October 28, 2002
A Year On Hold

Marketing convened a panel of top executive recruiters to discuss the trends and forces shaping careers in marketing and advertising. Their consensus: After a year in neutral, the employment market should start picking up any time now

The salary tables in this Salary Benchmarks report only tell part of the story about the state of the job market right now in the marketing and ad agency sector in Canada.
A host of trends are shaping what it's like for people who work in the industry, such as how pay rates have been mainly static for the past 18 months, but could see a quick bump when and if the economy settles down; how non-salary compensation such as bonuses is more generous at the senior levels these days but also tougher to achieve; the increased flow of people in the business back across the 49th parallel since Sept. 11/01; the increasing importance of lifestyle factors in people's choices of where to work; and the problems many employers are likely going to face in regaining the trust and loyalty of their employees when the job market does become more robust.

The participants were:
Rick Chad
President of The Chad Management Group: After working at Procter & Gamble and William Neilson (Cadbury), he entered the recruitment business in 1980, building a recruitment agency that focuses on the marketing/advertising community.

Martin Kingston
Senior consultant at Morris Group International: He has worked in marketing and advertising for more than 25 years. This 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 what was then called Morris*Pervin in 2001.

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 eight years.

Michael Gates
Vice-president of the marcom practice at Mandrake: After earning an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration (HBA) from the University of Western Ontario in 1987, he worked in various marketing positions with an outdoor fashions company, Rubbermaid Canada and American Sensors Electronics. Gates has been with Mandrake since 1997, practising primarily in the communications area, including advertising and direct and database marketing. He is also a leader in the financial services category.

