Once upon a time, advertising agencies and clients formed relationships that lasted for decades. Personnel on both sides remained with their employers and held these relationships together through many years of work.
It’s unlikely to have escaped anyone’s notice that things have changed. Recent studies show job tenure growing shorter and shorter; people are tending to leave jobs after only two or three years, with the overall average down to 4.4 years. Most 30-year olds would be hard-pressed to keep their resumes to a single page – the former gold standard. Client-agency relationships now often break off at the two-year mark.
While it’s tempting to use this as another example of the coming apocalypse, or the fall of humanity, it would serve us all well in this industry to look optimistically at the advantages of shorter relationships. You can:
- Keep your skills sharp by learning new personalities, industries and products
- Enjoy the energy that new clients bring into the agency
- Give life to great ideas that never got used
- Avoid multiple personnel changes and their accompanying strategic paradigm shifts
Any agency that’s reluctant to step outside their comfort zone is probably not the agency a client would most want to work with. So celebrate change and take advantage of the two-year itch to become an even stronger, smarter, more creative agency.
Hit us up on Twitter if you have thoughts on this!
