Is Help Wanted?

Dion Hughes, a freelance copywriter in Minneapolis who has teamed with art director Mark Johnson for the past three years, was seeing a small but significant change in the way his agency clients were working. It was the summer of 2001 and agencies across the country were in the midst of what would become several rounds of layoffs. "We had an early warning sign on the economy when people started to stop flying us in for meetings," says Hughes, who had been steadily working on new-business pitches and new campaign efforts. But he and Johnson, award-winning creative directors who held top agency positions before forming a freelance partnership, considered themselves fortunate to have any work. "By then, a lot of freelancers weren't doing anything."But since early this fall, says Hughes, the two are seeing another shift, also subtle. More calls have been coming in, and they've been much busier. The freelance market is typically the first to feel climate change in the agency business, and recruiters and freelancers alike are indicating that an uptick in new business has led to more opportunities. And more calls to freelancers raises cautious hopes for a wider pickup in hiring. "At this point, there is a sign of some progress," says Anne-Marie Marcus, partner and CEO of New York recruitment firm Judy Wald Partners in New York. "The freelance market is getting a little bit more active. Usually that's a step toward the road to recovery."Some might assume that the industrywide cutbacks would have led to more work for freelancers, but by and large it just resulted in more of them competing for fewer jobs. Trying to compensate for revenue declines, agencies were left with little room in the budget for freelancers. Marcus and her partner, Catherine St. Jean, attribute the upswing in assignments to creative departments finally feeling the ramifications of cutbacks. "There is work to do now," says St. Jean. "They had reduced staff so much, there isn't enough to go around."John Nelson, president of the Free lance Forum, an Atlanta-based organization that counts about 150 freelance creatives among its members, has also seen an increase. "Overall, the number of people dead in the water are fewer now," Nelson says, "particularly in the second half of the year.""Agencies are in supercompetitive pitches for less money, but they still have to have a competitive edge, and that involves finding the right people," says Hughes, who works mostly for McCann-Erickson, Straw berry Frog in Amsterdam and Haku hodo in Japan.While U.S. media spending has registered just a 1 percent increase through August vs. the first eight months of 2001, according to CMR, research firm Global Insight recently forecast that ad spending will increase by 6 percent next year. Bob Coen of Universal McCann made a similar prediction (a 5.5 percent rise) in July.Susan Friedman of recruitment firm Susan Friedman in New York cautions that generally only the most senior creatives are in demand. "It's only the top echelon that can come in, solve a problem and leave," she says, adding that any agency hires in the new year will likely also be high level. And Marcus warns that al though the climate looks "a lot better than it did a year ago," some agencies that used to throw as many staffers as possible at each assignment have grown accustomed to getting by with fewer people. While freelance help can be costly, it also gives agencies flexibility. "Hiring freelancers gives me the ability to expand and contract as I need to," says David Fowler, executive creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York, who spent five years as a freelancer in the '90s. "In this economy, that's a real asset." Fowler, who has four freelancers assisting him on accounts including Fanta and Goldman Sachs, notes that he sometimes prefers to work with freelancers. He hires them "for just about anything," he says. "I like their heads, their work ethic and they know the basic transaction between mercenary agents."

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Is Help Wanted?

Eleftheria Parpis

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Eleftheria Parpis