The ‘Telling Your Mates Down The Pub’ Factor

Some agencies are better than their reputations, while others are much worse.

But whatever the reality, the perception can be a powerful thing.

This makes itself most obvious when you are telling people you haven’t seen in a while where you are working and what you’re working on.

Sad though it is to admit, I’d rather tell people I was working at well-thought-of but less good place than a turning-it-around shithole (Of course, I’d rather work at the latter, but telling and doing are very different things).

Of course, agencies know this, and are able to attract better staff for a smaller wage based purely on reputation (although that reputation would of course have to be based on something more substantial).

But I’m surprised agencies don’t exploit this still further. In these difficult times, getting every financial advantage possible would seem a bright thing to do, so it seems a big waste of cash to be a crappy agency who has to pay more for lower quality staff. Having said that, it really is a buyers job market out there, so I suppose the ‘less good’ places can get better staff than they could before without the tedious bother of having to sell difficult work.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, pride in your workplace=greater job satisfaction.

It also has other benefits. I recall visiting a friend sometime in the 1990s when I was working at what was generally considered (through little fault of my own) to be one of the best agencies in the world. Her flatmates were two account guys who worked at another agency, that was, frankly, shit, and they were quite rude and mean to her. Then the subject of what we all did for a living came up. When I told them where I was and in which department they stopped being rude/mean to my friend, making her life a good deal more pleasant.

Obviously, they were a pathetic pair of tits, but I never forgot the unexpected advantages of working somewhere good.