The Headhunters' View

A panel of top executive recruiters discuss the current trends shaping careers in marketing and advertising
The salary tables in our Salary Benchmarks report only tell part of the tale about the state of the job market at marketing companies and ad agencies in Canada. An array of trends are shaping what it's like for people who work in the industry, such as how quickly pay rates are rising (or, more recently, how slowly); what sorts of non-salary compensation are paid in various jobs; the flow of people in the business back and forth across the 49th parallel; and lifestyle and pay differences among Canadian regions.
To discuss these trends, we assembled a round table of five of the executive recruiters who helped us compile the numbers for our Salary Benchmarks tables. Our session was held in Toronto Sept. 5, so it doesn't reflect the impact of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. six days later. The moderator was Marketing's editor Stan Sutter, and managing editor Jim McElgunn and editorial assistant Averil Joseph were also in attendance.
The participants were:

Martin Kingston, senior consultant at Morris|Pervin Group: He has worked in marketing and advertising for more than 25 years. This has included senior marketing positions at General Foods. As well, he has held senior management roles, including president and CEO, executive vice-president and general manager, at agencies such as Ambrose Carr Linton Kelly, Baker Lovick/BBDO, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Leo Burnett and Young & Rubicam. He joined Morris|Pervin this year.
Sylvia MacArthur, president of Madison MacArthur: She has worked for more than 20 years with a variety of marketing companies, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Chesebrough Pond's and Reckitt & Coleman. MacArthur has also worked with major retailers, such as Sears, Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian Tire. She has been a search consultant for over 10 years and has run Madison MacArthur, which specializes in marketing and communications, for seven years.
David Smith, vice-president creative and digital practices at Mandrake Management Consultants: He has worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble, as well as in account management at Bates Advertising and Young & Rubicam. He was managing director and partner in the retail agency Prism Communications and president of the Marketing and Promotion Group before joining Mandrake as a consultant and now VP of the creative and digital practices.
Harry Teitelbaum, president of InterCom Recruitment: He worked as a radio announcer before working at the agencies Saffer Advertising, Vickers and Benson Advertising and Bates Advertising in account management. In 1993, he founded InterCom Recruitment, an executive recruitment firm specializing in marketing and marketing communications professionals.
 
The big picture
Stan Sutter: Was anybody surprised by any of the numbers here?
David Smith: I would assume that our clients would be sitting there saying, 'Hey, how come things aren't dramatically less than they were last year? I find it interesting with our clients that they expect that there's going to be a downward spiral on salaries, but conversely they only want to hire the top people. So those people aren't going to take less or lower their expectations out there.
I would suggest to you that it's the bottom section of the market that's being hit most. If you're a top-performing brand manager in a company, your expectations are not lower than they were a year ago. And, in fact, for you to move somewhere you've got to have the same promises, if not more security. So when we tried to compare this year versus last year, we didn't see, particularly amongst the top 25% or 50% of the group, that their salaries were any lower or that their expectations were any lower.
Chad: The only thing that's going to be pushing on that is that there are a number of senior people being displaced around the director or VP level and there are very few jobs available at that level. Some of these people are pretty talented, but if they're sitting at home for six months and nothing's happening, they may come back to the recruiter and say, 'Look, I'm willing to take a step back. So let me at least keep this even keel, or put it a bit lower at the higher levels. It's that mid-level where there just aren't enough talented, trained people where I would agree with you, David.
Martin Kingston: There's been a general trends towards flattening operations in marketing or advertising agencies. And that's caused problems in different areas as far as compensation. For people coming into the industries, they're coming in and putting pressure on those with experience. Their expectations are high coming out of school.
Smith: An ongoing trend is, as you've mentioned, people in the mid level, with seven to ten years' experience, we're seeing companies making the same mistakes as they did in 1991-94. They're not willing to bring people in.
The number of people who came in in 1991-94 was dramatically reduced in the last recession, so what we're seeing is seven to 10 years out those people are getting premiums over what you would have typically expected, because there's just much less a supply for those type of people than there is a market demand. What we project is that people who put hiring freezes on today, then five years out when people are starting to look for an account supervisor with five years' experience we may see a disproportionate premium put on them.
