• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, February 23, 2014

Well, this is a bummer. To make room for that 1,000-foot desk it recently installed, it looks like The Barbarian Group has had to lay off a few employees. Hey, never let a few able-bodied advertising professionals get in the way of awesome office design, right? As much as we'd love to paint The Barbarian Group as a soulless agency that could care less about its employees, that's simply not the case. The agency, it seems, let go four people who worked on a piece of the Samsung business that was transferred to the agency's parent, Cheil.

Everyone knows breaking into the ad agency business is not easy. But those who persevere find success. One such individual is Tom Pascoe Williams, who purchased promoted tweets on Twitter to land a job. Specifically, he targeted the promoted tweet to the follower of 40 agencies in London where he resides as well as the followers of Ad Age, Creative Review and Cannes Lions. Of his efforts, he told The Drum, “I desperately needed to build my contacts -- and I recognized that all the people I wanted to have these conversations with were right there in front of me, I just needed a little push. It's all about standing out at this stage, I've sent hundreds of emails, called many, many agencies and none of them have gotten back to me, so I thought I'd play them at their own game!” Did it work? Yes. He's had many interviews and is in negotiations right now with one particular agency.

Speaking of breaking into the advertising business, it's not just job seekers doing great things to land a job in the business. Agencies are doing their part as well. Mullen Pittsburgh has launched Ad U, a 10-week course to teach middle school and high school-age students the ins and outs of advertising. The program was launched February 11 and is being taught at the Barack Obama Academy of International Studies. Of the program, Mullen Pittsburgh President Brian Bronaugh said: "I've been in this business for nearly 25 years and in spite of the seismic changes that have occurred in how we conduct our business, what has shamefully changed little is who is conducting it. It continues to be a primarily male and primarily white workforce. Ad U is a step towards developing a seed program that will introduce the opportunities available and the types of skill sets that are required to the generation of children in the middle and high school levels."

So what does Omnicom do in the midst of its mega merger with Publicis Groupe? It goes out and buys more agencies, of course. And it's getting busy buying up Indian agencies. After acquiring Mudra in 2011, Omnicom is moving ahead with the acquisition of Bangalore-based digital agency 22feet, which was founded in 2009 by Brijesh Jacob, Deepak Nair and Vinod Moolacherry. Omnicom plans to merge 22feet with its Tribal DDB unit, which itself is part of Mudra.

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