• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 19, 2014

Are you smart enough to be Yahoo's next ad guru? Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has taken a lot of heat for hiring Henrique de Castro as the brand's COO and for paying him $109 million. He was tasked with improving relations with Madison Ave.  Sadly, that $109 million was poorly invested, as Yahoo's ad business has remained fairly flat since de Castro was hired 15 months ago. So de Castro is out and Mayer is on the hunt for a new COO. Writing on EverythingPR, Phil Butler has a few candidates for Mayer to consider. And most of them hail from the agency side of things. Who's on the list? Droga5 Brand Strategy Director Tom Naughton, AdRoll Founder Adam Berke, Grey New Business Director Jane Reiss, The Martin Agency Creative Director Andy Azula and Goodby Silverstein & Partners Group Account Director John Coyne. So does Butler have any idea what he's talking about?

So what's it like working in an ad agency compared to working in a public relations agency? According to former ad guy Charlie Tercek, who now works at PR agency GolinHarris, ad agency people are mean and PR people are nice. "In an ad agency, everything is a fight. Creatives fight for the best assignments and account execs fight about who sits next to the client. I remember fights about where we should go for lunch. I made a lot of friends in the business and left with some fond memories -- but everyone is so aggressive, it was frankly exhausting." So why is it this way? As long as ad agency people produced creative that worked, clients would put up with their childish behavior. In PR, until recently, there wasn't really a tangible product. It was all about building relationships. And no one wants to build a relationship with a pompous, self-centered asshole.

So are you a Medium? A Historian? A House of Cards? A Magician? A Time Bandit? If so, you are doing grave harm within your agency. If, on the other hand, you are a Confidant, a Stalwart, a Willow, a Coach or a Time Traveler, you will be loved by co-workers and clients alike. Check out this analysis of five personality types that are harmful to the collaboration process and five personality types that are beneficial. Sadly, there are way too many of the former and not enough of the latter in the agency world. 

It's really hilarious to watch the fickleness of the ad world at work. Back in the Mad Men days, agencies were looked upon as one-stop-shops for all things advertising. Then there was the almighty unbundling which gave us creative boutiques and media agencies. Now there seems to be a swing back to a world in which agencies are integrated organizations providing, yes, a one-stop-shop for all things advertising. He is far from the first to comment on this emerging trend, but Traction CEO Adam Kleinberg, writing in Ad Age, gives three reasons why integration is, once again, a good thing.

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