Creative and Planning Salaries 2009

Earlier this year I ran a very small survey to get a sense of the salary expectations of people working in the social media space. It was most interesting to me because the survey asked both employers and employees the same questions. And while I fully expected there to be a mismatch between the two groups, the results were surprisingly similar.

Over in the UK, the advertising focused recruiters, The Talent Business, produce a guide that outlines what agency folk are being paid. Simon Veksner over at Scamp has shown that there is a huge discrepancy in what ATL people are paid over their digital counterparts.

So while there is a huge push for those from traditional agencies to acquire some digital skills, it could be, as Scamp suggests, creating a race to the bottom. It seems that there is little immediate incentive for creatives to skill-up in order to take a cut in salary.

But it is not just the creative department where the discrepancies lie. Amelia Torode shares the salary details for planners from the same report.

There doesn’t appear to be quite so much variation between the ATL and Integrated rates …

But while it seems that the heads of planning at ATL agencies earn more than their digital counterparts, this is reversing in junior roles.

Note that all these figures are in Pounds Sterling – and it can be difficult to get a sense of the cost-of-living equivalent here in Australia. But I would guess, based on our earlier survey, that 1:1.5 is not far off. Makes for interesting reading.