@ Ad Week ’07: As Media Agencies Look To Reinvent, Questions About Talent And Structure Come First

After going over some of the architectural details of the NYT’s new headquarters, NYT advertising reporter Stuart Elliot posed questions to a panel of media agency CEOs on subjects relating to the hiring ad retention of talent, competition from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and how to reinvent their organizations to meet the challenges of digital media.

On the question of Google appearing poised to steal more talent after luring Ogilvy & Mather’s Andy Berndt over to head its new creative lab: Charlie Rutman, CEO of Havas’ MPG, noted that Google is in a better position to offer creative individuals a lot more money than agencies can. “We’re also competing with consultants. But yes, I find it tougher than in the past. I’ve been in this industry for 30 years and we’ve adapted by trial and error, but we’ve done a pretty good job at keeping up with change.” But in terms of hiring, some of Rutman’s colleagues weren’t so sanguine.

Nick Bryan, CEO, Universal McCann: “As agencies, we’re used to working within silos, and that goes for the client side as well. We have to question whether that is the best structure. The fundamental issue we’re dealing with is how we react. One of the problems in figuring that out relate to the industry’s economic model – the commission model – and that is not necessarily the best one for this age. We need to work with clients that have a long tail but no marketing business and has a campaign with a 100 different touchpoints, we need to come up with another way to charge for our services.”

Laura Desmond, CEO, MediaVest: “We all have a lot of questions to ask about ourselves as we try to reinvent. Are we in the media business or in the connections business? Are we planners or buyers? The source of innovation comes at the operating level, within the right holding company environment. If we don’t reinvent, it’ll be done for us.”

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