Advertising Has Its First Union. Why Marketers Should Worry

However, unlike everyone else, when leaving one such agency, he took an unusual step to provide a solution: He co-founded a trade union.

The formation of what appears to be the first union of advertising agency workers—called Creative Communications Workers (CCW) and comprising advertising, digital, PR, design, media and production employees—comes as industrial action is sweeping Europe. In the U.K. alone, more than a million working days in 2022 were lost to strike action, which is continuing into this year. 

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Among nurses, teachers, rail and airline workers, advertising and communications professionals might seem unlikely comrades as that sector has never before unionized. But if an ad industry union gathers momentum, it could have significant implications for both agency bosses and their clients. 

“Since the pandemic, many people are looking at their workplaces or careers and thinking about their jobs in very different ways. There’s a new mindset recognizing the need to rebalance the relationship with workplace, career and colleagues,” Binding said. “That cultural shift makes the presence of a union more interesting.” 

CCW formed over a year ago under the umbrella of United Voices of the World, a grassroots trade union founded in London in 2014 comprising 5,000 members and spanning eight sectors including architectural, legal, design and cultural workers. So far, CCW has gained nearly 100 members—still a small fraction of the U.K.’s ad industry—but co-founder Sammi Ferhaoui said there’s been an uptick in interest from agency employees amid nationwide industrial action. 

Tackling burnout

CCW aims to tackle these issues in the industry:

• pay stagnation
• inequities between certain demographics
• lack of diversity and inclusion
• working conditions, particularly long hours and unpaid overtime

The latter, which leads to high levels of burnout, will be the focus of the first campaign, which union leaders are planning to release later this year. 

The campaign will call attention to the European working time directive (EWTD), which is part of U.K. law and requires companies to ensure that employees do not work more than 48 hours, including overtime, over a seven-day period. However, companies can include a clause in employment contracts that asks employees to opt out of this 48-hour limit. 

CCW plans to educate employees about their rights and ask holding companies to scrap the opt-out clause from contracts, “so people aren’t feeling as coerced in signing away their right to only work 48 hours a week,” Ferhaoui explained. “People generally don’t feel they can [observe those limits], because in this industry it’s the norm to work long hours.” 

While mental health has become a hot topic in the industry, with some agencies instituting wellbeing policies since the pandemic, the issues of overwork and burnout are still prevalent across businesses, CCW’s leaders observed. 

“It’s very important that employers who profess to care about mental health make good on their commitments,” Ferhaoui said.

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Impact on marketers

The union will put pressure on agency bosses to address working conditions­—but doing so could also have a knock-on effect on clients, said Ferhaoui. 

“Clients are going to have to adapt themselves to the fact that workers have hard limits on their mental and physical health, and what they can and can’t do,” he explained. “Marketers will perhaps have to rethink the level of demands they can put on their agencies.”

The other priorities of the union—pay and DEI policies—have also come under increasing scrutiny since events including the Black Lives Matter movement, pandemic and cost of living crisis. Ferhaoui said these issues are all interconnected, and tackling them will require collective action and “change at every level” within businesses. 

“Hitherto, the diversity and inclusion discussion has been too individualized. Representation is important, but also more material stuff like pay and working conditions need to be thought about,” he said. “We need transparency and a united workforce demanding the highest levels of inclusion.”

Economic pressures

CCW formed at the height of the Great Resignation. At the time, CCW’s founders were among many observers who said the balance of power was shifting from employer to employee since many companies were struggling to recruit and retain talent.

Since then, the economic situation has changed: soaring inflation, an energy crisis, mass layoffs across sectors including tech and media. But such turmoil only heightens the need for an industry union, said Binding. 

“During an economic downturn, one of the first things that gets cut is marketing budgets, which has a knock-on effect on staffing levels,” he said. “The question of ‘Where do you turn if you feel threatened?’ is much more on people’s minds.” 

Marketers will perhaps have to rethink the level of demands they can put on their agencies.

Sammi Ferhaoui, co-founder, CCW

Speaking at the industry conference Lead last month, Alessandra Bellini, president of the Advertising Association (AA) and chief customer officer for supermarket chain Tesco, highlighted the “slowdown” in salaries for advertising and marketing professionals over the last decade. She presented the findings of the AA’s 2023 Talent Report, which showed that the number of people working in advertising and marketing fell by 14% between 2019 and 2022 due to factors such as the pandemic, inflation and Brexit.

There was also a lack of salary progression: While ad spend increased by 42% since 2011, the average annual advertising and marketing salary decreased over the same period (by 4% and 10%, respectively).

“There is a real issue here that we need to rethink completely,” Bellini said.

A cultural shift

A union may also have more appeal to some employees now because many people have reevaluated their relationship with work since the pandemic began, Binding argued. 

“The industry built up this culture of what it means to work in advertising: It’s a word hard/play hard mindset of staying late with the promise of incentives. The industry has convinced many people they’re part of something lofty and culturally connected,” he explained. “Since the pandemic, people have got some distance and woken up to the fact that that’s not more important than their health or fundamental rights as human beings. There’s a lasting impact from that distance as we evaluate work now.” 

Adweek asked other industry leaders if a union would be welcomed by the workforce. The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) trade bodies also acknowledged the need to protect the health and wellbeing of talent. Last year, ISBA and the IPA launched the Pitch Positive Pledge, which seeks to tackle mental health in the workplace by asking brands and agencies to take a more responsible approach to pitching.

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“That said, we know more needs to be done,” said ISBA director general Phil Smith. “Agency employees themselves are best placed to decide whether a trade union could contribute to positive change without making the U.K. less competitive as the world’s leading creative center.”

Paul Bainsfair, director general of the IPA, added that the organization was “invested in looking after our people” through initiatives such as the Pitch Positive Pledge. However, there has “not been a huge cry for a trade union” among its members, he said. 

CCW’s founders said they had so far had little direct engagement with agency leaders about the union. However, Binding said he asked the CEO of a major holding company for their perspective on unionization, and the executive replied with a response written by a lawyer. 

“It told me two things: They’re taking it seriously that unionization will happen in the sector, and also quite fearful of it,” he said.

Ferhaoui added: “We welcome any employer who wants to work constructively with us.”