Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Advertising Agency Employer Branding: Eliciting Salient Attributes from the Perspective of Prospective
Employees
Steven Pike, PhD, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Gayle Kerr, PhD, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Introduction
Branding is a well established topic in the academic literature, with the first papers published during the 1940s (see for
example Guest, 1942). In the time since, a recurring theme has been the potential for branding to differentiate an
organisation, product or service from competitors (see Gardner & Levy 1955, Aaker 1991, Keller 1993, Kotler, Brown,
Adam, Burton & Armstrong 2007). Branding research has generally been undertaken in the context of consumer or
trade markets, the growth in interest of which was evidenced during the second half of the 20 th century, when an
estimated 766 major publications by 789 authors were published (Papadopolous 2002, in Anholt 2002). However, the
concept of employer branding has emerged relatively recently (see Ambler & Barrow, 1996).
The last 50 years has witnessed major changes in the workplace and society; through the technological advancements of
the 1960s, industrial strife in the 1970s, the emergence of the 1980s ‗enterprise culture‘, the 1990s recession and
corporate downsizing (Cooper & Burke, 2002). This has resulted in a plethora of new challenges and opportunities for
management and workers, including: downsizing, restructuring, short term employment contracts, changing roles of
men and women, virtual organisation networks, outsourcing, and flattened hierarchical structures. Recent macro
environment factors such as the globalisation of labour markets and the aging of baby boomers have created more
competition for staff recruitment, which in turn has necessitated management to become more people-centred.
However, understanding employer attractiveness from the perspective of potential employees remains under researched,
(Berthon, Ewing & Hah, 2005).
This paper is concerned with advertising agency brand image among prospective employees. Specifically this
exploratory study reports the first use of Kelly‘s Triads to elicit attributes of advertising agencies deemed salient to
graduating students of an undergraduate advertising major. The differences between the salient attributes elicited from
students and opinions of an expert panel highlight the value of engaging in an inductive stage identifying context-
specific consumer input to supplement universally accepted attribute lists for use in structured surveys measuring
employer brand image and positioning.
In the advertising industry, recruiting and retaining knowledge workers is of vital importance, given as suggested by
Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts that his organisation is in the ideas business (see
www.saatchikevin.com). Often the success of an agency in a competitive pitch depends upon the quality of the staff and
the creativity of their thinking. Also, traditional advertising is undergoing radical transformation, which is changing the
way it is planned, created, channelled and even defined (Richards & Curran 2002, Schultz & Schultz 2004, Malthouse,
Calder & Tomhane 2007, Chowdbury, Finn & Olsen 2007). It is expected that amidst this turbulence, advertising
agencies are also seeking to redefine and reposition themselves. The motivation for this research project was the
acknowledgement by the advertising industry in Australia of a severe and worsening talent shortage (see for example
AdNews, August 8, 2008, p. L3). The problems resulted in a National Skills Summit called by the Australian
advertising industry in 2008. The desire to attract potential graduates has encouraged agencies to launch innovative
recruitment programs such as such as DDB‘s ‗Launch Pad‘ (see www.ddb.com/careers.html ), which includes a
commitment to spend 2% of total revenue on training programs and support 23 internships in 2008. It is proposed that
there will be an increasing need in the future for advertising agencies to develop an understanding of how they are
positioned as employers in the marketplace if they are to enhance their recruitment strategies. To do so requires an
understanding of the salient attributes that attract recruits to agency brands and how the firm is perceived to perform on
these attributes in relation to key competitor employer brands.
Method
Due to the lack of an established scale to measure advertising agency brand image within the literature, two inductive
approaches were used to develop a list of salient attributes, which could be used at a later stage to operationalise the
construct of interest. The first involved personal interviews with prospective employees using Kelly‘s Triads, and the
second sought expert opinion from a panel of practitioners and academics. The rationale for the latter was to identify
any differences between the supply and demand perspectives, since it has been argued that one of the strengths of
Repertory Grid is the identification of attributes of importance to the participant, but which the researcher may not have
thought of (Ryan, 1991). Kelly‘s Triads, also referred to as the Reperotry Test, was originally designed to operationalis
George Kelly‘s (1955) Personal Construct Theory (PCT). The unification of theory (PCT) and technique has therefore
has strong face validity (Downs 1976, Smith & Leach 1972).
Qualitative research requires a purposeful sample of information-rich participants. Another sampling aim is to reach a
point of data redundancy, where the addition of any new participants would not yield any new information. Previous
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