Chad: It's going to be even more so, because a lot of the training grounds aren't training them and haven't been for a few years. At the same time, with the senior levels, you have jobs being annihilated by multinationals without making us into the branch offices we used to be in the '70s.
Sutter: Sylvia, you raised a point before this round table about financial services, especially at the CEO level, that in the top marketing organizations it's way higher pay.
Sylvia MacArthur: It's not just financial services, it's also in a lot of the new-economy businesses that you're finding that. There may have been a little bit of a slowdown now with the telecommunications and technology arenas, but they've both got quite significant pay as well. There are very specialized skills and perhaps a shorter time frame to exercise those skills.
 
Cross-border job hopping
Harry Teitelbaum: One of the trends that I see is that we're losing a lot of human capital to the the United States, because the differential between U.S. pay and Canadian pay is getting much broader.
I'm getting about 10 or 12 resumes sent to me through an electronic service. Unfortunately, they're all U.S. resumes, but on average the minimum is about $150,000 to start, and these could be people who have anywhere from three to seven years of experience. Very rarely do I see something under $150,000. So that's a huge differential from where we're at in terms of the averages that we've just completed (in the tables for this report).
Sutter: So it's a 50% to 100% premium in the U.S.?
Teitelbaum: It varies by market and it varies by experience. But, yeah, we're losing a lot of people to the U.S. based on both tax issues and compensation issues.
Chad: Harry, that's slowing down now because they (the U.S. government) are not giving out the visas anymore in the last eight or nine months. I'm absolutely inundated, particularly by people who've gone to California. And when they get let go, they're on, I think it's on an H1 visa or an N1 visa, and the scenario is they technically have to return within 10 days. The U.S. government's giving them some slack right now, but they have to get out. And it's not just the West Coast, we're getting them from Chicago-
Kingston: We're seeing them from New York as well. And with a lot of the dot coms going down as well, people are coming back and they're willing to take a lower salary. They've been earning great money down there, but they will come back. They recognize they can get a better lifestyle here. And that's the reality: they're not jacking up the prices, at least we're not seeing seeing that.
Chad: That was happening up until December. It was ridiculous, that was a major issue.
Sutter: People are flowing back in (to Canada) in the last year?
Kingston: We're getting them back in now.
Smith: That was people going into the digital space. It's been tough to move to the United States in the advertising space for a long time, because you have to demonstrate to get a visa that you and you alone can do this job. And with 15,000 people unemployed in the New York area in the advertising business, it's awfully hard unless it's an intra-company transfer to demonstrate that you have that skill.
There was a creative director who was prominent here in Toronto who moved to San Francisco about two years ago, and it took him a huge amount of time to get the necessary paperwork. He had to pull out every award he had and they had to advertise in the local paper in the United States.
So I don't see that as a huge drain (in marketing and advertising). In the digital world, it was certainly a drain because they were giving out visas to anybody who could steam a mirror in the digital world. But here, in the advertising world, you weren't seeing a lot of people migrating unless it was an intra-company transfer, because it was just too hard to do it.
MacArthur: Going back to the fact that a lot of companies aren't training, that's going to cost down the road. That's the one area where it's easier for the young people to get into the U.S. They can get a short-term visa and learn the craft there, both in advertising and in marketing. And so we're losing those young people.
Chad: We are only losing them if they go to a U.S. university. Have you seen a lot of people who've been educated here and get a one-year visa in the U.S.?
MacArthur: Yes, actually.
Chad: Okay, I didn't know that.
MacArthur: And then if they end up marrying down there, then they're gone forever. But they're using it to get the experience.
 
Getting a life outside work
Smith: The other thing we're seeing, and it's once again agency-related, and it's a poor statement, but because the clients are in such a cash crunch they keep reducing agency fees. And since 80% of all agency cost goes to people... To put it in the simplest form, if there were five account supervisors on a big piece of business two years ago, you've probably only got three today.
You've also got the people who are into a lifestyle segment, which is called Generation X, who are saying, 'You know what? I don't want to do this any more. And so I think that's particularly in that mid-range, (the people with experience of) five to 10 years, is creating part of that crush for the demand for people.
Clients are saying, 'But all these people are unemployed. Well, quite frankly, the best people aren't unemployed. There may be some of them, but it's not like it's across the board. And that continued downward pressure on fees for agencies is in fact creating a migration away from the business of people who have skills, because if there were five account executives on the business two years ago there are only three now. And, in fact, the client expects more than it did five years ago. So people say, 'Nuts to this! I want to go somewhere where I can live a life.
