I'm a good creative with lots of "good" work but know i'll never transcend to a "great" creative. Having a hard time knowing I'll always be just shy of W+K.

Tons of great creatives have had fruitful careers without w+k's approval. They have no magic sauce, just stand up for your own creative and believe in it.

If youve ever worked at wieden or know people who have worked there, you’d know there are plenty of just “good” creatives there, even some genuinely bad ones. Getting in there has more to do with who you know, like any other agency in this business.

Do the best work you can and always try to work for the best creatives possible and you’ll have a fulfilling career no matter where you are. It’s really about finding that one great ECD who takes you to the next level

If you want to be a great creative you have to think beyond an ad agency and create something great that is truly yours. Whether you're capable of that or not is a completely separate question than if you could ever thrive at WK.

There are great advertising creatives, yes. But it's still just advertising, and nobody cares. Find some freedom in the lack of care.

Don’t feel bad everyone fast forwards wk commercials too

They’re fine. They’re not the end all be all. Plenty of fine folks doing just as good of work elsewhere. The sooner you realize this in your career, the happier you’ll be. You don’t need that validation to be just as talented.

Man, I’m a few layers of Earth away from W+K so I feel this in a big way. But hey, you’re a great creative if you make work that you’re proud of — even if you don’t work at your ideal agency. 💪

How do you know you'll never transcend to 'great?'

What does 'great' mean?

You believe growth is not possible?

How could a good creative become better? ('Better' might be a more helpful concept than 'great' by the way. Great is binary: you are or you aren't. Every day you have an opportunity to strive for a little better than before, no matter where you are in your career.)

My 'limiting beliefs' detector is going off.

I think that’s a feeling you’ll always have. I work at WK and still feel this way. It’s (hopefully) a constantly ascending bar. Your taste and expectations will likely always be higher than your talents.

It really is more luck than anything that gets you in here. Plenty of people with not amazing books or just medium talent. And also plenty of amazing creatives who leave for other places because they’re not getting great briefs or think they’ll get better opportunities elsewhere. The work I’m most jealous of these days is not being done by us.

Which is just to say (and this may or may not be helpful) don’t let your self worth hinge at all on working here. It’s far from the be all end all.

I honestly think we put these companies on a pedestal. Once you’re inside you see how unorganized they are—you’d be surprised what I’ve seen.

I know how you feel. They hired my partner but not me, so it couldn’t be more blatant either

Have you ever worked with people who have worked at W+K? Some of them are really great. Some of them are really, really not. Stop judging yourself by a name on your resume. Start judging yourself by your skill set. It doesn’t matter where you work, you can always improve your skills.

Dear OP: with all due respect, bullshit. You have exactly zero idea of whether that amaze flash in the pan will bang you upside the haid tomorrow, the day after, or a decade from now. But I know what you’re doing, because I do it too: pre-conditioning yourself to avoid disappointment. If we, you and I, know we’re not destined for the hall of fame, we can’t be bitter about never getting inducted, eh?

So the alt view is that’s self-limiting and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Unless that speed brake on your ambition makes okay, okay, in which case we both know which way the career crumbles.

This is not Pollyanna speaking, it’s pragmatic. In the end, every career is a flash in the pan; of the several hundred who’ve gotten into the creative side at W+K since they were founded in 1982, you and I could name maybe a half dozen (and where did all those others go?); and to dust off a bit of Gretzky lore, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Who needs W+K? Compare yourself to yourself, and you’ll be a lot happier because you’re setting your own personal goals at your own pace.

I’ll always be a Zimmerman or TMA creative and I’m happy with that. Ok, maybe not TMA.

What would you need to do to get into Wieden? What’s holding you back?

There are mediocre people everywhere no matter how shiny the nameplate is outside the agency — also there are great people spread across SML agencies, in-house, freelance etc. — great work+people always tend to rise to the top over time

I felt the same way, then ended up in pharma and guess what? My salary and work life balance rocks! 😁 I still got ads on TV and in Times Square. Find where you can make your mark!

Does anyone know if w+k is still remote?