Top post-COVID lessons for the ad industry

The COVID-19 pandemic touched nearly every aspect of our lives and livelihoods when it reached across the globe over the past year and a half, forcing people and businesses to adapt and evolve in ways they didn’t anticipate. Now that restrictions have largely loosened and the economy is ramping back up, people are facing a different kind of adjustment—to greater demand, bigger client budgets and an increased need for staff to support it all.

“The biggest adjustment is the speed of the economy ‘turning on,’” says Craig Millon, chief client officer at Jack Morton. “While many economists indicated the economy would turn on over time, it feels like it happened overnight.”

In the shuffle to get back to business as usual, some are hoping to hang on to a few vestiges of pandemic life: specifically, our renewed appreciation for work-life balance, flexible schedules and good communication. We spoke to members of the Amp community to get a sense of the impact reopening the U.S. economy is having on businesses, and what they hope to see stay the same moving forward—all while keeping an eye on the threat of a pandemic recurrence due to the Delta variant.

Ad Age’s 2021 Small Agency Conference & Awards will address many of these issues. The three-day virtual event, which kicks off on Monday, Aug. 2, is dedicated to the needs of independent shops with fewer than 150 employees, giving practical, actionable advice to help build their businesses. Register today for the Small Agency Conference & Awards at AdAge.com/saca2021.

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Getting back to business

After a year and a half of remote work, many businesses are approaching today’s opportunities from a new perspective. “As the economy has begun to return to normal, we are seeing more self-reflection from brands,” says Adrian Owen Jones, chief growth officer at ThreeSixtyEight. “Clients are coming to us for renewal and reinvention—a reflection of how we all feel after the last year.”

With an unprecedented slowdown—both in business and pace of life—brought on by the pandemic, businesses are getting back to work with a chance to do things a bit differently. “We have a rare opportunity to create an entirely new, and better, ‘normal’ on many different levels—personal, societal and economic,” says John Peto, U.S. head of Deloitte Digital. “We are helping our clients across industries change their business models, reimagine their customer and workforce experiences and tackle the broader question of what they want to stand for in society.”

The same is true for companies and agencies in the ad space, which are now capitalizing on the opportunity to turn temporary adjustments into sustainable, permanent change. “We all experienced a major reset during COVID, and now, with the economy reopening, we’re looking at some additional, exciting adjustments,” says David Steverson, CEO of Chicago- and San Francisco-based Two x Four. “We’re eager to be together, as nothing truly fuels creativity and spontaneity like in-person collaboration.”

That fuel will be key for those facing a major influx of post-pandemic work. “We can definitely feel a wave of pent-up energy. New projects and RFIs are coming in faster than normal,” says Shon Rathbone, founding partner and creative chairman of 3Headed Monster. 

“We’ve seen an influx in demand from all types of brands due to replenished budgets, and industries that are rethinking marketing coming out of the pandemic,” adds Andie Tilden-Jewett, VP of business development and marketing at AMP Agency. Tilden-Jewett points to healthcare brands as an example, with a need to digitize as they readjust after the pandemic, as well as travel and hospitality brands that are seeing demand on the uptick. “It’s exciting to see the pendulum swing from where things were a year ago and tackle new challenges.”

For agencies, getting back into the swing of things also carries the exciting prospect of in-person meetings and collaboration. “There is a palpable energy that comes with the reopening of the economy and lifting of COVID-related restrictions,” says David Jordan, Bader Rutter chief growth officer.

Facing new challenges

The boom in business is not without its challenges, though. Across industries, there’s an urgent need for great talent and the staff to meet heightened demand. “Our biggest challenge has been finding talent with the right digital skills,” says Laura Steele, director of business operations at VOLTAGE. “It is a very tight market. We have embraced out-of-state hiring and have been looking into international hires, as well as some very skilled U.S.-based developers and designers, but [it’s taking] many weeks longer than previously.”

Several factors are at play, resulting in what Kris Tait, U.S. managing director at Croud, calls a “squeeze on talent.” There’s a growing sense of confidence among businesses coming out of the pandemic, which has led to more energy and spend in digital marketing, plus an increase in agency job openings and an exodus from both urban centers and the ad industry over the course of the pandemic. “The biggest challenge to agencies trying to grow in this environment is the balance between new business and hiring the talent they need without overburdening their current employees,” Tait explains.

The risk of having overworked staff during this time of increased demand is top-of-mind for many agency leaders. "If you spend enough time in the advertising business, you eventually learn that successful advertising comes down to two things: talent acquisition and talent collaboration,” says Questus Co-Founder Jeff Rosenblum. “The great lesson isn't new, it's just more important than ever: Focus first on building a world-class team, develop processes to hire amazing talent and then enable them to do their best work." 

Register today for the Small Agency Conference & Awards at AdAge.com/saca2021.

The need for talent has pushed businesses to do better in areas many had started actively working on during the pandemic: office culture, solid communication, opportunities to carry out meaningful work and more manageable working conditions. In short? All the things that make a workplace desirable for qualified candidates. “Everyone is reevaluating everything. If you want top talent, you have to evolve,” says 3Headed Monster’s Rathbone. “Things will never be the same again, and we’ve found that to be a good thing.”

