Question for the old timers. What was it like when the ad industry was doing really well?

We'd go out for a lunch of 🥃 and 🥩 and brainstorm at the bar until we had amazing concepts so we could justify expensing it. No one cared what time you came in, what time you left or what you did in between as long as you showed up with killer ideas.

Oh yeah, and we had offices with doors, book shelves, and leather couches.

Well, I’m a female and a minority, so for me... was not so great.

lol this post. Yes! Great q. Everyone is always out here like “wow you missed it 12 years ago.” Yes, yes everything in 2019 spiraling inferno i GOT IT it’s chill

Leadership team boondoggles were the best! The Caribbean for team bonding meetings, Florida resorts for training (with and without client; trip for spouse too!), European internal awards shows/parties. Offices with a budget to custom furnish, doors (!), Cable TV in your office (to keep up with popular culture), budgets to take your team out for random bonding. Seems like a dream......

I caught the tail end. Pretty great

Weekly check ins. Enough fucking said.

Agencies weren’t so obsessed with awards, so people had better work/life balance. And there were more people on each account to begin with, so we weren’t always stretched thin. And swag from production companies was great

I forgot about weekly status meetings! Calm, productive meetings that people showed up for and that was potentially your ONLY meeting with those people that week! Amazing.

Everyone who touched the project went on the shoot. The junior team, the ACDs, the CDs. The producer always had at least one AP, usually 2 We all flew business to LA. Because all shoots were in LA, unless they were in Antigua or The Swiss Alps.

Obviously, a ton of things have changed, and advertising has never, ever been a 9-5 job, but overall the whole work environment and work/life balance was more sustainable. We were genuinely closer to clients & more involved. Longer relationships and less “churn” of everything. Since clients didn’t change agencies so often, you could get emotionally invested and committed to a client. With fewer pieces of creative work required, you could more attention and make sure it tied to a longer term “big idea.”

There was more $$ available - for production, retainer, travel.

We all know what happened - things matured, more people got in the game & could do “professional" work. Digital & social required so much more content & differing expertise, so clients decided, for lots of reasons, to do more of the marketing work & expand their agency rosters.

This has happened to lots of industries (film, music, publishing), so advertising is certainly not alone.

Certainly, lots of things have gotten better, but there is no doubt that seeing something like Ogilvy’s “open buyout” to virtually anyone in the London office who was interested, is a sign of a different business. Nowadays, we spend an awful lot of time scrambling for project revenue & debating with clients over compensation and staffing.

It’s still a fun industry to be in, but a bit more of a hassle to “operate.”

It was more about inspiring than just saving your job.

I never saw this because I was too young, but when I started out, the older creatives would talk about production company parties in the late 80s and early 90s where cocaine was just laid out on mirrors in the back room. Shit like that.

Well, Marlboro built a train to take people to “Marlboro country" for a promotion. Not like branded a train, but built an actual train from the ground up... does that give you any indicator how big you were allowed to dream and pitch?

Large Budgets. 2 week location scouting, casting and shooting and staying in nice hotels. Big bonuses and amazing holiday gifts from every production partner. Plus, huge corner office. Less pressure. Less desperation More fun.

#MAGA... make advertising great again

Saatchi London in the mid 80’s crazy and 1st class all the way baby - agency parties in airplane hangers transformed into a carnival with rides clowns on stilts and football field sized dance floor - unreal. On business trips you brought your dry cleaning with you so the hotel could do it and you could just put it on expenses...I had a secretary who typed all my correspondence and then faxed things when it was urgent - ha! At another Saatchi euro office they took the whole agency on an all expenses paid trip to Istanbul - just because...yeah - those were the days! 😎

In short. The work mattered more than the short-term margins. There was a belief that great creative generated by creative, strategy and account all working together was the key to everything. Hence, if you did great work clients stuck around and new clients came your way so money flowed more freely. At the agencies and on the client side the short-term numbers game is all that matters anymore and loyalty is nonexistent.

Everything is cyclical, right? 🤔

Offices with doors, admin to do meetings/expenses/travel, business class for anything international or over 5 hours, working lunches, town car vouchers to go anywhere, a year to do one TV ad and one print ad, a kick ass studio for comps or whatever you could imagine, an office bar that people actually went to, production parties... but I also like it now. All that stuff was fine, but think some of the business problems now and challenger categories and brands - make things much more interesting

I miss the travel, the shoots and the totally careless lifestyles we lived to produce killer work.

It was... glorious.

hahaha. you’re too young to understand