Is there any end in sight to the talent crisis facing the Middle East’s advertising, media and marketing fields? Last year’s first annual Communicate salary survey painted a picture of an industry facing double-digit salary inflation, rampant poaching and a ridiculous rate of employee turnover. More than a year later, many say the situation has worsened.
“The problems are getting even bigger,” says Mounir Harfouche, managing and creative director of Lowe MENA. “Agencies have, in my opinion, a major issue with people – either finding them or keeping them.” New business keeps pouring in, but the supply of talent isn’t keeping pace, and it doesn’t help when the clients themselves start poaching staff.
Among the chief problems – and surely the best-documented – is the cost of living in Dubai, the region’s media and advertising hub. A February report on human resources in the Gulf from Bayt.com, a recruitment site that claims to be the largest in the region, noted that the cost of living “has replaced the weather as the main topic of conversation.”
And this was prior to Salik, Dubai’s new road toll system, which set off a new round of complaints among the emirate’s cabbies and chattering classes.
For years, pessimists predicted inflation would lead to a human resources crisis for Gulf economies. In the marketing communications field – an industry almost entirely dependent on imported talent, from the CEO downwards – it seems the worst fears have come to pass.
Average entry-level salaries now stand at 8,451 dirhams per month for the position of junior account executive in an advertising agency, 9,917 dirhams per month for a junior buying executive at a media agency, and 8,000 dirhams per month for a junior account executive at a PR agency. These results are based on a voluntary and unaudited poll. According to MBR Worldwide, an independent recruitment company that caters to the industry, last year agencies paid fresh graduates a bare minimum of 5,500 to 6,000 dirhams per month. “Now the agencies pay a minimum of 7,000 to 7,500 dirhams,” says Piyush Ganatra, MBR’s managing director.
ATROCIOUS ATTRITION. According to a Bayt survey in January, salaries in advertising rose an average 17.2 percent year on year, and in PR were up an average 14 percent.
“My endeavor is to have anything between 10 and 15 percent,” says Avi Bhojani, CEO of BPG, a full-service agency that includes media buying and PR arms. Others, like Harfouche, peg the figure at about 20 percent. It sounds great for job-seekers – on the surface. Things are less rosy when you consider the average cost of living in Dubai shot up a whopping 28 percent last year.
This means employees’ purchasing power has fallen considerably in real terms, and the trend shows no sign of abating. Employees’ difficulty saving is compounded by the plummeting value of the dirham, which is pegged to the beleaguered greenback. If you’re sending money home to Mumbai or saving up for a down payment on an apartment in Islington, that’s bad news.
The problem is as much psychological as it is macroeconomic. For many, Dubai has strayed from the comfort zone that makes it an attractive work destination – especially for those in the creative industries. “Dubai has lost its charm as the land of opportunity,” says Harfouche.
In short, Dubai residents are frightened by what’s happening in the city. “I think people have lost the feeling of social security, with prices rising at any time, leaving everyone with a very scary feeling of a city with no price limits,” Harfouche says. Increasingly, what’s earned in Dubai stays in Dubai, be it in the form of soaring rents, road toll charges, or nights out on the town. “It’s designed in such a way that the money you generate will be invested back in the country.”
Poaching is widespread in all areas, but it’s particularly acute in the PR field. “Attrition rates are atrocious in PR,” says Bhojani. “Upwards of 25 percent in our business. One out of four people is new every nine months.”
Bhojani adds, “PR is less of a team game than advertising is. … You don’t create an emotional bond with your team as easily, so you can pack your bags and move in nine months’ time to another firm and not feel too disturbed about the environment.”
SKILLS IN DEMAND. In all fields, agencies are searching far and wide to fill the gaps. “In advertising, we tend to go to the UK a lot. With PR vacancies we go as far afield as the States. And South Africa and Australia are certainly very popular hunting grounds,” says Lama Ataya, corporate communications director at Bayt.com.
Creatives and digital specialists, as opposed to account managers, are coming in from France and Germany. North Africa, where fluency in both French and Arabic gives job seekers an advantage, is providing more candidates than ever before.
There appears to be no shortage of actual bodies to put on seats. For every opening within the industry posted online at Bayt.com, the site receives about 400 CVs, according to Ataya. This average excludes the most popular jobs, where the numbers skyrocket. Most applications to jobs in the industry come from the UAE, where Bayt is based. The Emirates saw 46,300 submitting their CVs last year. Egypt produced 19,000 applications, followed by India and Pakistan with over 13,700 combined, and Lebanon with 8,000.
But it’s the skills that are lacking. Jack Pearce, managing director of Matrix Public Relations, says PR agencies are hard pressed to find Arabic-speaking staff – “particularly those with good writing, translation and journalism skills, [who] are in very high demand and can command a premium salary.”
There’s also a paucity of digital media talent. “The playing field has very much changed,” says Ataya. “It includes emerging technology, things like video-on-demand, podcasting – new ways of reaching target audiences that are perhaps more cost efficient and more focused than traditional mass media methods.”
NICE BRIEFS. Harfouche says the most difficult positions to fill are English and Arabic copywriters and strategic planners. Part of this has to do with meddling or overly cautious clients and the lack of sexy briefs” – that is, opportunities to do great work. “Good copywriters will run a mile the moment a client who doesn’t even know the language begins to dictate headlines, body copy and terms and conditions,” he says. “And understandably, if nine out of 10 great concepts are bombed and replaced with the most basic and boring ideas – the likes of which you see every day on 10 different pages in Gulf News – they’ll be off.”
But does it really make fiscal sense to give a copywriter’s ego greater weight than a client who, after all jjust wants things a certain way – and who ultimately pays all the bills? Consider this: A number of agencies in Dubai – particularly those with reputations for creativity – are known to pay less than their competitors. People are lining up to work there anyway. With staffing costs going through the roof, that makes a difference to the bottom line.
The same principle stands in less creative parts of the marketing business, like PR or client service. “Salaries are only one factor in employee satisfaction and are not even the most important,” says Pearce. “Creating a supportive team environment which acknowledges individual achievement and encourages self development is extremely important.”
That’s also why agencies are putting increasing emphasis on training, which could include rotating employees through departments to give them greater exposure to different subdisciplines, or even offering stints working overseas.
“Today’s cutting-edge HR professional is very aware that without the training, it’s hard to motivate their employees over the long run,” says Bayt’s Ataya.
It’s a risky proposition. After all, you can never guarantee that an employee won’t take the skills learned in your agency to the nearest higher-paying competitor. But increasingly agencies are seeing they have little choice. “You can’t buy loyalty,” says Pearce, “but you can earn it.”
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