Harry Teitelbaum
President of InterCom Recruitment: He was a radio announcer before working at the agencies Saffer Advertising, Vickers & 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 Salary Benchmarks recruiter round table meets (clockwise from top left): Morris Group's Martin Kingston:; Madison MacArthur's Sylvia MacArthur; InterCom's Harry Teitelbaum; Mandrake's Michael Gates; Chad Management's Rick Chad and Marketing's Stan Sutter
Marketing: We've looked at the numbers. Anything surprise you here in the way they've changed over last year, or not changed?
Sylvia MacArthur: Not really. I compared them to last year's numbers, and the only thing that, while I wasn't surprised, stood out was the strong similarity. There's not much change, really.
Martin Kingston: I think it really reflects in many ways what we've seen in the marketplace. Which is a static market for the most part. It's conservative, and that's the mood out there.
Michael Gates: It's also not surprising there wouldn't be a change. There've been a lot of companies with salary freezes.
Marketing: On both the client and agency side?
Gates: I'm more aware of them on the agency side.
Kingston: Particularly the agency side. Most of the multinationals have not given raises for almost two years.
Harry Teitelbaum: Yeah, there's a lot of organizations that after two, three years are still holding flat. And no change in sight right now.
MacArthur: For the most part I think that holds with the marketers, maybe not being quite as flat. But they certainly aren't seeing the kinds of increases that they might have seen in the past.
Gates: The other thing that fuels it is that the growth companies that were driving salaries in '99 and 2000 aren't there. They were creating new opportunities and they were creating turn-over within the traditional companies. And so even if people want to move, they don't have as many destinations to go to. It's supply and demand. There's just not the same pressure.
Kingston: And that's the key to this: supply and demand. With so many people out there, and a lot of people looking for jobs still, people will take a knock-back in salary.
Gates: If you're unemployed, particularly if you are used to earning $100,000...
Kingston: ...there's a lot of room for negotiation.
Teitelbaum: Or if you've been out for 10 months, you're flexible.
Marketing: I've heard tales that, in the past, people&\#150;especially on the agency side&\#150;get that high expectation of a big salary, and they can't come to terms with taking $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or more less.
Kingston: It depends on where you're sitting. If you're out of the market, you don't have a choice. And those who have those salaries are protecting them, so they're holding on to their jobs right now as best they can.
Gates: People who are more senior, particularly those earning $150,000 and above, they've got enough friends, and they've heard enough stories, that they know they'll be fortunate to duplicate their current salary.
Kingston: What you find, though, in many of those scenarios are people who will take less salary but will negotiate for an incentive package based on performance. They'll put their names on the line and say: "Give me a chance to fulfill the objectives. I'll take that huge cutback in salary, but I want to get the money back through incentivization."
Teitelbaum: I don't think anybody is going to leave a job to take a less-paying job. But it's all in timing. If somebody's been out for a period of time, they'll consider working for less if they find UI has run out or their last resort is going and knocking on NABS's door.
Gates: We've seen a few cases where companies are willing to up the range of bonuses. And it's very hard often for people to achieve them because the business climate just isn't there. But instead of the bonus range being 0% to 10%, it'll be in the 0% to 20% range. So, hopefully, when times get better you have a better upside. In the meantime, the company has better cost containment and that helps.
MacArthur: What the market's done basically is put people's expectations back in line. We had an unrealistic bubble there that was impacting on everything and drove expectations way out of range. The realities of the marketplace are such that people's expectations are coming back to where they should be.
Gates: There's still keen competition for that five- to 10-year person making $70,000 to $100,000. There's still a demand for the strong managers, the people who are '91-'93 recession or post-recession graduates. And they still have options.
When you want to hire them, it's still not easy. It's a real struggle. Yeah, you as a recruiter can deliver a longer short-list than before, but you're not necessarily getting four stars. Whereas two years ago, you were just happy to get four people that were sort of reasonable.
Harry Teitelbaum
Marketing: So there are still people out there who can make a move for more?
Kingston: Definitely.
MacArthur: Although they are being more conservative about making a move. The risk factor is larger. Ultimately, there is a little bit of concern about making a jump.
Kingston: But I'm sensing right now almost a torrent of frustration out there. Because a lot of people have been held back from making opportunities. And they've grown and they've been learning and contributing to their companies. You're right, Sylvia, there was a point there where they wouldn't talk (to recruiters), but now they're phoning us. They're not going to wait much longer because the promises are starting to dry up. They would talk to us, but they were also a bit resistant.
MacArthur: They were hunkering down.
Gates: They were also getting five to 10 calls a month, and it was their luxury to choose what they would even consider. And now as the number of calls they're getting per month is going down, they're maybe being more proactive and thinking "I need to create something for myself to make it happen, versus just letting the phone ring and when something sounds juicy, I'll talk."
Marketing: But as you say, Martin, enough time has passed that bonusing promises have not been met.
Gates: I predict the agencies that have been into 18 to 24 months of salary freezes are going to see people start to leave. And they will get a premium to move.
Kingston: It's happening. We've passed that point.
Gates: If we go another six months into this, it's really going to be difficult for the management of those agencies.
Kingston: And how many more excuses will they listen to? I mean, obviously we went through a lot of anguish and hurt with Sept. 11, which became sort of topspin to what was going to be a bad year anyway. And then coming in now, we've got another war looming and there's another lot of excuses coming out of the States again. It's going to be interesting.

Martin Kingston:
Teitelbaum: Obviously the focus of the conversation here is about compensation, but it's one of the levers to consider moving to another company. It's only one. A lot of people are reluctant to look at other companies unless it's a better environment than the one they're currently in. And, although we can wave more money in front of them, it's not going to be the prime motivator, at any level anymore, to get them to consider going somewhere else.
MacArthur: That and work-life balance.
Gates: I would add to that job challenge. With the younger group, it's job challenge and learning. That's the number one thing we're hearing from them.
Kingston: "Give me something I can make a mark with."
Gates: Yeah: "I'm going to do something new. I'm going to learn something. I'm going to have more responsibility." As you get more senior, work-life balance becomes a factor. But if you get someone under 32, it's all about "What am I going to be challenged with?"
Marketing: And that's new in the last year?
Gates: No, that's always what's motivated them. However, they're more willing to listen (to recruiters presenting a job opportunity) because they're stuck at a salary level. They may have been promoted, but they're stuck at their old title's salary.
Kingston: What we've seen in the past 10 or maybe 15 years is a new generation of managers come forward who are not going to listen to the corporate stories any longer, the loyalty stories and that sort of thing. And this is where lifestyle now becomes a priority to them. They're going to balance it; they're going to do what's good for them before what's good for the company in many cases. And that becomes a negotiating item too.
Those companies that are smart enough to offer work enrichment and learning and other bonuses around that will be the ones that succeed.

