Patterson proposes transfer fees for interns

Several advertising and media journalists have unfairly commented that our efforts have been tokenism and I can fully understand that the limited success has led them to this conclusion. It's easy for us all to become disillusioned at the progress. Our collective efforts to train seem to have been counter productive, despite the good intentions.

The assumption was that, if we as an advertising and marketing industry embraced training, there would be an immediate influx of sufficient talent to fuel our growth. But this initiative was not picked up to the degree it should have been. Too many companies selfishly decided to 'harvest' the talent rather than grow it and since no investment had been made in talent development, significant salaries could be paid to secure it.

Revolving door

The talent 'harvested' rarely had sufficient training to make the move and build a sustainable career path. The net result has been a revolving door of talent, an escalation of salaries well beyond capabilities and ultimately a continuous loss of people from our business.

The growing un-affordability of these youngsters has led many companies to re-focus on more stable experienced people to 'get the job' done. Although this short term solution fixes individual agency problems, it grows the ultimate industry challenge exponentially as many of these experienced individuals are now over priced and approaching retirement.

Without a rapid and decisive intervention by the ACA, and hopefully a client marketing organisation, our industry is in danger of becoming irrelevant. The solution is not more meetings and conferences - these merely draw out of our industry woodwork the soap box Charlie's with vested interests in political aspirations.

Protect training efforts

I believe that those companies investing in training need their efforts protected. And those companies fuelling their growth by harvesting talent need to be financially deterred.

One possible solution for consideration is based on the UK soccer model where teams pay transfer fees for talented players. For example, interns offered a contract by an ACA or marketing organisation member would be required to work for that company for two years.

Should the intern wish to move for whatever reason from one member to another during the contract period, they would re-fund the employer a portion of their earnings. This money would be then re-invested by the company in another intern. Should a member approach an intern within another member company then the full two year salary would be paid as a transfer fee to the initial company.

Harvesting of talent

This concept would protect those who've embraced transformation and it would also protect young talent from premature advancement, which could shorten their long term contribution. It is a deflationary model, and although it allows for "harvesting" of talent, it forces those companies to indirectly re-invest in talent development.

While I'm sure there will be some practical complications to this concept, I do feel that there is a germ of an idea here that is worth exploring. I have put the concept to the ACA and hope that it will gain some traction within that body.