The Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, whatever you want to call it…People are leaving their jobs. And it makes sense: We’re nearing year three of the pandemic, cost of living is going up, hours are long for many, and some simply can’t imagine going back to the office again.

As a result, many ad agencies are introducing new perks and policies in hopes of retaining talent and keeping employees from walking out the door.

In a recent meeting with his leadership team, John Barker, CEO of New York agency Barker, said that “the rules have certainly changed and we need to change faster than the rules.”

Money, money, money

Even before the pandemic, experts suggested that leaving a job can often be the quickest way to advance a worker’s title or salary.

• With the stakes higher than ever, many people are taking that risk, putting agencies on defense. Barker decided to give employees a 4.3% year-forward bonus in December to proactively respond to growing inflation in 2022. Mary Beth Weil, EVP and managing director at Barker, told Marketing Brew that feedback has been positive.
• “To be able to respond in a way that is literally, tactically, meaningful brings joy to [employees],” she said.

Another one: According to Weil, the agency also gave holiday bonuses, which were meant to feel like a gift, while year-forward bonuses were more functional. It plans to continue watching inflation rates and consider quarterly adjustments.

Barker said it also plans to give out $1,000 anniversary bonuses this year, as well as retroactive $1,000 bonuses for every year an employee has worked with the agency. “It’s another important way to show appreciation and say, ‘You matter,’” Weil explained.

The joy of learning

Some agencies are taking a different approach, feeling money might not be the key to retention after all.

• Mya Kelly, VP of people and culture at mid-size agency R&R Partners, told us the agency is putting “a lot of emphasis on training and development” this year.
• “Money doesn’t really keep people,” Kelly said. “It’s good to keep people for the moment, but nowadays, I just kind of feel like we’ve decided throwing money at our employees doesn’t mean they’ll stay.”

Knowledge is power: Kelly said R&R purchased LinkedIn Learning for the company to help employees develop technical skills. Long-term, the plan is to align courses taken with its performance management tool, which will track progress and be used in evaluations for things like bonuses. According to Kelly, employees will “be rewarded for taking the courses that have been identified as a goal for them for the year.”

She added that she hopes to change certain aspects of the agency’s compensation structure by the end of this year, including adding merit-based increases, which R&R did not do in 2021.

Other agencies are increasing perks, like more vacation time, to hold onto staff. Read the full story here.—KH

The MTA’s revised advertising policy is already having an impact. At least one brand’s OOH advertising strategy has been affected by not only the MTA’s recent ban on cannabis ads, but also its newly expanded restrictions on sex-related advertising.

• In September 2021, OkCupid introduced its “Every Single Person” campaign, which CMO Melissa Hobley described as an inclusive campaign created to make all types of daters feel welcome on the online dating service.
• For instance, one ad welcomes “every single insomniac” to the service, while another says that OkCupid is for “every single pansexual.” It ran on multiple channels, from digital to OOH, including the NYC subway system.
• OkCupid decided to bring the campaign back in 2022 for what Hobley told Marketing Brew is peak dating-app season (January and February), kicking off its second rollout in NYC.

What happened next: The MTA rejected four of the “Every Single Person” campaign images that it had previously approved only months prior, citing both its new cannabis advertising ban and its recently expanded definition of a “sexually oriented product or service,” according to OkCupid.

• One image referencing “tokers” was rejected due to the MTA’s ban on ads promoting “cannabis or any cannabis-related product,” while the other three were nixed due to the MTA’s ban on references to “sexual activity.”

“We were definitely scrambling, and surprised that images that were [okay] just four months prior we were now being told that we could not bring to life,” Hobley told us, adding that the timing (this all happened over the holidays) made having about a third of the campaign images rejected even worse.

But, but, but: OkCupid says it ended up paying the MTA around the same amount of money this time around, even without those four images (Hobley declined to share specific figures). And she told us the situation won’t prevent OkCupid from working with the MTA for future campaigns.

Bottom line: “​​We were really disappointed in [the] MTA’s decision…but we also love the subway, and we love the medium as a way to tell a story,” she explained.—PB

Following Edelman’s announcement earlier this month that it wouldn’t stop working with some of its fossil-fuel companies, scientist Michael Mann (aka Leonardo DiCaprio in Don’t Look Up) told Adweek that if the agency wants to avoid the appearance of greenwashing, ending work with fossil-fuel clients is “a must.” Now, Mann is among 450+ scientists calling for change.

Together with the Union of Concerned Scientists and Clean Creatives, the group of scientists signed a letter last week asking for PR and ad agencies to stop working with fossil-fuel clients.

• In the letter, contributing scientists write that they are “consistently faced with a major and needless challenge: overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil-fuel companies that seek to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks posed by the climate crisis.”
• Signees include scientists at universities around the world and from institutions like the Nuclear Energy Information Service, as well as doctors, including one from Boston Children’s Hospital.

Astrid Caldas, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Clean Creatives that the urgency stems from the need to cut carbon emissions by at least 50% this decade and to net-zero “no later than” 2050 to avoid a climate catastrophe.

That’s not possible, the group writes in the letter, if PR and ad agencies work with companies or trade groups that “plan to expand their production of oil and gas.” Or contribute to efforts that spread “climate deception” and impede climate-related legislation.

Duncan Meisel, director at Clean Creatives, told Marketing Brew he believes the letter will make it harder for agencies to make sustainability pledges without addressing their client work.

“There’s no longer any excuse of not knowing how dangerous this work is, or attempting to hide behind the ambiguous commitments made by the oil industry,” he said.—KH

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Shocker: Social media users have recently grown more privacy-conscious, according to this infographic, which digs into the specifics.

Product: Get a little closer to the perfect product rollout with these seven steps.

Content: Here’s a content marketer’s guide to demonstrating ROI.

Watch: Morning Brew is on YouTube! Our shows cover the tech, trends, and companies you care about, but we do it in a way that won’t make your eyes burn from jargon or boredom. Check out some of our newest shows.

“Flu.”—This 1920 Florida grapefruit ad

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