September 11
Marketing: It sounds like, from what you said earlier, that maybe Sept. 11 was used as a cover for a lot of things last year.
Teitelbaum: We had a problem long before Sept. 11. A lot of people don't remember that.
Gates: The dot coms, the technology companies, crashed long before.
Kingston: There were warning signs that the economy was in rough shape anyway. People weren't banking on a good year. That gave them the ability to close the year down and basically put a very conservative plan in place for the next 12 months. And that's what we've been living through.
And particularly in this market, where you set your plans and budgets for the next year around October or November, the impact was incredible. Because all of a sudden management could go to the owners, to shareholders, and say, "Look, the expectations have got to be reduced. We've just come through a terrible period." And it allowed them to put conservative numbers in place, which has held back growth, held back investment.
Michael Gates
That's a major generalization. There are pockets of growth and pockets of things happening out there. But it sort of stymied the whole year.
Gates: At this point, a year later, I think the stock market crashing this spring and summer is a bigger factor than a lingering 9-11 hangover. Because the market actually went up again after 9-11, and then business confidence went away. Even though there are economic factors out there that don't sound bad, the stock market mitigates them.
Kingston: And it impacts confidence levels. Going into the spring this year, there was a good feeling in the air. People were talking about hiring and coming out of a bleak period.
Gates: Each quarter would get a little better.
Kingston: If you track it with the mood of the stock market, the mood changes and people's confidence level goes down and again they get quiet and they don't want to talk. We've gone through periods of coming in and out of that probably three or four times this year. And it all follows the stock market going up and down.