Most people, once they've been out of school five years, their lives change too, whether it's about getting married and having kids, or that they want to have something outside of work. So I think the real thing we are going to see in salaries in time is probably people with five to 10 years' experience are going to get a premium, which, for all of us, we'll say, 'An account supervisor is getting what?!&\#148; But because of the laws of supply and demand, it's just not going to be there. A lot of people are starting to call it slave labour because they are working an inordinate amount of time to take on the volumetrics that weren't there.
Teitelbaum: To that point, a top business student coming out of Western or Queen's has got a choice of three. He can go to an agency for $25,000 or $35,000 to start; he can go work at a packaged-goods company, in a product management role, at $55,000; or he can work as a consultant right out of school, at $80,000.
Chad: Except they've all been laid off.
Teitelbaum: They've all been laid off.
Smith: No, even better, they've been given that money (and told), 'Go hiking in Europe and then come back in January.
Kingston: And then you've got the environment where the managers are asked to keep their salaries down. People are scared to ask for a raise, they just want to hold on to job security. There are a lot of mixed feelings in marketing companies and agencies, the pressure on people to live lifestyle out, versus it wasn't 10 years ago where you were driving up the ladder and you could envisage getting good increases every year. Look at the numbers (in the salary tables) and there's hardly any inflation at all. And that's versus last year, and really versus the year before that. Things have flattened out quite dramatically.
Chad: The only difference is those two-year brand managers are getting the same amount as the five-year brand managers because nobody wants to lose them.
Kingston: Experience now has a premium too, but the entry level hasn't really changed that dramatically.
 
The dawn of harder times
Sutter: Five years ago was about when the economy really took off. Were there some huge jumps three, four or five years ago?
All: Yeah.
Chad: And people didn't necessarily have to have the background, they just had to be a live body with above-average intelligence. Now what happens is people (employers) are more picky. If they're in the shampoo business, they want to see three brand managers working on the shampoo business before they'll look at anybody who's on the conditioner business.
Sutter: Certainly in the last 18 months it's been changing. I hear you saying, David, that it's not going back to the days where the employers were in the driver's seat.
Smith: I don't even think it's the last 18 months in the marketing and advertising world. Certainly the last 18 months in the digital world, but in the marketing and advertising world I'd say it's in the last six months.
And I don't think we're even halfway there in terms of seeing the real change. If you look at the stock market, it's been the digital companies, the HPs and Nortels who've done the significant cutting. They talk about consumer demand going down in the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year. That will really start to hit some of the consumer companies, and that's where in this field we're going to start seeing some significant cuts coming again.
Chad: I don't think it's going be as aggressive as the last recession, because a lot of the companies have been a lot leaner in the last decade. They've been more aware of not overhiring, so they are pretty tight. They're tighter than they have been, so even when they let go they can't let go of (as many).
They used to have three people on a brand, and now they have one person on the brand. So what they'll do now is put some brands together in the short term or not replace someone when someone leaves and have someone take care of a large portfolio. I think it's going to be more from attrition in those companies.
Smith: In the agency world, you still haven't seen the client cuts that come usually in the fourth quarter. For the agency, where 80% of your costs are people, you don't have anywhere else to go but to people to address that. We haven't seen huge cuts at the consumer companies as of yet, but one would have to suggest that we will.
Chad: But the consumer companies are still doing revenues that may not be plus 3%, but they're in line with years previous. If it's a luxury product like a stereo, maybe not, but in terms of basic brands.
Kingston: And they forecast that too. It wasn't that they forecast great growth. In the last two or three years, they've pulled back their numbers and held their costs in line.
Smith: The biggest domestic advertising business here in Canada is cars. And the numbers just came out from there.
Chad: It's 24% down.
Smith: And that drives the agencies, the BBDOs and MacLarens, those are huge cash cows. And if the variable (for the car companies) to make their numbers is advertising, then it's more than just a salary
Sutter: What about non-salary compensation? What are the most common forms of that?
