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Depends entirely on the person. Ive met truly exceptional creatives that have gone from junior to CD in 7 years - it’s more common now for agencies to bump up senior creatives to CD’s so that they can double their workload and give them an incremental pay rise. Hermeti & Ana Balarin at Mother London went from placement to ECD in 7 years. But those are exceptional circumstances where you have an agency founder / ECD believing in younger talent.
The average is 2-3 years at Junior, 3-5 years at Mid-Weight, and 5-10 years at Senior. The step up from Senior to CD is the most tricky one.
The best creatives seem to get to ECD in 11-15 years.
Anna Arnell at 18 Feet and Rising was made Creative Partner at the agency 4 years into her career. It all depends on the place. Luck plays a part. So does taking a risk on a scrappy upstart.
👆 It’s not about years, it’s about the qualities people pick up in those years.
I’ve seen a few promotions to Senior _______ recently, all people who have MAYBE three years of work experience in their role. Am I being an old grump for thinking that this is totally inappropriate? I’d expect minimum 5-7 years of experience for a Senior title.
Depends on the person. I've seen genuinely bright, exceptional people make director in 4 years and so a good job at that level.
https://medium.com/@peterjwagoner/whats-the-difference-between-a-junior-midlevel-and-senior-creative-2ef5993f5f1e
0–4 Junior, mid-level, senior = The juniors
5–15 ACD CD GCD = The seniors (still in the weeds)
16–20 ECD = The actual CD
21–25 = Involuntary retirement
I will speak completely from personal experience rather than generalities so take what I have with a grain of salt. Some people in my office have show a little animosity towards me as I went from Intern to SAD in around 2 years, which I feel is understandable. “Years of experience” is something often brought up, but as advertising wasn’t my first career, I feel this isn’t the best method in which to judge. I had no previous advertising experience per se, but shouldn’t overall talent and personality be the reason in which we place people in said positions? I of course am biased here, but in a world moving away from awards, away from large holding companies and the like, I feel that the stuff we produce should be the deciding factor as opposed to how much time we put in.
I mean I think that is a separate conversation entirely so I won’t put too much here, but there are quite a few articles on how awards mean less today than 10 years ago, same with holding companies. More nimble groups and small shops are seeing great success in today’s climate that focus heavily on social/ strategic digital productions. At the end of the day most brands don’t care about the awards we win or the title on the building, they care about the creative representing their name and how the public reception to the creative is received, and I feel our industry is slowly realizing that.
It’s not about time. It’s about the work. Whoever says differently, says wrong.
A lot of responses re creative here, but I’ve seen several quick promotions for producers and strategists lately and I find it hard to believe they have enough work experience under their belts to warrant the title. They graduated in 2016-7 for crying out loud!
A lot of the time it’s about doubling someone’s workload and giving them an incremental pay rise. That way they don’t have to hire someone experienced from outside the company - which is expensive.
Things bottleneck anyway when it comes to promotions in strategy and production. There tend to be more CD’s than Strategy Directors and Exec Producers at agencies.
I agree agism should not be a factor to titles any longer. Should be production and experience based. Not simply production (hard work, output, hustle) but a level of experience, net worth in network / maturity to manage the tough relationship nuances and politics that can occur on the job. Age has some correlation there but should not be considered the gold standard here! It’s tougher to evaluate against but we should be at a point where we are doing a better job of evaluating production and experience not just age which is certainly tough for HR to deal with but we need to be better!
If you’re talented and depending on the agency, they may promote you to senior position earlier to retain you. I’ve been nearly 3 years at my agency and I went from coordinator to supervisor while another colleague still at associate level. Also, one of our interns holds an associate title, and she has been with us for nearly 1.3 years. (We work in digital space, so the promotion curve could be faster as well)