lot more predictable to be on the client side, to be honest than to be on the agency side.

Julia 

Completely agree with that. I think most people would agree with that, for sure. So, one of the things that we were saying was a pro is getting deeper. And then you also talked about, like continuous learning? Well, I also kind of think, on the opposite side, that is a con, of being in in house is that I’ve heard that, there is budget to go to this conference or do this certification. But that generally agency side, you’re more on the cutting edge. You have to be for your clients. A lot of the times I remember clients would come to us. And they still do, I guess, but like, say, one of the things in the RFPs would be like, how are you going to teach our staff and help them stay on the leading edge of marketing, technology, new stuff, things like that. And it was like, oh, they want us to be the leaders, the teachers have their internal staff. And I thought that was interesting. So, I think that’s maybe a con for being in house is while there is budget for continuous learning. It’s you’re not necessarily seen as the most innovative or cool. That’s true. Knowing the cool stuff.

Kelly

That’s absolutely true.

Julia 

I also think I’m jumping to cons now.

Kelly

I know, I know.

Julia 

I also think that when you go deep, and you have access to all these pieces of the business operation, while that is good. The other side is internal politics. And it seems to me to be easier to deal with it on the agency side. Because if the client is just going to roadblock, you because of politics, then what are you going to do on the agency side, you just got to wait, right, internally that almost every client I’ve ever worked with, always struggles with internal politics in some way, whether it’s getting budget, or whether it’s getting a project approved or aligning on strategy. And that’s just normal people stuff, right? Nothing’s ever going to be perfect, but they’re hard to navigate. And you just really have to figure out if your personality would be better equipped to deal with politics from an agency side or a client side.

Kelly

I absolutely agree. I felt that the internal politics on the on the client side were much heavier than on the agency side. I mean, again, it’s a different type, right? Whereas the agency side you’re dealing with interdepartmental issues like creative versus suits, right? Which is a different thing at then it is my senior manager wants XYZ, the head of legal wants this, the CEO wants that, which may not relate to what you think your goals are. So, there’s a lot of things that come into play on the politics side. So, from my experience, I definitely agree that there are more politics. As I said, there were a lot of benefits on the pro side being client side, but frequently, the politics can cancel out the benefits. So, you kind of have to think about that, when you’re going into that type of environment.

Julia 

I also think, for me personally, why I would probably not like client side is this con, which I would put as number one for me, less variety.

Kelly 

That’s why we’re in advertising. We love to be able to learn about a whole range of, of industries and categories, and everything’s new and fresh, and you don’t get bored.

Julia 

And not saying that client side, you’ll be bored. I mean, were you bored? Kelly?

Kelly

No, I was not bored.

Julia

Yes. So, less variety does not necessarily mean bad for some people, right? I think again, it’s totally a personality thing. Like, do you like to juggle a lot of things? Do you like to hop skip around? Do you really like change? So that would be more of an agency life versus probably less variety and go going deeper you value safety and security.

Right. Other cons. I think the only thing that I would say, I would end with is — I’m assuming that you can kind of be on an island, when you are client side, because you are probably competing for the attention, the time the resources of the overall business, to apply to marketing. And so, if people in business ops don’t understand the value of marketing, or they questioned the value of marketing, you are always going to be going uphill.

Kelly

Yes, that can be frustrating. Because frequently, people that aren’t in marketing don’t understand marketing. And they don’t understand the creative process, and they don’t value things like a creative brief, and understand the importance of a creative brief or some of the things that happen on the on the agency side. And so, I think that’s definitely harder in terms of valuing what an art director or a copywriter does, because, they see them not necessarily producing as much right, because the output may be smaller in terms of reports and this and that. There are also more layers for approvals and decision making most senior this and a senior that and it’s got to go up the chain and it has to be political, and you can’t necessarily go skip a skip a level, right? You got to go to your boss and that boss has to go to their boss. And so that can be a little bit of a challenge. And I think also on  younger people — frequently, it’s required to have a master’s degree in marketing or preferred, not necessarily required, but preferred to have a master’s degree which isn’t required in advertising.

Julia 

Nope. Thankfully, I feel like I have a master’s degree in work experience.

Kelly

Well, yes, after you have 20 something years’ experience, you can say you have a masters.

Julia 

Okay, so I feel like that lets us slide into agency life. Which I am certainly more comfortable talking about. Do you want to talk about pros or cons first?

Kelly

Let’s do cons. We’ll end on a high note.