MacArthur: Certainly option shares, any combination thereof, depending on the particular structure of the organization. If you have particularly high (sales) targets that you want to make, those can be hugely attractive, but the individual who's charged with meeting those targets has a pretty tall order in front of them. If they do make them, though, it can be extremely lucrative. So a lot of companies are holding salaries but increasing the upside based on meeting pretty significant targets.
Sutter: So it's not uncommon to have 50% or 100% on top of your salary?
Chad: If you achieve or overachieve the target numbers.
Smith: That's usually just at the top end.
Kingston: It tends to be more in the area of sales. Sales get those incentives so much written into their contracts; (in) marketing, it's not quite as broad as far as 100%.
The area that we've seen a lot more growth in is spot bonusing. It's very discretionary, and yet it's a motivator around the entire company. It's an area that can be budgeted relatively low, but yet given out to a few stars within the organization.
Sutter: How does that work?
Kingston: You've overachieved against a goal or you've done something exceptionally.
Chad: Spot bonusing has been around for a long time.
Kingston: It's definitely been around a long time. But now it's almost replaced bonus. In a lot of places where bonuses have come out of profit, profit isn't there any longer. So how do you still maintain an environment or culture where you give a bonus as part of a motivational package?
Chad: A lot of times you'll give it based on achieving certain objectives, like keeping employees.
Kingston: The days of giving a bonus to the entire organization...it's not happening as broadly.
Smith: It's partly the new-economy idea of 'praise publicly and praise often. So you'll give an account executive a $100 spot bonus once or twice a year. That's 200 bucks instead of $1,000 at the end of the year.
Teitelbaum: At the junior and intermediate levels, they're trying to negotiate parking. I mean, that would be insignificant to us, but it's pretty significant to them.
Smith: One of the trends we're seeing is people separating dollars and titles, in the sense that, 'We're going to promote you to account director next month, but we have a salary freeze so we won't be able to give you an increase until March, or whenever it is. So the person gets two rewards. They're obviously taking some of the new-economy thinking, which is 'Do it twice, and the person feels better.
Chad: That's very dangerous, though. Because then the person gets the title but they're being paid below market. If they're good, sooner or later someone's going to call them and say, 'I can get you 20% more for an appointment across the street.
Kingston: We're also seeing a trend where there's more being paid for expertise and understanding and skills, versus the title itself. That's a general shift that will take place. We're seeing more specialty happening within organizations and people who are getting paid a premium for that. So job title per se is not as significant as the skill set.
 
Back to contract hiring
MacArthur: We're getting a lot of that too. Our clients are looking for highly accomplished, very specifically experienced people to initiate a project. But they don't necessarily want them long term, and then they can bring in the maintenance person.
So they're looking for two hires: one on a contract basis to get the project off the ground, and then a more-junior person to maintain it once it's been done. So we're starting to see many more queries about contract hires, but pretty senior-level people. There's a whole big market for a lot of those accomplished people out there who are having a heck of a time finding a new home.
Kingston: That raises another issue, the outsourcing expertise and service. In the agencies, we've seen that trend now for several years. Media (planning and buying) is under attack at the small agencies, to the point where it's no longer in existence in the very small agencies. Research has basically disappeared from most agencies today. Planning has somewhat replaced it, but it's then put a little bit of pressure on the account service side.
Again, that's another trend that is pulling the numbers down as far as the number of people in organizations and keeping cost down. It's a matter for the managers to just keep their overheads down and their head counts down as well.
MacArthur: With clients looking for very senior people to launch a project, they're concerned that once the program is launched the person will be bored, that they will no longer be challenged. So (they say), 'Let's do a whole different hire to support the program once all the thinking part is completed. And I think that's a very logical thing to do.
Teitelbaum: That's a trend in our (executive recruitment) business. We started out as contract placement for the first four years of our business, and then all our clients said, 'Okay, now we just want to own them and it became permanent hires.
Now the swing is slowly shifting back to, 'Well, I'm not sure if I'm going to make that permanent hire right now. We'll do it on contract and see how it goes. Or, as Sylvia points out, a very tactical reason for doing so.
MacArthur: And from the candidate's perspective, I'm seeing a lot less resistance. You can quite easily call up folks who have a permanent situation right now and talk to them and find a great deal of interest in a significant contract hire to do something exciting.
Chad: Especially if they're getting bored where they are.
MacArthur: There's really no sense of security anymore.
