Fancy titles and salary spikes: A cheap trick to retain talent in HK ad land?

Hong Kong’s marketing industry has gone through massive amounts of turbulence, and like many parts of Asia, talent woes continue to impact many within the industry. This is further exacerbated by the fact that more than 10% of skilled workers have left the city, according to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (HKGCC) in March this year.

There are many contributing factors to the loss of brilliant minds in the marketing and agency scene – from migration, to switch in industry, job relocation and the rise of the gig economy – the reasons are endless. The fight for good talent has also made the competition with the marketing and advertising industry extremely stiff. This has left many agencies with little choice but to lure in suitable candidates with inflated salaries and titles.

However, the tactic isn’t by any means a sustainable one.

Publicis Media Hong Kong’s CEO Lawrence Yang agreed that the market has experienced significant talent shortages, and salary rises over the last 12 months rose rapidly  due to changing market conditions across the region. "The media industry salary benchmarks have indeed increased, and this is happening across all industries. A ‘salary’ is a recognition companies offer to employees. It is always necessary as a business to adapt to the market and ensure that any decision to reward employees benefits the company,” Yang said.

However, Yang warned that although paying higher salaries is very much a needed for hiring the right talent today, the long-term impacts can be detrimental on the industry.

"I personally don’t think that salary and title inflation is the answer to Hong Kong’s marketing and advertising talent issue. On the contrary, I believe it is actually part of the problem. Rather than taking the time to properly mentor our people, we too often go for the quick fix," said DDB CEO, Andreas Krasser.

He added that rather than helping employees see the value of a long-term career path within the ad industry, often the path taken is to sway them with short-term perks. In order to resolve the talent crisis, Krasser is of the view that  dedicated mentorship, proper growth planning, and most importantly, creating environments that don’t interfere with our people’s wellbeing, is the answer.

At the end of the day, it’s not about promotions, it’s about principles.

Does the marketing industry have a compensation problem?

According to Anson Leung, co-founder of digital agency Pontac the marketing industry has long struggled with compensation, and it is up to decision-makers to take a stand and say that creativity and artistic skills are worth money.  “It is a decision we have to make that talent is worth paying for,” he said, adding:

Title inflation is a cheap trick, and in our hearts we all know how little a difference it really makes.

In the end, fair compensation and compassionate management are the only real tools we have to retain top-tier talent, he added. 

Agreeing with Anson Leung, was Ivan Leung, general manager of digital martech company Aloha who said salary increase and title inflation are the most common actions taken to retain talent but deemed them to not be sustainable fixes. He added that salary increase, for example, need to be supplemented with other initiatives. Meanwhile, title inflation can also backfire and impact clients if staffs are potentially given added responsibility that they are not yet ready to handle.

Ivan Leung suggested that organisations need to undertake a multi-dimensional sustainable measure; review and enhancing areas such as company culture, career progression, working environment and pay and benefit.  This then needs to be communicated better to the staff.

“It is essential to communicate to understand staff needs and address those needs in a way that makes sense for the company,” Leung added.

Ivan Leung’s views are also reflected in a recent Morgan Mckinley study that showed that 47% of HK professionals don't actually know what their employers are doing to try and retain them. And the problem isn’t isolated to marketing and advertising alone. Robert Sheffield, MD at Morgan Mckinley of Greater China, said: "We expect to continue to see high levels of salary inflation across most sectors in 2022. Increments are ranging from between 25-50% in some cases.”

Can the industry come together?

Simone Tam, CEO of dentsu certainly thinks so as the shortage of resources, inflation of titles and salaries, disruption of business, is causing frustration on both the marketing and agency sides. “The domino effect is felt and is creating a loss of trust in agencies. I would love to see agency leaders come together and solve this constructively as a united industry," Tam added.

Meanwhile, Alice Chow, managing director at MediaCom HK said that she would want to see agencies inflating titles to solve short-term staff turn-around, as undoubtedly it will drag down the quality of the industry’s work over time.

“I hope people in the industry and new joiners are enthusiastic about data and new technology and consider these parts when joining or working in the field. We need to upkeep a strong desire to transform because we should never conclude what would be the coming focus,” she added.

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