Workflow and Personnel Observed at a New York Media Agency

Balancing Rapid Personnel Turnover with Work Continuity

I arrived at V2 (New York) in February 2019 for an EIBA(※1) training program, and August marked exactly six months. V2 is part of the same group as Vizeum, a media agency within the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) group, specializing in media buying and planning. Its integrated planning capabilities, combining traditional mass media with digital, are particularly outstanding and highly valued by clients.

V2's main client is a certain global corporation, accounting for nearly 99% of its workload. This client owns numerous well-known products that everyone recognizes. Due to its massive budget scale, it frequently collaborates with famous events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars. I am privileged to work in this exceptionally valuable environment, experiencing things I wouldn't normally encounter.

While my job duties haven't changed much from when I was in Japan, the corporate culture is fundamentally different – from how teams are structured and work is approached to the relationship between managers and subordinates. This leads to many new discoveries and insights. Today, I want to write about the thing that puzzled me the most.

As you probably know, the US is a country where job-hopping is common. Taking my current company as an example, in just the six months since I joined, I estimate at least 15-20% of the team has turned over. At this rate over half a year, the annual turnover rate would likely be in the 30-40% range.

Some people send a polite email on their last day, but most just leave without a word. This applies to clients too—often, you only learn someone has left when you send an email and suddenly get an auto-reply.

With turnover this high, how does it not disrupt business? Amidst this constant turnover, how do they maintain continuity in work—including handoffs—and consistency in client service? Also, what about training new hires?

New members are introduced this way on the company TV. There are no welcome parties, no self-introductions in front of everyone, and no greeting rounds.

While the focus is on operational matters, given the increasing labor market fluidity in Japan today, I thought organizing my observations from the past six months might offer some insight into how DAN tackles this issue and maintains profitability.

Competing on numbers?

Frankly, it seemed they had enough staff that losing one or two people wouldn't immediately cause problems. Based on my experience in Japan, I even thought, "Isn't this way too many people?"

How many? Well, teams are organized by client product. Just for the media planning team alone, there are five or six people. One planning head, two associate planners doing the actual work, and two or three assistants. What's impressive is that this doesn't even include digital planners or analytics/insights staff (the so-called strategic planners) handling target analysis. In Tokyo, you might end up handling nearly all these roles yourself.

Ensuring sufficient staffing like this is actually a crucial point, and I believe it has three key benefits.

First, if someone suddenly leaves, there's no panic until a replacement is found. Information is constantly shared within the team, so even if one person leaves, the remaining members can cover.

Second, it reduces the workload per person. This directly addresses the issues of "work style reform" and "work-life balance" that are currently hot topics in Japan.

And most importantly, since the US operates on a fee-based system rather than media margins, increasing staffing directly boosts fees (labor costs + operating expenses), which directly improves the company's profit margin. Of course, client approval is required, so you must convince the client's purchasing decision-maker why that level of staffing is necessary.

The Existence of SOPs

SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedures. These are documents that meticulously explain each step of a job, existing for different types of work. Their contents include:
① The purpose of the process
② Clearly describe which department and who is responsible for what in this step
③ A timeline stating what must be done by when
④ What the deliverables are, with samples provided
⑤ Process details and important notes
That's the gist of it.

At first, it felt less like advertising agency work and more like a factory manual. Various SOPs exist—for media buying, billing processes, reporting, etc. Each document runs at least a dozen pages, with longer ones stretching to 30–40 pages. These are exceptionally well-organized, serving as training materials when someone leaves or a new team member joins.

Additionally,
- Reduces errors
- Quality of output can be controlled
・Client service remains consistently high
・Most importantly, work know-how and insights are shared and preserved in solid written form, not just through individual knowledge
・This makes work handover procedures nearly unnecessary
・Since it's shared and agreed upon with clients, you can manage client expectations. Furthermore, if any issues arise, you can easily identify the problem by verifying whether the SOP was properly followed during the work process
These are the benefits.

As an aside, I initially thought, "Even though EIBA is practical training, I'm a foreigner and don't know much about the market, so maybe I can take it easy and study for the first month or so?" That expectation was completely off the mark.

Before a week had passed, my female boss called me in and said, "Alright, I'm putting you in charge of leading this task!" I was stunned! I hadn't even formally greeted the client yet, and within the company, I barely knew who the team members were or what responsibilities they held.

This isn't really related to the main topic, but there's a beer tap in the office. After 3:30 PM, it's okay to drink while working.

I couldn't very well say, "I just got here, so I don't really know!" So, I started by confirming the bare minimum etiquette—like whether it was okay to email the client directly without my boss introducing me—before diving into work. This is where SOPs really shine. After all, they're designed so that a new foreigner, unfamiliar with the market, can immediately start working as part of the team.

Adding one more point about information sharing: team data is stored and managed in shared folders, just like in Japan. But managing them is a huge deal—so much so that at first I thought, "That's a bit over the top!" You can tell how seriously it's taken when even the folder structure, naming conventions, and contents are discussed in meetings exclusively for managers.

Simple is best

Beyond that, I sense many other thoughtful designs built around the assumption of personnel turnover, ensuring anyone can jump right into the work.

Highly Versatile Systems
I think Japan is trending this way too: instead of building proprietary systems, they use widely known, highly versatile systems or external platforms. This way, new hires don't get confused by different internal systems and can start using them right away. It seemed like they were reducing training effort and maintenance costs.

The Clarity and Richness of Media Tools
Tool automation is highly advanced; with just basic knowledge, anyone can master them quickly. There are advertising analytics tools like Japan's DAS(※2), but they don't just output raw data—simply select the information you need, and they automatically analyze it, including year-over-year comparisons. I was also amazed at how they present it in clean tables and graphs.

Simply selecting competitors allows for easy market analysis. Just thinking about how much time we spent on this in Japan brought tears to my eyes—it was that impressive.

※2＝DAS (Dentsu Advertising Statistics)
Japan's advertising statistics database. Allows searching by advertiser for advertising expenditure, volume, and creative materials.
 

Sharing Formats by Client
When I joined V2, my supervisor gave me a PowerPoint titled "Convenience Kit for Working with Client XX." It detailed everything from client-specific PowerPoint templates, fonts, and logos with their correct usage, to email response speed and timing, auto-reply rules, and CC/BCC protocols. It was incredibly clear. Conversely, since other materials couldn't be used, there was no confusion, making it highly efficient.

This approach not only ensures consistent minimum rules and business etiquette for client service but also helps anyone quickly adapt to the company.

This time, the focus was mainly on the operating procedures at my current company, but if the opportunity arises, I'd like to share more about the actual work content somewhere.

(※1) = EIBA (Emerging International Business Assignment)
A practical training program where young employees are dispatched to Dentsu Inc. Aegis Network locations for one year as part of developing next-generation talent. The goal is to gain business experience in a cross-cultural environment and acquire the perspective, skills, and network necessary to become a field leader on projects, both domestically and internationally.