Chad: And some of their peers have contract jobs and they can pull in more. They don't take the benefits, they're younger, they're not as conscious of what those benefits might mean if someone were to get ill. So they can get a premium. But that's pretty dangerous, though.
 
Benefits? Who cares!
Sutter: Rick, you raised benefits. I've been surprised to hear and maybe this isn't true at all that agencies are notoriously lax in providing health benefits and other insurance. Is that the case?
Chad: I don't know if they're 'notorious' at it. Their cost of goods are people, whereas if you go to a manufacturer, their costs of goods are their cost of goods, and people are an expense. So when you consider that companies pay anywhere from 17% to 30% (of salaries) over and above in benefits, if they can save money on that and pay someone a higher base salary... Remember, most agency people are younger, so they're not as conscious of benefits and what it actually means.
MacArthur: They're invincible?
Chad: They're invincible.
Kingston: They don't have families.
Chad: And they don't have families necessarily, and so they've been able to get away with it. But as the agencies get larger, that's less likely.
Smith: According to one of the trade publications in the U.S., the average stay at an agency is 27 months. So, with that, if you start looking at the vesting, because you're moving so often, you're not looking.
Chad: For the pension plan.
Smith: For the pension plan, or orthodontics 100% covered, which is also an aging-stage thing. So I don't think the statement is correct about agencies being notoriously poor for it. It's what people want. They want to know, 'Well, how much money are you paying me? If you're an art director moving from agency A to B, you're going to earn that much. 'I'm 28 years old, I don't care whether I get full dental or I get full this versus half of that
Chad: It never comes up.
Smith: It's just, 'How much are the dollars?
Chad: Client side it comes up all the time.
Kingston: There's always been a discrepancy there.
Chad: If all of a sudden it became the issue of 'How do we keep our people by having better benefits? well, for a while Procter and Gamble came out with the best maternity program. And if you take a look at everybody who stayed there, they were all females who had three kids, they were the only senior people left in the company.
Smith: (turning to tape recorder) That was Rick Chad who said that!
All: (laughter)
Sutter: Is that a bad thing?
Chad: No, no, no, but it, it, it
All: (laughter)
Chad: David, how come you're nodding?
Smith: I was just thinking what trouble you're in, Rick.
Chad: But as a general rule, if all of a sudden benefits were the key indicator that helped keep people around and helped keep an agency more stable, and you actually thought it could do that... But, you know what? If all of a sudden you're on Moosehead business at agency A and it goes, you're gone.
MacArthur: The interesting thing around that, though, is you try and bring a senior agency person in from the U.S. and they think more like client-side people.
Teitelbaum: But they don't have universal healthcare.
Smith: We take it for granted here in Canada that 'I can go to the hospital and it's not a problem.
MacArthur: Yeah, that's true.
Chad: That's more of a problem than you think these days. If you need a certain kind of care, if you need any kind of long-term care, there are all these private hospitals that are asking $35,000 before you walk in.
Kingston: I think the trend of the future will be for agencies to respond more to it. You're going to have more slightly aging people who are going to be worried about retirement plans, (about how much) the government is going to kick in. You've got privatization happening in the medical area. People are going to be looking for those components of a contract, whereas today they're not as worried. And I think that it will be a negotiating issue.
 
Hanging onto the talent
Smith: The other thing that we've been talking about is that, typically, whether it be on the client or agency side, they do a reasonable job of recruiting people. But there also seems to be a mindset now about retention planning: 'What can we do to hold onto people?
Now, we haven't seen many concrete plans of action, but it's starting to be on people's agenda. And it becomes something like 'how do we get this person to stay after we've trained them? So it seems to be something that's at least top of mind. Whether they're doing anything about it as a group, one would suggest probably not. But it's starting to become part of the conscious mind.
MacArthur: At both agencies and on the marketing side, retention strategies are very topical right now. Everybody's focused on that. But it's becoming harder and harder as the organization gets flatter. A big component of retention strategy is providing some level of lifestyle management, but you can't do that if somebody's doing three people's jobs.
Smith: I think it's topical, but we still haven't had any clients talk about including it in their business plans for 2002. They talk about 'We've got to find ways to keep people, but
Kingston: But there's a cost to retention.
Sutter: Does that kind of stuff start to show up when candidates start asking about it?
