Overly optimistic Gen Z take incoming…

Good creative and human perspective always win out. Maybe not tomorrow or next year. These are strange, sometimes scary times. AI might threaten jobs and conglomerates are squeezing creative freedom.

But we(me you, the guy down the hall) in numbers are stronger in the long run than any suit or CEO. Power shifts. Industries change. If good creative disappears, people will miss it. They will crave it and we will bring it to them.

I still have hope.

People don't crave advertising. Capitalism craves advertising. Capitalism needs advertising because capitalism needs consumers.

This isn't an industry that does good in the world. You can enjoy the life it provides for you as someone in the profession, but advertising props up an economic system that keeps increasing economic inequality.

Have hope that one day we'll overthrow the 1% of the world that owns 50% of the wealth.

Sadly untrue, OP. Efficiency wins. I’ve done this for 20 years and every year, the pie gets smaller, the future gets scarier and agency leaders tell us we are “lucky.”

Good creative does build buzz, though. And this is an industry where you control your own destiny.

Your holding company bosses are pricy for your clients and you have more power than you think. We bring the ideas. We forge relationships.
Any one of us could start a shop that undercuts holding companies, cuts out the fat at the top, poaches clients and treats people better. Look at Mischief, Mojo or Bandits and Friends.

The bigger and more unwieldy these agencies get, the more vulnerable they are to competitors. Don’t get too optimistic, though. Optimists end up begging for scraps, and your leaders who preach about the ‘power of creativity’ just want you to work harder and harder for them. If you want change, you have to make it.

I appreciate the optimism, but there are several forces at play that make this untrue.

1. Clients are under massive pressure to prove ROI on everything. That means every initiative needs to be justified with data before it gets greenlit. You end up in this loop where the only “safe” decisions are based on what’s already worked, so anything genuinely creative becomes a harder sell.

2. When budgets inevitably tighten, companies look for ways to cut costs. Talent is always the most expensive line item.

3. Big agencies are owned by publicly traded holding companies with a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns. Investing heavily in craft and talent doesn’t align with that mandate when cheaper alternatives exist.

Good creative cannot win because the system we’re in does not reward it. I’m not saying there’s no place for creativity, but “people will crave good creative and we will bring it to them” requires fundamentally restructuring how clients and agencies operate.

People would miss entertainment/movies if the good creatives disappeared… but advertising isn’t entertainment. It is something people endure. Sadly, we are disappearing because people hate us and we are expendable.

I mean, I'd like you to be right...

I do think craft will make a comeback generally in culture. Being the parasites we are, the ad industry will then follow suit.

Creative will always exist, but the number of roles available will continue to shrink. Our industry will only contract from here on out. The optimism is wonderful and I hope you hold onto that as long as you can. But for most of us, we’ll be forced out of the industry in no time.

I, too, wish this was the case but tend to lean on the side of many comments here that it’s proven not to be the case… that said, I think it’s important how and what we’re considering as advertising. Because I think what we consider as “ads” is changing or will have to change to be effective.

Consumers see right through it these days and tune it out as noise. But what still makes me excited in this industry are the brands that actually invest in experiences, albeit branded, that highlight genuine humanity or cause people to stop and critically think for a moment.

Maybe not the 30 second spots we remember or digital ads cluttering our screens today… but I hope we go in the direction of branded experience, and think we may see an evolution like that not too far off…

I DO think traditional ad agencies may not have much time left, but the boutique and highly specialized agencies will survive, hired for that specialty or for those high profile ideas that they need expertly executed… it’s exciting to have some unknown so close to the here and now, also terrifying, but hey, along for the ride given there’s not really another choice 🤷🏻‍♀️

It may not

True!

Ok

Good creative movies already disappeared and there’s no massive outcry or consumer demand. I’m in my 40s. Every year there were movies that came out they were works of experimentalism, works of art, and just bad ass mainstream action movies that were both of those things too. There were emotional family dramas about relationships that people waited online to go to a movie to see. There was terms of endearment type stuff. They don’t make this anymore. Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, if they were young today, would be trying to get on an episode of CSI or severance. And guess what. There’s no massive public boycotting an outcry. The AMC in our part of the city just spent gazillion to rip out all their seats and put in Seats that recline all the way so that teenagers can give each other hand jobs while the slasher is hunting his prey. Nobody is begging for the return of that type of creativity. So they certainly don’t care about it in advertising!

People won’t miss quality ads but businesses will if it impacts its bottom line. That’s where you could be right! I hope