Julia 

Well, agency life does come with its cons people. That’s what we are here to tell you about. And so, we’re going to start with them. Because the pros in my opinion will weigh them out. Right? But you got to think about this. When we just talked about variety. The opposite side on the agency side is the overwhelm of constantly juggling, different maybe sometimes wildly different clients’ subjects and understanding of their industries, and actual deliverables. I feel like someone in the agency world is absolutely going to be that juggler with like 25 balls in the air. So, if that does not appeal to you, that might be something to really consider about agency side.

Kelly

Absolutely. I mean, it’s funny, because there’s always this conversation that on the account side, especially like, how many accounts can one account person handle? Right? And what level of billings or etc. And you can handle more work, right? And it just becomes, it can become quite a challenge. And so, the workload level is usually quite high. Especially on both the creative and account side, and the pace is always nearly always fast. It’s funny, because we used to talk about how maybe the summers there was a little bit of a lull, or the holiday season, there might be a lull. I don’t see that happening anymore.

Julia 

Well, COVID, totally flip flopped everything, I think.

Kelly

Yeah. And so that fast pace, and you and I admittedly are let’s go, let’s get it get, executional, let’s get it done. And so, you really can’t be a turtle in advertising.

Julia

No, no turtles. And if you are a turtle, we still we still love you. But you just may not be an agency person. Well, okay, so like with COVID, there’s been so many changes, right? One of them is that the constant and I’m going to say it pivoting that is necessary, really falls on the agency. Hey, you just spent three months doing that entire campaign. And it’s beautiful. But now we have to completely change the messaging and it goes live next week. Yes. Well, guess who’s going to be working overtime? It’s definitely not the in-house people. They are happy. And if I was an in-house person, I would absolutely be happy to give it to the agency. So, there is volatility in terms of the stability of your work hours, your work load. I’m sure it’s in what you were saying, Kelly, it’s not like gentle up and down. And then you have a nice little low in the summer. It’s definitely more peaks and valleys, I would say.

Kelly

Yeah, to play off your pivoting concept, it demonstrates how flexible we need to be. Because frequently, a client might be coming back with you and saying we’ve got this change, we’re changing strategy. A new CEO is coming in, a new head of marketing, they want this, they want that. And you have to be able to say, okay, take a beat, here’s what we can do.

Julia 

I think on the agency side, you really have to be okay with constant criticism and rejection. Which if I think about my personality, I actually don’t like that. But I think what I do like is the challenge of that pivot, taking that moment and saying, okay, let’s bring it on. Yeah, bring it on. Along with that crazy peaks and valleys of work, I also think you got to throw in new business too, right? So, you could be in the middle of a crazy campaign, and then an amazing opportunity comes in. And who else is going to do it? I mean, the agency has to assemble a team to the right team, and you may be part of it. And then you got double time.

Kelly

I have this little sticky note, which has fallen off my computer, which you cannot see that my coach told me to write, it says to “work on the business, not in the business”. Right? And when you work on the business, that’s really how are you moving the business forward versus getting involved in very specific executional client work. And that always ends up being secondary, which is why the agency joke is that the agency websites are always the worst. And the agency social media is always the worst because we never have time to do them because we’re doing the work for our clients, right?

Julia 

Totally. So, another COVID thing that I meant to mention is just overall volatility of advertising in general, this is a huge con. Right? You probably heard this, like in college, if you want. The first thing to be cut is marketing and advertising and so, during COVID, I looked it up, like Forbes said that through 2021, over 50,000 jobs in the US had been cut from advertising agencies. And, one of my clients, they’re a big agency, their big pro bono agency had every single person from their account was let go at the beginning of the pandemic. So, I wouldn’t say you get a lot of high job security on the agency side. And like, if you’re just working, even if you’re doing a great job, and let’s say one of your main clients decides to leave, you also might be in need of finding a new job, simply the pure economics of money in, money out. What clients are in, and who are leaving could impact your job security.

Kelly

I want to soften that a bit because I don’t I mean, if I were hearing this, for the first time, I’d be kind of like, why would I want to work for an agency? And we’re going to get to that in a minute. But I think, on average, in advertising, everyone has lost their job at least once. And it wasn’t of their own accord, right. I remember one time I was laid off, and I was young. And within one month, I had three job offers, I was able to pick from three different offers. Now, that isn’t always the case. Things are hot right now in the economy. They weren’t necessarily in 2008 or 2010. So it depends on where things are. But that’s kind of a growing pain that we got all go through, and almost a badge of honor, really to be laid off. Because it’s an experience you need to get through that there’s a lot of ego there, right? Why did I have to go? And you have to be able to go through that in order to kind of move on to where you need to be in life. And I think that’s a part of the overall life experience.