Smith: No, I don't think it's candidate-driven, it's driven by
Chad: Candidates are security-driven. If it's an agency you're talking about, they don't want to leave an agency for another agency that they're feeling uncomfortable with because they've heard there's a lot of turnover there. But until they have those kids, or until they or their spouse or significant other has had significant health problems...then the question gets asked. But that's the exception, it's not the norm.
 
Brighter lights elsewhere
Sutter: You mentioned prospects coming out of school. What are the sectors that are drawing away talent from marketing and advertising?
Chad: It was the technology area and the consulting area. And it's going to be very interesting how the next year goes. Because I don't think they're in a big hiring mode, when you have the McKinseys laying off people who haven't even started and people who started a year ago. And they pay big dollars to go after the top 10% of the population at Western Ontario, or Queen's or whatever school. It's going to be interesting the next 12 months.
Kingston: It's going to be tough for grads in the next year or two. Everything's tightened up, so the jobs aren't there and people aren't being promoted as quickly necessarily from the opening levels. And there are cutbacks in general, so companies just aren't hiring as broadly as they were, and these pockets that we've talked about have disappeared.
Chad: There are still some pockets, like people who are niche marketing going after CRM (customer relationship management), one-on-one marketing, where if you spend $1 you find out if you made $1.05. So some of those areas are definitely (hiring).
But you have to be a certain style and type of personality to do that. Not everybody is that analytical. Most people who want to go into marketing and advertising have this creative thing that they want to use, not that you can't do it in any kind of analytical role, but it's not necessarily everybody's cup of tea. So it's going to be challenging for the more creative types.
Smith: I think direct marketing is going to continue to be strong, and telephony in one form or another. The only thing that's questioning that is that there's a bill before Parliament to get rid of the ability to do telemarketing, which may put a huge damper on that. So if I could pick two areas, that would certainly be the two.
And then number three, as it relates to marketing/advertising, I think retail will be able to do better than some of the other areas, simply because a lot of retail is more domestically generated than on a North American or an international basis. So the number of roles that are available will be stronger than in some of the other categories.
Teitelbaum: The other category we've also overlooked is financial services. It will continue to draw people.
MacArthur: I don't know, though, if the (federal banking) legislation continues to change there's going to be a huge consolidation there.
Chad: And when a big bank gets purchased by some bank in Boston or the U.K., you could see a lot of jobs go bye-bye.
Smith: There used to be five financial institutions and a couple of trust companies, so you had seven marketing departments. Now you only have six. They still say that (federal finance minister) Paul Martin at some point is going to let the mergers happen, so what's going to happen at the Royal and Bank of Montreal? Don't know. But one would suggest that it will be like Canada Trust and TD, which is the TD Group lost and Canada Trust won. Those (TD) folks were on the street.
Sutter: I've heard it said that governments and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are embracing marketing like they haven't before. Is that something you perceive, that good people who might not have considered government before are looking at it?
Chad: If they have no other choice, they'll go there... (turning to tape recorder) That was Rick Chad who said that!
All: (laughter)
Chad: Because the reason someone generally wants to go into marketing is because they want to run a business, they have some kind of entrepreneurial instinct, and that and government don't necessarily go hand in hand. Now there may be the odd altruistic individual who believes they can change things, and there might be the odd genuine person who actually goes in there and makes a difference. And frankly, I think it would be nice if we could get some entrepreneurs in there who would waste less of our money.
Teitelbaum: I don't think anyone in this room has ever interviewed anyone who's said, 'I want to go work for the government, get me a government job. It's quite the opposite.
Sutter: Any other sectors that are hot?
Smith: We haven't talked about it because we'll all blush, but the sin business. Online gambling
Chad: Yeah, but that's a short-term thing. The reason there's some activity in Canada right now is because the regulators in the U.S. are going after it, so all those guys are moving their head offices out of New York or Boston or wherever to Toronto or Denmark or wherever. And their operations are actually in Antigua.
So I think it's a short-term thing, because eventually what will happen is Nevada will take over and they'll buy up all those companies. But for the next two or three years, there are going to be some jobs in those sin industries, and dating anything to do with sex.
Smith: We all laugh at it, but there are a lot of legitimate businesses who've made a whole significant business, like IMG, Accutel, First Media. It's a big business.
