Money Isn't Everything

Sometimes a job is about more than money. Perhaps, along with your paycheck, you’d like a break for a beer and videogame down the hall, a massage maybe, or possibly a spin in a new sports car.

“This is better than any therapist could ever do for me,” says Dory Anderson, a partner at Carmichael Lynch’s PR unit, of driving around town in the shop’s Boxster. Each month, keys to the Porsche—which is a client of the Minneapolis agency—go to a team that has done something original to boost a client’s business.

During the boom, agencies lured the best people by throwing perks on top of paychecks.