Julia 

True, I don’t want to be doomsday about it. Because listen, I’ve never been laid off at an agency. So, but I do know that it’s just different than the in house, it’s just less stable. Let’s put it that way.

Kelly

One of the things that, that having worked at a wide range of agency is one of the big pressures was always on utilization and utilization rates. And I remember, a variety of different agencies always had a number in their head, that you had to be 70%, 75%, or 85% utilized — meaning that percentage of your work day of a 40-hour week, you need to have billable to a client. And if you’re not the look at those utilization rates, and those are the least utilized meaningfully, billable, will be let go. So that’s a stretch and then that the problem happens there where you get account, you get padding on different client accounts. So, you’ll see you know XYZ person who may or may not be busy adding a lot more hours on a specific client because they felt they needed to because they knew that if they weren’t more fully utilized, they would be let go. So that’s another pressure when you have agencies focused on utilization as the main metric, which is not really the right way to go. Because there are ebbs and valleys, ebbs and flows in agency world.

Julia 

How about how about this one being treated like a vendor and not a partner? That’s the hardest one to deal with. Because like when you’re in house, like you’re a family. You’re all in it together, right? And when you’re an agency, you are treated differently because you eventually really are a vendor, even if some people treat you like a partner or not.

Kelly

I don’t have anything to say about that other than you want to be able to work with clients that treat you as a partner and not as a vendor and it’s very clear up front which ones which ones do that and which ones don’t.

Julia 

How about the one that you wrote dealing with prima donnas?

Kelly

There are a lot of prima donnas in advertising. I have to say the majority of them are on the creative side. I’ve also found some, on account planning side too, and there’s definitely account people as well. But there are a lot of a**holes, and you will have found them in your careers, and you’ll learn how to deal with them. And that can be a challenge too, because you know, people put that person on a pedestal because their creativity or their ideas may be above and beyond everyone else. Because those ideas are so fantastic, they kind of let it slide that their personality is just not so, so good. So that that is definitely a challenge on the agency side.

I think the other one is, there’s a perception that advertising is glamorous. And it’s not always glamorous, I think I’ll give you a good example of this. Everyone loves going on TV shoots, and I used to work on managing TV shoots, or photoshoots for a major hamburger franchise, and one of the fun things that we would have to do is go and pick off all the sesame seeds on top of the bun to make sure that the bun looked perfectly round. And so, there’s, there’s a lot of things that that aren’t so glamorous on the agency side. But unfortunately, a lot of times that ends up happening with the more senior people, the junior people may not necessarily get to do the fun glamorous stuff, which was going on shoots and photo shoots and video shoots and that sort of thing. And I think, the one of the bigger challenges is the silos. There are silos, in terms of politics, the politics in within an agency is really about suits versus creatives. And you know, is your agency run by a creative? Or is it run by a suit? Because that shows what’s prioritized at that agency, honestly. And that can be a challenge to make sure that you as a suit or an account person are really being a partner to the creatives that you work with, and everyone wants to feel like they’re their voice is heard. And so, there are there can be silos – it used to be the creative department was way away from the account department, even on a different floor, which I find very frustrating. Because I think there needs to be an opportunity for more collaboration.

Julia 

Okay, so let’s move to the pros. Because this is my favorite part. And this is a totally why I love agency life, because, and we’ve touched on this, like the variety, I will get stressed out by the balls in the air. But I mean, I really thrive on it. I think it’s really exciting to be able to jump from deep knowledge of, you know, something completely opposite of another thing all in one day. I love learning about new things that, you know, I had no previous knowledge of which I think is very exciting. Because on an agency, you will get new work, new clients will come in and you’ll be part of the team and that that onboarding and really getting to be an expert is really exciting for me.

Kelly

I totally agree. It’s more fun. I have to say it’s more fun to work an ad agency, I’m going to say that flat out regardless. I mean, we’re creating magic. I think I’ve said this before, a creative director that I’ve worked with said “This is the fun part of our client’s day, when we come and visit and we need to give them a present.” I’ve talked about that in the past where the creative is the present, and you have to make it exciting to open and create some drama. And so that part is really, really fun. And a part of that because you’re going through the stressors of the fun part, but also the stressor parts with new business and working long hours, you end up making some really strong friendships. And I have to say the friendships that I made at Grey Advertising in Los Angeles are the some of the best friends that I have still today 20 something years later. And the work culture is generally better, stronger, more social, you’ve got the cool fun office spaces. Of course, advertising agencies have always had the ping pong tables and the pool tables and you know all those fun things to do, and toys all around Legos, etc. So that part is really fun. But you know, building those strong friendships, you don’t realize it at the time. But you know, if you’re working in an agency and you’re young in your 20s need to realize that those people could be your bridesmaids later on in life. And that part is really wonderful.