A stress that can't last
Marketing: I wanted to return to the work-life balance issue. You mentioned that people are more concerned about it. Are companies, employers more accepting of that?
MacArthur: They're having to be, because it's being used as a big lever and bargaining chip.
If you can bring people on four days a week or flex hours or telecommuting, if they can have that flexibility, then that will bring them over on a lateral level.
Gates: It's even more important in retention. Once somebody gets there and they get a comfortable situation, it's even harder to get them to leave.
&\#009;If I'm promising a better work lifestyle, everybody's going to listen with a bit of a jaded ear. But when they actually have it, and they know they've got control of their lifestyle, it's really challenging to get them to listen to an opportunity.
Rick Chad
Teitelbaum: I just completed an assignment and one of the things I was talking about with the company&\#150;and to discuss it sounds rather odd&\#150;but I asked the question "What's a typical workday?" And they said "9:00, and they leave at 5:00." And I thought "How remarkable, how rare, how odd."
But that should be more of the reality. That shouldn't be the exception. That should be the norm. But the norm in a lot of companies these days is to squeeze people within their organizations and expect them to work six days and sometimes as much as seven. Or to work 12 hours instead of seven or eight. So that's the expectation a lot of firms still have.
Kingston: Maybe what will happen, though, is we'll see more of a normalization.
The first piece of repair work will be for companies to start filling back those positions that they've let go over the last couple of years. That will generate a much better feeling in those companies and take that pressure off.
Marketing: It sounds like you're saying that if, six months down the road, the economy's still not better, we might see a wave of people throwing in the towel on their employers.
Kingston: They won't throw in the towel to the point where they're going to walk away from a salary. But they will be pushing much more aggressively looking for those job opportunities.
MacArthur: Who can sustain that? They simply won't be effective. It'll have an impact on the business. Nobody can do that for long periods of time. You can do it for short bursts.
Kingston: It's interesting. One area where we're finding is coming on is coaching. Coaching has become a really hot topic among employers and employees. It's a way a company can show that it does listen and care by providing that type of outlet.
Teitelbaum: There's a statistic I saw yesterday. The U.S. Labour Department said that in 2006, four years from now, there'll be 151 million jobs in the U.S. and 141 million workers. So, definitely in the next four years we'll see increased demand for people. And, as a result, we'll see greater salary increases. And the nimble companies are the ones that are going to be able to provide work-life balance, or a better working atmosphere, to attract those kinds of candidates.
Marketing: It might have been Mandrake president Stephan Denis who I heard say at a conference a year or two ago that long term there's going to be a fundamental shift and employees really were, for the first time in many generations, in the driver's seat when it comes to the relationship with employers. It sounds like what I'm hearing is that what's gone on in the last year is a temporary setback for employees.
Gates: I don't think the economy has to strengthen a whole lot before hiring and staffing will get tight again. It's soft now, and there are people out there, but it doesn't have to improve much.
Rick Chad: I would add to that. There's not that many, unfortunately, well-trained people in Toronto. The training grounds aren't as prevalent, so when the economy does turn (there will be a shortage).
Even the major training grounds that have been here, they've closed their offices or turned them more into branch offices. And so you can't find the skill base. There are people, but they aren't the right quality.
Teitelbaum: Yeah, two years ago a lot of agencies said they were going to make a big commitment towards training. Never happened. Or a commitment to hiring people straight out of universities. They may go to recruiting fairs, but they still don't hire.
Kingston: And marketing companies too. They've pulled right in. As far as university recruiting, there's been a lowering of the numbers of major companies that go out and hire seven, eight, 10 people. Now they're hiring maybe one or two or three.
Gates: There are a lot of disappointed recent MBAs out there who thought they had got themselves their ticket. They're struggling for jobs and looking at taking $45,000 jobs when they read when they started school that the average starting salary for an MBA was $70,000 and $75,000.
Chad: Notwithstanding all those people who have moved here, because they have the MBAs and the training, but when they get here they find nobody wants to hire them because they have non-domestic experience.
Or they have to take such a big step back it's very disappointing because they came from somewhere where they were, you know, king of the castle. There are a lot of those people competing for the same jobs.
MacArthur: One great example is a couple of years ago one of the tier-one marketing companies on one campus recruit made 26 offers and had four acceptances. This year, they made four offers. That's a pretty dramatic difference.
Marketing: What about the acceptance rate?
(Laughter)
MacArthur: One hundred per cent.
Marketing: Rick, you mentioned immigrant communities and the problem they have breaking into the industry. Is it that they are not actually qualified? Or is it owners, managers aren't prepared to hire someone with a bit of an accent or a darker skin tone?
Sylvia MacArthur
Chad: I don't think it's that. It has way more to do with the fact that Canada is, not different from the U.K., but the retailers call a lot of the shots. So, let's say it's a food marketing person and they've had experience working in India or Spain. Marketers are sitting here worried about what Loblaws is thinking, or what Wal-Mart is thinking, or what Overwaitia or Safeway or London Drugs (are thinking). So, if they had their druthers, they'd rather get someone with domestic experience.
I'm sure there are some elements that aren't quite like that. But, with the clients I've been dealing with, how they position it to me is that they'd prefer to get someone with domestic experience. And because right now, because it's a buyers' market, I can generally find them someone within the realm. If it was a sellers' market, meaning that there are not enough candidates around, then that's when someone with non-domestic experience is going to get landed.
Gates: Hiring's risky. All else being equal, they're going to go to a lower risk, somebody who's somewhat proven themselves in this market versus somebody who hasn't.
Kingston: When we present those (non-domestic) candidates too, many times they're almost desperate. They're willing to reduce their expectations. It's not a good bargaining place to begin. We try to encourage the candidate not to do it, obviously. But they're desperate. They've arrived, been here a while, they've got families to feed.
Marketing: These are people from the U.K.? India?
Kingston: From all over.
Chad: South America. Every time there's a new coup (laughter) or for that matter somebody gets hijacked, all of a sudden you'll get 12 people from Mexico calling. We're lucky here in Canada.
Gates: You have a huge East Asian population coming here, but also you've got South Africans and South Americans.
Chad: There is one issue. We do a lot of recruiting in the communications business, obviously. So if you get someone who's got a very overt accent, or they don't appear to understand, they're at a real disadvantage trying to break into this community.
If you get someone from Australia or the U.K. or South Africa, they generally can adapt better, or they are going to be perceived as adapting better, than if you have somebody with a distinct accent.
Gates: It's very hard to judge writing skills, so if somebody isn't born or educated in English there's a concern. You're not going to find out if there is a problem until they are on the job, and then that's too late.
Marketing: Should the industry be more willing to take a flyer on non-Caucasian, non-North American workers?
Chad: You should talk. I went to your Digital Marketing Awards last night. The girls that you hire are all great looking.
(Laughter from MacArthur)
I didn't see one frumpy girl. That's not a shot, but people do that.
Teitelbaum: It goes back to Rick's comment that we're in the communications industry. And our employers want to hire people who are from our marketplace. Whether it's us or the employers, I don't think anyone is making a concerted effort to not hire visible minorities.
Chad: In fact, I would argue if you had five candidates, and one was a visible minority, but the training was all equivalent, the visible minority would have an advantage.
Teitelbaum: Exactly.
Marketing: So we're starting to see second-generation Canadians routinely getting jobs?
Gates: Absolutely. If they're Canadian-university-educated, it's not even an issue.
Chad: Honestly, I've been doing this for a lot of years, I've never seen it happen. But where it's an issue is where the person just moved here from Beijing, and you can hardly understand them. And many times, because I feel badly for them, I get them interviews and they go in there, and they don't get the job. The company asks: Do you have anybody else?
Now, three years ago, I probably could have placed that person because it's tough to find great talent. But now it isn't.