Chad: But in the total realm of things... well, gambling is, but the problem with gambling is if someone starts a gambling business and makes a lot of money off North Americans it doesn't stay here. It goes to other countries, it doesn't help our economy.
MacArthur: It seems to have stalled a bit now. But another area where (there's job growth) is with the deregulation of utilities. It's a bit stalled as far as electricity goes, but as those things start to ease up, there's going to be a lot of activity. All of a sudden, people could be wanting to go into those government jobs to make the change.
Smith: Some of the stuff that Enbridge is doing, the challenge will be they've got some good marketers there now is whether they'll still be motivated two or three years out, what they're hoping they'll be able to do and whether they'll be able to do that.
Kingston: Media (companies) is another area that has been hot the last year and will continue to grow as well. It's a world-class industry, and with the integration of their products, and with marketing playing a really key role.
Sutter: We've got 47 new television channels as well.
Kingston: Exactly.
Chad: But they have one marketer handling 17 digital stations, because they only attract nine people each per night.
Kingston: But the likes of a David Kincaid (formerly of Labatt) going to Corus Entertainment, there are some interesting things happening. And I think it will work itself down to a structure eventually not hundreds of people, but there'll be some good new jobs opening there.
 
How the regions compare
Sutter: I want to discuss regions. I know this group has basically got Toronto and Ontario numbers. What is the feeling in terms of Quebec or Western Canada or Atlantic Canada?
Chad: To start with Atlantic Canada, it's a lower-cost region to live in. They're generally well-educated, extremely so because I think they delay going into the workforce, because they can. Their salaries are generally 20% less than they would be here, but people generally want to go back there. They have a great cost of living and lifestyle.
If they're from there and they go back, they're in seventh heaven. So even though the salaries are a bit lower, their quality of life is excellent. They may not have as much choice in terms of, let's say, cultural events or major sports teams, but they have lots of screech-
MacArthur: With regards to Quebec, the people who are living and working in Quebec are extremely committed to the market. I've found that it's even harder to recruit a French-speaking person from Quebec to come to Ontario for a job than it is to find fluently bilingual people here. Because those that are there are very committed to staying there. Again, it's a lifestyle choice, and it's very hard to wrestle them out of there.
Chad: And if they have a good job in Quebec, the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of everything, it's a whole different mindset. So they are very comfortable.
Sutter: So in total the salaries would be lower there but not substantially?
Chad: Some of their salaries in the key companies are pretty comparable.
MacArthur: Yeah, in the larger companies they are. But the norm is that you're generally making somewhat less, but your lifestyle is elevated because of the (lower) cost of living.
Sutter: Same thing in Vancouver and Calgary?
Chad: Vancouver is an anomaly because the cost of living there is quite high. But people who are from out west or people who want to live in that kind of lifestyle are really committed to the coast. So when they decide they want to go out there, they go out there. But a lot of times they'll go out there, not be happy and come back.
Kingston: At a more senior level, particularly if you look at agencies and creative directors, to attract someone, a name, to come out, they'll pay a premium.
Sutter: I've heard both from the East Coast and the West Coast, especially in agency creative departments, that to get top people you have to pay a premium on Toronto rates.
Chad: But you're more likely to pay more in Vancouver than in the Maritimes. We've placed people in the Maritimes and you don't have to pay them as much.
Kingston: It's a more competitive market in Vancouver as well for most people.
Jim McElgunn: So the lifestyle is better everywhere outside Toronto?
All: (laughter)
Chad: In Toronto, there are more options. If you're career-oriented, Toronto's the place to be. You grow up in some of these other places and you hear how terrible Toronto is, yet when you go to university and ask, 'Where do you want to get your first job in the business and 'Where do you get the best training.
MacArthur: It's not Kelowna.
Chad: I don't go to Kelowna Credit and Savings to try to find a trained person.
Teitelbaum: Toronto is probably the best place for marketing opportunities in all of North America because all our marketing head offices are here. You can't find that in the U.S., you'd have to change cities.
Chad: Although in the U.S. they're used to moving around. If they live on the West Coast, they go to school on the East Coast. If they live on the East Coast, they go to school on the West Coast.
MacArthur: Here you can't get somebody to move from Mississauga to Scarborough.
Chad: Scarborough? You can't get somebody to move from Mississauga to Oakville!

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