FMCG's loss is financial services gain

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Pages - October 7 2007

Competitive salaries and the guarantee of an invigorating challenge are driving many marketing executives away from the FMCG sector and towards financial services, writes Dermot Corrigan

A growing number of high-level marketing executives in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector are moving into new industries, including financial services and telecommunications, according to Marketing People director Rory Brennan.

"A brain drain is hitting most Irish FMCG companies," Brennan said. "An example is Damien Devaney, who is now marketing director of O2 Ireland. He came from Coca Cola, and prior to that he was in Diageo. He had worked for the biggest brewery and soft drinks companies in the world. That is an asset that FMCG had developed up to a very high level, and now he is gone.”

Brennan said Vodafone, Bank of Ireland and Perlico had also recently taken senior marketing executives from employers in the FMCG sector.

Chris Small, director of interim, consulting and training with Alternatives, said increased competition within markets such as financial services was driving the demand for skillful and experienced marketing candidates.

"There is now a lot of competition between banks for customers, so they want to have the best marketing people out there," said Small. "Consequently there is not as much available talent of the calibre that they - and we - would like."

Key attractions

Brennan said the salaries on offer to marketing candidates in the financial services sector were generally higher than in FMCG.

"Financial services as a home would pay, broadly speaking, about ten per cent more to marketeers in basic salaries,” he said. “On top of that, you have packages which are slightly more lucrative."

Brennan added, however, that many of the candidates who opted to leave FMCG for other sectors were not just attracted by the promise of a higher salary, but also the challenge within a new market.

"Marketeers are generally not, by their nature, money grabbers," he said. "Their salaries are pretty healthy, but they are not generally as cut-throat as sales people. When I move people, particularly at the middle to senior end of the marketplace, they are not moving for money; they are moving for a more rounded experience which will add value to their CV and help them up the marketing ladder."

Brennan said that the skills marketing departments developed in FMCG were easily transferable to both financial services and telecoms.

“If you build a good career in food and drink and get original advertising and really good branding experience with big budgets, you can quite easily apply that to a banking or communications environment," said Brennan. "For example if I am marketing a beer, or marketing a mortgage, the market for those products is actually quite similar."

Brennan said marketing candidates tended to prefer original ‘above the line’ advertising experience working for Irish-based brands, over ‘distributor’ experience localising international campaigns.

"The goal for most marketeers is to get original advertising, where they are really being creative," said Brennan. "Most good marketeers will seek out experience that will get them that type of exposure so they know they can develop and will be attractive for most companies going forward."




Marketing Salaries

Marketing People's latest salary survey, released last month, profiled marketing salaries across the FMCG marketing sector in Ireland.

The data compiled in the survey was taken from a comprehensive range of industry sources, including a large selection of multinational and indigenous companies, key industry contacts and the company’s own internal data.

Brennan said salaries were relatively stable, with incremental rises the norm over the last year.

"Basic salary increases are at an average of 4.5 per cent," he said. "The rate of increase is down from the previous 12, when the average was eight per cent. Salaries were growing at a serious speed, but they have definitely slowed down. I think it will even tighten again in the next twelve months."

Brennan said salaries in certain senior roles were growing faster than the average, but at middle and lower levels, growth was generally negligible.

"The whole piece has slowed down, which ultimately is good for clients," said Brennan. "People are staying longer and building their skills. A year ago, some people were coming in to us and saying they wanted €40,000 and, in my opinion, they were only worth about €32,000. There is a little more sense out there now."

Tight market

Brian Sweeney, sales and marketing director with HRM Recruitment Group, said economic factors were driving recruitment trends in marketing.

"Some of the larger companies have reorganised their marketing departments and there has been a certain streamlining of roles," he said. " The markets are now saturated in areas such as telecoms and financial services, so they are looking for creative marketeers and trying to put in a different marketing structure."

Sweeney said the trend meant some candidates were now less inclined to consider a career move.

"Senior candidates are being more particular about what they want," he said. "There are a lot of senior people in the marketplace who maybe have less options than they may have had. They may be looking, but there might not be an awful lot there for them to choose from at the moment."

Sweeney said an economic slowdown would mean both increased competition within particular sectors of the economy and greater demand for marketing expertise.

"There are a number of saturated markets in Ireland," he said. "A lot of larger clients have slightly downsized their marketing departments, but companies need people with a very strong capacity for delivery."

"Companies are looking to their marketeers for opportunities to get into new segments or broaden the distribution channels they are already in. They are looking to the marketing group to add that additional insight to their business."

Sweeney said he did not expect a slowdown in marketing recruitment. He said HRM had recently added a new member to their marketing team, with plans to expand the team further in the near future.

Companies looking to manage scarcer resources often turn to interim marketeers to work on individual projects, rather than take on extra full time staff, said Small.

"Over the last two years the interim area has grown particularly well and we are certainly expecting it to continue to grow," he said. "As general business conditions tighten, interim is a really good solution. It is 'turn on, turn off' so you can take what you need, when you need it."

Skill-sets

Despite the general tightening of the market, Sweeney said certain specialised skill-sets were still in demand.

"On the services side, there is a strong emphasis on strong customer relationship management people who can put direct marketing and relevance marketing campaigns together," he said.

"On the brand and product management side, we are seeing demand for managers who have had commercial responsibility for affecting change in their market and who really understand how to drive the triggers in their market."

Small said Interim’s clients were looking for new staff with particular niche skill-sets.

"We are finding a strong demand for customer insight specialists who have a strong knowledge of how people think and act," said Small. "It is a pretty refined skill and the sort of thing you only really find in the most senior candidates.

"Data analysis is an area where there are not as many people as there were in the past. There is also more demand for brand managers, particularly in the financial services sector.

"Technology is a growth area, but it is still a niche. A familiarity with online marketing is quite important in telecoms and financial services, but maybe a little less so in FMCG."

In the current market Sweeney said clients were willing to wait for the right candidate to come along at the right price.

"Some clients are being very particular about the skills they are looking for," he said. "They are saying we want somebody who can bring a more defined consumer orientation to what we are doing, or we would be looking for someone with a broad range of above the line or TV campaign experience. They will wait to find the right candidate and that can sometimes take some time."