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Nurturing the Future of Advertising

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

The advertising industry has been facing a "creative talent" shortage for quite some time. Agency executives feel that they cannot recruit the talent they believe they need, young professionals and junior copywriters who grew up in the Information Age think they know everything and deserve more than they should, and recruiters are stuck in between, thinking that both sides have no idea what they want.

It is a mess.

But it is not a disaster, and it can be fixed. The "sink or swim" model that has been in place in many agencies, whether you like it or not, is no longer efficient. Advertising executives must take a more active role in developing talent in our industry. There's a model already in place in other industries that AdLand can adapt.

Amibiga Dhiraj, a contributor to the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, calls it the Montessori Way.

The process is modeled, of course, after Italian educator Maria Montessori, and Montessori education is practiced in an estimated 20,000 schools worldwide.

Dhiraj focuses on the main tenets of the Montessori principles, which includes "an emphasis on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child's psychological development, as well as technological advancements in society." If it's good enough to be applied to Dhiraj's analytics services firm, it should work for advertising.

True, advertising comes with a mixed bag of talent; copywriters, graphic designers, business development, strategists, media buyers, and the like. But grooming talent using these principles can be implemented across the board. Each focus can provide significant challenges for young professionals, and can leave room for them to grow into the job and profession. This model too, provides the "limits," where executives and team leads are positioned to instruct young talent about the ways advertising is done in the real world while still sharpening the fundamentals the young professionals need to have as their base. The process gives the young talent a path to grow professionally, while learning new ways of thinking and new materials to use.

In a fast-paced environment like an agency, this could mean implementing some changes. Let's look at meetings, for example. The process demands that the developing talent to have "uninterrupted blocks of work time." It doesn't mean getting rid of meetings altogether, but in order to fully immerse themselves into their work and thinking, young professionals cannot have distractions like meetings constantly on their minds and schedules. If the advertising industry is serious about developing its talent, the talent needs time to develop.

The process also calls for a "discovery model," where young professionals can learn conceptually instead of being told exactly what to do.

As Dhiraj mentions in her article, this process does not create competition amongst the employees. If implemented correctly (along with supervisor's encouragement), the Montessori way will drive young AdPeople to constantly improve and challenge themselves. Leaders in the advertising industry would no doubt give more challenging work to those who strive to excel, and prove to be nimble when applying concepts in their specific advertising activities.

Now here's the rub. In order for this to work, as mentioned before, time is crucial. Dhiraj pointed out that in her firm, it takes about 18 months for their brightest new recruits to be promoted, and three years to begin differentiating and spreading their employees out based on performance. In the advertising world these days, three years is a lot of time. Heck, even at 18 months, our Gen Y brethren start to get a little antsy. Though time is important to develop the best talent the right way, the advertising world will need to play with what timetable will be the best fit. With this, Leaders have to establish a long-term vision that young talent are able to buy into. In order to keep, nurture, and retain talent, the "burn and churn" principle that is accepted in AdLand needs to go. More investment from the agency's side will turn into a more invested young professional.

Show some love to your new talent, AdLand, and they won't disappoint.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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