Home from the U.S.
Marketing: Shifting gears a little bit, we talked a year ago about all the Canadians who had gone south and stared to trickle back last year. Are we still seeing that?
MacArthur: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Kingston: Like a call a day, if not more. Expats are begging to come home.
Marketing: Is it still the dot-com implosion?
Gates: The highest numbers are coming from California, but lots of New York refugees as well.
Kingston: Particularly those who are married. Their families want to come back, either the husband or the wife.
Chad: Or they both had jobs and one of them loses theirs and they can't find another one.
Kingston: But they're not feeling secure.
Chad: For people in New York, it's Sept. 11. We've had a lot of calls.
Kingston: It's a growing paranoia, too. I spoke to one candidate and he said, "You know, the cable guy came to the house the other day" and he just wasn't sure whether they were now spying on him
or not.
(Laughter)
Marketing: There really is a "blame Canada" movement afoot.
Teitelbaum: We're finding Americans themselves want to move to Canada.
MacArthur: We're getting a lot of calls from the U.S.
Chad: Except when they hear that they can't deduct their interest on their mortgage payments. And then they hear what our tax rates are. And then "you get paid how much?"
Gates: You've made $100,000 American, we'll pay you $100,000 Canadian. And that converts to, you know, $62,000 U.S. and then you pay more tax. Thank you.
Chad: We pay for our quality of life here.
MacArthur: There's definitely significant interest in terms of resumes coming in. But the reality is it's still a tough move for an American to come here because of the adjustments to be made financially.
Gates: They're always much more willing to relocate, though. It's so hard to get somebody to move out of Toronto, especially if you've got a two-career family.
MacArthur: It's hard to get someone to move across the city, let alone move out of Toronto.
Chad: There are ones who amaze me. I had one the other day. I got them a great move in marketing. It wasn't on the subway line. I have no patience for that.
The person, of course, is working there now. But it's amazing, even the subway line becomes a huge issue.
MacArthur: But, you see, that goes back again to that work-life balance. You don't want to be stuck in traffic. They want to be either convenient when it comes to location or be near the gym or have flexible hours.
Marketing: We've touched a bit already on non-salary compensation, but are there things sticking out this year that have become more prevalent?
MacArthur: Less prevalent.
Marketing: Such as?
MacArthur: Signing bonuses have gone the way of the dodo bird. Options have been very heavily cut back.
Chad: People don't even ask about the options.
Gates: We're seeing, for the client-side roles, cars are not given out as easily. Companies are trying to scale back on their car programs.
Chad: Some of my clients are even charging a little bit for parking, where they didn't do it before. Not a lot. But just to make them feel that if they have a parking spot they're getting $25 less on their paycheque each month.
Marketing: Are people leaving companies that seem a little uncertain? Are they wanting to go to those solid-rock organizations that they know are going to be around?
Chad: I'll say this a little differently in terms of promoting our whole business. This is a great time to raise the bar in terms of the calibre of the people that you have.
MacArthur: Oh, it is a great time. Yeah.
Chad: I'm constantly saying to clients: Now is the time. They've had a few years where they'd hire anybody. And now it's becoming evident that they don't have the right people in place. And it's my point of view that this would be a fabulous time if you want to raise the bar in your department.
Kingston: And, as I said before, companies should also be looking to add in a few more bodies to help ease the workload.
Gates: You see companies that may need to chop 10% of their workforce, they may chop 12% or 14% with the intent of hiring back better quality. You chop more than you need and then you infill with better quality.
Chad: It's interesting, because in the past, just a few years ago, when companies had to cut, they'd lose some of their better people because they'd go "I'll take the package."
Now we're advising them to sit tight because it's not worth going to the marketplace when there's not as much choice out there.
Kingston: When you manage a company when you're coming out of what we're now coming out of&\#150;hopefully&\#150;you start to look at your inventory of people and ask who will be the guys and girls who will build the business. And you need them, because you're going to start to put down numbers that are going to be more aggressive and you're going to have to show that you can grow the business.