Julia 

You don’t think you got that being in house? Like, just talk about the difference between that because I’m super curious.

Kelly

Not as much. I mean, I definitely made good friends on the client side, too. But my I have to say some of my best friends really came from, from the advertising side.

Julia 

So okay, this leads into our questions that we that you might our listeners might be thinking about, like, so what is the right path? Is it better to start agency side? Or better to start client side? What is your opinion? Kelly?

Kelly

Oh, my, I don’t I don’t believe that there’s a correct answer to that. I think that people need to figure out who what type of person they are, what type of personalities they are, and what type of culture is the right fit. And that takes time. It takes variety. And you may not know that till you’re 30, after you’ve done a couple different jobs, right? And you’ve tried out a couple different options. I believe that to be a good agency person, you need to have some client-side experience, especially as an account person, because then you really understand what the other side is going through.

Julia  

I think you’re right, there’s no right answer. I think what’s important, especially if you’re at the beginning of your career is if you do whatever path you choose first, if you start feeling this anxiousness to try something new, and move, I think it’s just important to kind of listen to this podcast, and determine, what are going to be more pros for you, versus more cons. And that might lead you to the next step, right. So, if if you decided to start off client side, and you find that the pros really weigh out the cons, then stay client side. And the same with the agency side. And if there are big discrepancies, then really, I think both of us would encourage you to try the other side, the opposite side of where you’re at. Because having a variety of experiences will really only strengthen your professional resume and make you more valuable to the next position or the next move, but also give you more personal satisfaction. Learning about what you’re good at what you’re not good at what you like, and what you don’t like.

Kelly

Yeah, we’ve kind of talked about this before, in terms of my opinion, is you go broad, you start broad, and then you narrow, once you figure out what your niche space is, you don’t know right out of college, what your niche specialty is, unless you’re like, an electrical engineer or something. So, if you go broad, and you start either client or agency side, you need to make sure that you’re doing a wide range of things you and agency side, you’re going to get a whole range of expertise on a whole range of product categories and industries and variety of advertising elements. If you go client side, you’re going to get that same experience, but it’s going to be more now a little bit more narrow to that particular category. So that’s something to think about.

Julia 

Yeah, like if you start off client side and retail, your experience is going to be deep in retail, retail industry, for example, and that might set you on a course for staying within that industry. So, there’s nothing bad about that. But I’ve definitely seen it when I’ve met certain people looked at their resumes like I’m going very narrow at the beginning definitely did kind of set a more comfortable path. Let’s put it that way.

Last question. Does picking one at the beginning of you lock you into a career path and how I think we already answered that. But how hard is it to switch? I think that’s a really good question, right? Because it’s really all about positioning. If you’ve been client side, and you want to go agency side, and let’s say, the agency, how is serving industries that you don’t necessarily have experience in, I think you really must position yourself as talk about those pros, client agency side, you’re the type of person that likes to be in a fast-paced environment, you are a creative person, I think if you can position yourself with that, you’ll be attractive to an agency, and then flip flopping. If you’re at an agency and you want to go client side, you need to position yourself against the pros of working at for a client, that you want to go deeper, and you have all this broad experience that you can now bring to the table that will really impact the whole marketing operation in house. So I think the answer is, could it be hard to switch? I mean, it depends on the job market. And it depends on what jobs you’re looking at, and what level of experience but I think there’s always opportunity in you soaking up experience and expertise, and then positioning yourself for the for the next move.

Kelly

I feel like on the agency side, especially in account service, we always usually love to have someone that has client-side experience, especially if it brings a specific category expertise with it. I think the opposite direction may be harder because frequently, agencies want people who have agency experience because they understand the process and how it works et cetera.

Julia 

There’s pros and cons to both, but you can do it. Everyone here you can do it

Kelly

You can do both. You can do either and it doesn’t have to be an agency/client/agency sandwich like I did, you can do it any way you want. But I absolutely recommend that you know, this is a wide career field and I think you’re more marketable if you do both, or have done both.

Julia 

So that would be an open-faced sandwich?

Kelly

With no sesame seeds on top.

Julia 

Alright, well with that. Thanks for a great convo, Kelly. We’ll see everyone next time. Talk soon.