On the plane last Monday, I read in an article in the Asian WSJ that a UK government regulator issued a new regulation in April that if one ad agency loses an account to another, the agency that won the account has to hire staffers who worked primarily on the business from the agency who lost it.
Have they gone insane over there? The article notes that "clients often change advertising agencies because they want fresh talent." Well duh. Let's take this a step further...what if I dump my ad agency because I think everyone working on my account is an incompetent fool? Can I specify in the new contract that no-one from the old agency can work on my account? What if I hire an ad agency in another country?
It would be quite ironic (if not uncommon) if this law had the extremely detrimental, and of course completely unintended effect of actually driving ad agencies out of the UK.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at November 6, 2006 11:50 PM