The Richest People In Advertising

On May 13, the Advertising Business Insider published a list of the highest paid people in the business.  God bless them all.

The irony about this list is that, with the exception of the heads of some of the agencies, most are people not in the public eye.  I actually didn't know the names of many of them. They are financial people, board members, even one lawyer. But they are very much in charge of the future of the business.  I actually spoke to the president of the New York office of one of the largest agencies controlled by someone on this list.  He had met one of the people on this list, who worked at the holding  company of his agency, but was sure that this person would not really know who he is, despite running the biggest office in the network.  That is simply stunning. 

Since most people reading this blog post will be working at companies which employ the majority of these people, everyone should click on the link to determine who these people are and  how much they are making.  Most of them received salary increases last year despite their companies not doing all that well.  

Executive compensation is determined by boards of directors which usually control a compensation committee.  In reality, those committees – and board members – serve at the discretion of the board chairman.  Now we all understand that the big guns like Martin Sorrell, Myles Nadal, John Wren and Maurice Levy and others are entitled to make a lot of money.  I would guess that most of them work 24/7 and are on a plane too many days a year to count.  These people should be paid well.  Their salaries belie huge amounts of other compensation – limousines, planes, cars, luxury travel, private chefs and others.  I don’t begrudge any of them anything.

The financial executives on this list make staggering amounts of money.  They are also the people who determine who can get a raise, a promotion and which agencies need to cut staff.  These policies are dictated to to all their agencies.  I suppose that is there job since almost all their companies are publicly traded  and they must insure upward numbers for their shareholders.  Many of these people o have nothing to do with the day-to-day business.

What really bothers me is not that they are making so much money, but that they put themselves before their employees.  The majority of their companies have salary and promotion freezes.  It is hard to imagine someone making millions, but denying a lowly administrator a  meager increase or a creative or account person who slaves for 80+ hours a week a promotion and a raise.

One additional comment.  

I simply wish some of them would give back their million dollar raises so that their executives who serve them faithfully can get well deserved raises.  As my mother used to say, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”  It is also good management policy.