A witness to agency history

I remember when I first joined the IPA as its Public Relations Officer in 1990, one of my first tasks was to share the IPA Agency Census topline to an interested trade and national press who all wanted to be the first to break the news about employee numbers. Because the numbers were an indication of the health of the business and the wider economy as a whole.

Being young (then) and very aware of the responsibility, the Census press release positioning was always to tell it straight, without angles which I always left to the journalist. Perhaps it was my greenness, but journalists in those days seemed quite terrifying – especially those on the nationals – because they were always on a deadline and cross at being interrupted by phone. These were the days before clickbait and rolling 24-hour news, when if you had the temerity to ring, you had to sell your story well, and quickly, if you weren’t going to hear “look, I am on a deadline, AND WHY? would I care about that!?” Rufus Olins (Sunday Times) used to say this to me a lot. But it was fun, and we had 4 weekly trade magazines on a Tuesday, Wednesday and a Thursday competing for stories and media editors on all of the national newspapers.

My bystander moments

When I look back on my 30+ year career at the IPA I feel I have been a witness to a number of key individual employment shifts and been a bystander to key moments of change or learning. To give you an example, having lived it, it is a safe bet to say we can expect a recession about every ten years; and that when this happens the industry can lose up to 25% of its staff, but that the numbers always come back strongly and support a shift in focus or job roles. I have seen the gradual decline of Secretary’s and the strengthening of PA’s as a key role; more female representation in the creative department; and the rise of digital or tech jobs which are still male dominated. I am happy to tell you that we have always had very strong women leaders – Tess Alps, Christine Walker and Barbara Nokes to name a few from my early days. And that the reason we did not have a female President until 2010 was that the ones we asked, declined the role. I heard that it was because they were not interested. And I am glad this has changed.

Men vs women

Thirty years ago, when I started, the male/female ratio was about even: 51/49. In 1960 it was 60/40 But since 2015 we have started to see an interesting shift in female representation from 50% to now nearly 55%. This is the new news. I also joined as the IPA had just published Marilyn Baxter’s groundbreaking 1990 Women in Advertising Report which talked of the glass ceiling in our agencies. And I would like to think that initiatives such as this report, our constant encouragement of women, latterly through our Stepping in the Spotlight series, and the family friendly measures put in place by agencies to retain employees and their continued commitment post Covid to hybrid working have worked in tandem for the good mental health of their employees and a better work/life balance. Three years on, the Census tells us that only 2% of agencies want their agencies back five days a week.

Back in 2002, females accounted for less than 20% of the c-suite. In 2023 it was nearly 38% and 32% at the highest level of seniority eg CEO. Again from the Census we know females are particularly attracted to HR, Account Management and Planning/strategy. Our data also shows a paygap of 15.2% in creative agencies and 14.3% in media agencies.

Staff turnover and retention are always major issues for the industry given that it generally hovers around the 30% mark. While we are still seeing women leaving the business in their forties compared to men – 18.4% vs 29.9% - it will be interesting to see how and if this changes in the coming years given the female base is the highest it has ever been. 

The first to look at diversity

I also remember when we first started thinking that we should gather agency diversity numbers. It was around 2003 when Jonathan Mildenhall (ex TBWA I think and Coca-Cola etc) and Stephen Woodford (now AA DG) were given the brief by the IPA Council to focus on and report on our diversity picture – from numbers of employees, to portrayals in ads so we could attempt to begin to publish best practice advice. This initiative spawned a number of leadership reports over the next twenty or so years which involved closely tracking ONS data and commissioning key players to comment on the evolving picture and got us on the Channel 4 lunchtime news being the first to coin and talk about “the brown pound”. The first employee figures we reported were around 6% but we also know that this was an estimate because we heard later that some agencies were retrospectively gathering the information they did not have to hand by looking down their phone list and adding up the numbers of any ‘foreign sounding’ names.

How we have come on!

The ethnic make up of our members employee base now stands at 23.3% and there is a particularly concentrated number of employees from a non white background at junior level at the moment. Looking forwards we expect this group to move through middle and senior levels within a few years.  

Again, blowing our own trumpet, we can be proud that in 2015 Tom Knox set industry goals for both women and ethnic representation by 2020. And we have nearly achieved them.

So as I close the door on some of my memories behind the annual Census which I hope you have enjoyed, I realise how proud I am of the role the IPA and IPA members have played in capturing the slow reveal of change. For the better.

Filling out surveys can seem a bit of a bore, but without the data, we can’t share the bigger picture and tell it how it is. Without the sensational angles. And I feel that the IPA as your trade body are the ones that should be asking you. For no commercial gain. And with no fuss.

The IPA Annual Agency Census goes into the field on 16 September.  The results will be launched on 9 January 2025.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.