Advertising agencies have shrunk budgets for freelancers and contractors as they wind back following the pandemic surge in business.
The days of inflated fees to get bodies to help get campaigns done for clients are over, for now.
Recruiters in Australia have seen a rise in enquiries from freelancers in the face of economic uncertainty.
WPP has cut the number of freelancers it uses by around 15%.
CEO Mark Read, briefing market analysts on March quarter results, says he has 800 fewer permanent people and is about 200 freelancers down.
“This time last year, we had to employ quite a lot of additional freelancers because net sales were ahead of expectations,” he told the analysts.
“And so we had to support that client work with freelance resource.
“This year, we've kept very good control over our freelance spend … we're down about 15% year-on-year in terms of the number of freelancers.”
Kirsty Tavae, managing director and co-founder of TKR Group, a recruitment agency specialising in placing talent in the advertising industry, says the freelance market has changed over the past six months.
“We have had so many freelancers reach out and in market as the big agencies have let go of the volume of freelancers that they have had to retain their perm staff,” she says.
“With some of the bigger agency’s restructuring and with redundancies, I have also seen that there was a big volume of freelancers in that mix too that were on fixed term contracts let go.
“We have also noticed that the inflated day rate has started to go back to what it was before the candidate shortage.
“We are seeing reasonable day rate requests again from talent which has been a nice change for the bigger and smaller agencies looking for freelance support.”
At specialist marketing work-solutions company Aquent, Lee Shorter, practice manager, design & development, says the demand for new permanent hires is lower than 2022 but it is holding steady.
“Businesses, whilst remaining cautious, are reasonably bullish about increasing headcount in the new financial year,” says Shorter.
“Over the last few months we have seen an increased demand for freelance talent that is largely driven by inhouse marketing, creative and digital teams.
“Recruitment freezes and reduced headcount approvals are key factors in this demand for freelancers, but tightening budgets and the need to control costs is also driving inhouse teams to complete work in house rather than completely outsourcing it to agencies.”
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