Been in this industry almost 30 years. Confidently, I can say I NEVER backed down from a challenge. Day in, day out, I made the choice to sacrifice everything, including helping raise my family, to make the agency work perfect and hit those insane deadlines set by my teams and my clients…WHATEVER IT TOOK.

Again, my choice. However, where I screwed up is thinking there was a reward at the end… and THERE IS NO REWARD. As I have progressed through the arduous path of my career, I’ve continuously s

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I’ve continuously seen an increase investment of less experienced and less passionate people whom I need to support me and my teams efforts. Resulting in a dramatic drop in appreciation for what “we” do in the trenches.

likesmart

This.

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A lot of layoffs are happening right now. GOOD EXPERIENCED PEOPLE are being tossed aside in exchange for cheaper labor and more “yes men/women” to secure those c-suite yearly bonuses. Maybe our industry is dying. Maybe the tech is making this possible. Dunno.

Regardless. What is clear is that the old equation of Advertising is dead.

Somehow, I still hope anyway, people like myself will get that call to fix this mess that our leaders have made.

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And yet they wonder why mistakes that cost the agency millions of dollars each year keep happening.

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I didn’t even mention an inept training/onboarding structure.. AND HORRID talent recruiters (not all of them, but DAMN some of them have no business resourcing at all)

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Sadly, it’s no longer about working hard and coming up with good ideas. It’s about checking boxes.

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Yup. A strong work ethic, or better said,a strong passion for the craft seems to be in short supply. There’s a big diff between doing what you are told VS applying your passion to the work. Checking boxes really just means doing the bare minimum.

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This is just sad. I know people like you. Put it all into the job and failed to build a life. And expected appreciation for that. It’s not going to come, whether or not advertising is dead or not- you’d be writing the same post if you were in any industry.

You gave it your all and they just don’t care. I’m sorry, but that was always going to happen, what alternative is there? Who even are the “they” that should care? Did you expect to be lauded and thrown a retirement party at 65 and then still get calls when they just couldn’t figure things out?

The agency model has always valued cheap over experienced, and once you are expensive, you get laid off. It’s not rocket science, this making of ads, and the kids who seem less “passionate” can actually get it done well enough to pass muster. They may not do it your way, but it gets done. It’s worse in creative services because we get no awards and nobody in leadership really cares how the work gets done (or can even name us or our teams). But this same aging out happens to creative and account as well.

Advertising has, indeed, changed, as holding companies demand growth and tech makes margins smaller and timelines shorter, and the resulting turnover and reliance on young staff is very, very, very annoying. It makes so much more work for folks like you and me to keep the trains running. And it’s easy to think you need to be there or they will fail. But they will not. Within a week of you being gone they will have adapted.

So, I’m sad for you that you lost your job, but it’s not the industry, or specific to the industry I should say, it’s just life. You got played by buying into the idea of “sacrificing everything,” and that must be really hard to face. If you are hoping to freelance, I hope you get lots of calls, but the attitude of them “needing you to clean up their messes” will not make you a popular freelancer. Try to lean into being a person they call to make projects go smoothly, or when they need someone to step in last minute.

I’ll also add that the folks I’m thinking of didn’t get calls to freelance because they spent the last 20 years of their careers talking down to people and yelling a lot about how it was or should be done and not adapting to change. I’m hoping you were more a mentor and teacher because in freelance it’s often about who people like working with and remember well, versus purely doing the job as described.

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Well said. Thank you for this reset. Totally agree on many points you made. I guess my rant was meant to remind everyone out there that we are expendable at the end of the day, and share my experience as a cautionary tale for others to avoid making the same mistake I made. Thanks for the encouraging words.

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Ugh factor all this into the absolutely demoralizing job market right now and it really just makes me feel bad, man.

Put a fork in it

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