Markets

Agencies Offer Much Questionable Advice for the Recession

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: December 22, 2008 / 3:01 PM EST / MoneyWatch

As the recession grinds on, the ad agency business is coming out with reams of advice for the newly poor, whether they are clients on tight budgets or fired staffers. Some of the advice is -- how to put this politely? -- not as good as it might be. Here's a selection of questionable agency advice for the downturn:

Ad Age has produced a couple of stories from the perspective of people who still have jobs.

This one, titled "What to Do When Your Friends Get Laid Off and You Don't," might as well be filed under "Advice for people who don't need advice." Nonetheless, the piece suggests that Twitter may help you get a new job:

it is incumbent upon friends and former colleagues to help someone who is laid off get acquainted with such social-networking sites as Facebook, Twitter and the business site Linked In.

Folks, Twitter can't even pay its own bills. Networking is fine but draw the line somewhere.

The second piece from Ad Age's somewhat tone-deaf headline writers is "The Executioner's Tale: The Folks Swinging the Ax Aren't Immune From Pain."

Right, because it's so much worse to keep your job than, er, lose it? Or something? John Sullivan, a professor of management at San Francisco State University and a human resources consultant, gives this astonishing quote:

It's 10 times worse to do it than to have it done to you. ... Surviving is not the best thing to happen after a layoff. There's plenty of actual research that shows their lives are miserable.

People, this is simply a lie. Don't believe it. Sullivan has been at SSFU for 20 years, meaning there's a good chance he's tenured and will never be fired himself.

Follow DDB's lead and start nickel-and-diming everything, now:

In a wonderfully confusing piece on hourly billing practices at DDB, the agency has discovered that its clients thought a "work week" was 40 hours, when at the agency a "work week" was only 35 hours. The agency was only able to bill 87.5 percent of some of its staff, and thus lost money. Now everybody has to get on the same 40-hour page. However, DDB is careful to point out that the agency bills by scope of work, not billable hours. So ... why bother? (NB This is why clients are always trying to figure out how, exactly, agencies spend their money.)

Ogilvy launched a web site titled Ogilvy on Recession.

Most of it is still in the "coming soon" stage. Given how many client budgets turn over on Jan. 1, perhaps it would have been more useful to have it online by then? Interestingly, none of it is about branding; much of it is about pr and boosting sales. Perhaps Ogilvy is having difficulty getting the remainder of its recession content out the door because its staffers are distracted right now with all the layoff rumors. WPP chief Martin Sorrell has announced there will be job losses, but hasn't put a number on the cut.