A broken trust
Marketing: I'm not hearing you folks say that there were the kind of stupid cuts in the marketing and agency business that there were in the early '90s.
Kingston: Oh, there were cuts. And it's had an impact as far as the feeling of the people within those companies&\#150;their motivation levels, their loyalty to the companies. Again, it comes back into that equation of measuring my lifestyle versus the company's needs.
So, they've hurt themselves. And I don't know if you can ever repair that. Companies that had great track records for years and years all of a sudden let people go. Yeah, there were reasons to do it, but...
Chad: What about the multinationals who closed down great operating divisions in Canada, who were outperforming their U.S. counterparts by significant margins and delivering great numbers, because some guy in the U.S. saw the balance sheet and said, "If I absorb this, I'm going to be more efficient here," with absolutely no regard whatsoever to the people, to the country, to the track record&\#150;because it was an easy thing to do, and nobody was going to scream in Minneapolis or Chicago or wherever.
MacArthur: It's an eye to the short term as opposed to the long term. They were looking for a short-term fix, but ultimately in the long term it's going to hurt them. Because ultimately that's going to have a huge impact on how they do business here in Canada.
To add to what Martin said about loyalty, when you see monoliths like Enron and what they've done to their staff and their shareholders, I don't think there is loyalty any more. Period. When employees see that happening, they're going to go out for what's best for them. Period. There's no reason to devote your life to a company. It's irreparable damage.
Chad: And you know what? That's unfortunate. I used to find it kind of nice that people used to be loyal to their companies and the companies used to be loyal back. And some people want to have a loyal life. Some people are happy with the status quo and having a certain standard of living.
Gates: The best examples of that are the banks and Bell Canada. From the marketing community, people would have eight different jobs in 20 years with those companies. And now most people in those companies don't trust that they're going to be there for the long haul.
Chad: All they talk about is when the next package is going to come. They come and talk to you and say, "If I get a package, can you, would you be able to find me something?" The smart ones are doing that.
But they're not ready to leave. Then you have people staying for the wrong reasons.
Gates: They're staying waiting for their packages.
Chad: And what does that do for morale when they all talk about it at the water cooler?
Marketing: Are there particular disciplines that are stronger than others? Last year we said anyone in direct could write their own ticket. CRM was hot.
Gates: CRM is still there, but it's not nearly as buoyant. A lot of the CRM hies were driven by technology and B-to-B players, and a lot of them are softer. The consumer marketers, the credit card companies, their business just kind of goes along and grows every year. It's still probably better than advertising, but it's not as strong as it was.
Chad: Of the disciplines we work in, direct would still be the strongest area.
For instance, you have retailers who are investing in those areas, with an objective of being there and earning profits later on. But if, all of a sudden, their core business is sucking wind, they're pulling back and not spending as much time on it because they don't want to lose as much money on them.
Gates: Those are big initiatives with long-term payouts. And sometimes they're driven by who the CEO is. They don't get good results and there's a new CEO, and the guy comes in and just changes strategy.
Teitelbaum: A strong category in Canada and the U.S. would be health care as well.
MacArthur: Anything to do with health care. And the insurance business is very busy right now.
Here also, anything that's related to the housing industry, whether it be manufacturing or any suppliers to the housing industry, they're doing very well compared to the U.S.
Kingston: We're seeing a resurgence in the broadcast industry as well, in anticipation of a better economy to come. They've suffered over the last while. But there is hiring taking place and planning to hire happening.
But one of the overriding areas we're constantly being asked for are good strategic thinkers. People who can apply themselves strategically. And maybe it's because of lack of training, or other organizations have come into the field as well, but that's an area to build in the coming years as well. And this is an area that would cross every category: the marketing community, the agency community, are looking for thinkers, good planners.