Many are building on the work they began during the pandemic. "The past year and a half threw us one curveball after another. We had to reimagine what support looked like, but we didn’t assume what the team needed, we asked them—and it set us up for success,” says Christofer Peterson, senior VP of people and culture at Dagger. “As the world reopens and we look forward to a hybrid workplace this fall … we’re confident our team will adapt again, because trust and transparency are so deeply rooted in our culture.”

The hybrid model of work-from-home plus dedicated in-office days will be key for those looking to attract new hires, many of whom may have grown accustomed to the ability to work from anywhere. “We want to provide employees with the inspiration opportunities that on-site collaboration can bring, but we also want to recognize and keep some of the great productivity habits that our employees have developed during the past year-plus at home,” says Bader Rutter’s Jordan.

 “People are rethinking their life and work choices and have more options than has been true for a long time,” says Deloitte Digital’s Peto. “The combination of forces and their complex interplay is requiring an unusual level of agility and a recognition that we will all be catering to and competing for customers and employees with quite different—and more variable—expectations.”

Beyond the struggle to attract and retain talent, another challenge managers are facing is the various precautions individuals are taking for the pandemic. “Closing down was a unifying experience—we were all in the same boat. Opening up is not,” says Kasha Casey, global CEO at ENGINE. “Employees have different attitudes about safety, vaccinations and how flexible they want work to be. Some are feeling excited about getting back in the office; others are feeling anxious. Navigating all of this, especially in the context of a very competitive employee marketplace, is a challenge.”

Lessons that won’t go to waste

Though 2020 was marked by challenges, those hardships also led to meaningful change that was long overdue: the prioritization of employee well-being, work-life balance—especially in the case of working women and mothers—and open lines of communication. For many, a top priority going forward will be preserving those culture changes and continuing that momentum. “We are planning to carry the lessons we learned over the past year and a half forward as we begin a new journey toward a more flexible, hybrid way of working,” says Kate Weiss, executive VP and global HR business partner at UM. “We also have a deeper appreciation for how critical it is to support one another: to check in, to listen, to empathize and to care for each other in all that we do.”

For businesses operating from multiple geographic locations, the switch to remote work also carried with it some significant upsides. “The impact of the last year and a half has allowed our teams to work more closely together virtually across geographies than ever before,” says AMP Agency’s Tilden-Jewett. “Evolving our working model has allowed us to expand and diversify our talent pool and develop more efficient methods to deliver value for our clients.”

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Detaching work from the limitations of physical office spaces meant, for many, greater productivity and an increased sense of teamwork. “We have six offices across the company. Remote work brought us together in a way that we had never been able to achieve before—we were all on a level playing field,” says ENGINE’s Casey. “We all experienced key culture initiatives together versus as an individual office or team, and were able to push the culture of the company forward by light-years.”

Agency leaders like Matt Weiss, president of Huge Brooklyn, have put measures in place to safeguard those values: New social events, employee-driven acknowledgement programs and measures like “minimal meeting Fridays” to keep the pace manageable—the idea is to keep those measures going long after the pandemic.

"The greatest lesson we learned is one that we never forgot," says Weiss. "Talent is our number one priority at Huge. It's the people who create culture, do the work, build strong partnerships with our clients and build bonds across the agency.”

A necessary evolution

Beyond talent-centric measures, the pandemic pushed agencies and businesses in a direction many were already headed. “The past 18 months has destroyed many orthodoxies around how things needed to be: the nature of what work looks like, what collaboration looks like, how much travel is required, what leadership looks like, what equity looks like and so on,” says Deloitte Digital’s Peto.

Part of that sped-up evolution is tied closely to what leadership looks like, and how it’s felt by employees. “Burnout was experienced across all levels, and, as business leaders, it’s important for us to be vulnerable in front of our staff and share our own experiences,” says Two by Four’s Steverson. “Our employees have learned they need to take care of themselves first, and we’re continuing to work to create a community everyone can be proud of.”

The need for supportive managers and teams was highlighted during the pandemic, and for many making the necessary effort, those learnings will permeate agency culture in a permanent way. “The culture of our business has evolved over the past year and a half, and we’ve learned how to rally together to better support each other and our clients,” says Croud’s Tait. “Moving forward, an agile working policy will provide a raft of benefits to bolster a healthy work-life balance.”

The pandemic also brought out the resiliency in both people and businesses. For a company like AdLoad Technologies, which opened their doors—only to quickly shutter them—in January 2020, the team was able to turn a major setback into an opportunity. “It was tough, but we were able to take the time to make our product better, test out our software and bring out an even better product in 2021,” says Ranjit Phagura, co-founder and CEO. “Things are picking up, and we are hopeful for the future.”

For a Texas-based agency like Bandolier—which faced the added challenge of surviving the “snowpocalypse”—the key to overcoming the year’s hardships has been connecting with core values of empathy and understanding. “Our small agency survived everything thrown our way through patience and genuine human connection,” says Kelsey Hickok, creative content manager. “We are able to leverage these qualities to create unique, authentic content and take advantage of the extra eyeballs on social media.”

Across the board, the key takeaway for industry leaders from a year of life and work in a pandemic is clear: Give people the confidence and flexibility to do what they do best, in the way that works for their lives, and everything will flow from there. “Trust your people,” says Jack Morton’s Millon. “Talented staff are the backbone of your business and frankly, all businesses.”

Register today for the Small Agency Conference & Awards at AdAge.com/saca2021.