The outlook for 2003
Marketing: What is the coming year going to be like?
Chad: If you'd asked me going into September, I was actually very bullish. Now I'm not not bullish. But there are so many weird indicators that I've come across this month. The Iraqi war. World politics. Every week there's another business announcing that they did something wrong. It's hard to tell.
It's tough. For the agency business, for them to keep even, they have to bring in new business. Because their current clients are decreasing their budgets by 15%, 20%, 25%, just to break even they have to bring in 20% more business. And I'm not talking about the mainline agencies, not necessarily the local ones. So a lot of people are still very tentative. It hasn't broken yet.
Kingston: I feel a little more optimistic than that. I think the signs of the economy, at least in Canada, are very, very good. And they have been for awhile actually, and we've been stronger than the States. If the States don't go into a double-dip recession, which is still a possibility, things will be OK. It's gradually going to get better.
I do feel in talking to clients in both the marketing community and agency world that there is a much more optimistic feeling out there. That hasn't come in numbers yet, but it's starting to pick up.
Chad: In the mainline business, like the food businesses, they're all holding their own. So there are stable businesses. And the expectations that we once had, which were ridiculous, have all come down. We are working from a low base. Chances are it will improve. I don't think we're going to get another 1999 or 2000 for a while&\#150;until we all forget in about 10 years and we all go through the same craziness.
Kingston: There's a gradual repair happening. And then there are new sectors that are opening up, like nutrapharmaceuticals, biopharma. These are the new frontier basically, and marketing and advertising in them is going to come along. It may take a year or two to catch up.
Teitelbaum: Staffing levels have been cut so sharply in recent years that all employers are at the point that they need to hire. They don't have approval to hire from their U.S. parent just yet. And when they do, it's going to be a good market.
We don't know when that's going to happen. We were all hoping for this month.
Gates: I think a year from now it will be stronger, but it'll be a bumpy ride in between. It won't be a gradual thing you can plot, there'll be spiking and then you average it out.
Kingston: And confidence has to come back. If the stock market starts to improve, watch that one very closely. It's a great sign.
MacArthur: I'm a bit more optimistic. And maybe that's just the nature of my client base. Possibly because we work across so many industries, we haven't been as heavily impacted as some. And as a result, I'm more optimistic. I think the turnaround will come a little faster. I don't think it will go anywhere near to what we experienced in the late '90s, but it will come back.

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