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Best piece of leadership advice?
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Question for the room. We all dream of doing incredible and famous work, but I estimate less than 1% of the work we do every year qualifies as that. We pad our books with maybe the 5% of “good” work and the rest just crushes our souls. Should we be more realistic with students or in agencies about what our industry really does. It’s not Cannes and shooting in Prague for the vast majority of us. And chasing that (and not achieving it) can really depress creative types.
Yesterday I had a GCD say to me that they were so tired of the Lions going to work that was a one-off and failed to build business or brands.
They have a point. We all want and chase those awards, but awards don’t always make our clients’ businesses stronger and more sustainable. It’s no wonder clients always want to squeeze more out of us and we work in miserable and exhausting conditions at times.
Dunno if this helps, but to a lot of Americans those places sound like extremely less stressful places to live and fantasize about moving to those markets daily.
If I could switch places with you I would.
Yeah, director summed it up pretty nicely.
There’s this idea that feels especially American, that if you grind and work hard and hustle, others will recognize you eventually and you’ll get what you’re due: the raise, the promotion, the cool brief, whatever. But then you look around, and see so many hard working people denied those things. But that idea is still lurking in the background of your brain, and you internalize it: their not sexist, I’m just not working hard enough. They’re not gatekeeping, they just want me to show I’m hungry. They’re not ignorant of my overtime, I just haven’t been delivering good enough ideas yet.
You internalize it all, and then one day you wake up and realize you’ve been a junior for three years and haven’t ever gotten a raise, and you’re the only female in your creative department. And all their words just ring a little hollow.
And that’s just advertising in America. The discourse here is so fucked up and has been for years. We’re all so tired, and we don’t know what we’re doing.
I just want to live and work somewhere where people are doing what they’re saying.
Edited for Director’s actual title.
🇨🇦 married to a 🇳🇿living in 🇺🇸.
The odds of doing ‘good’ work are highly dependent on which client and agency you get into. US market is generally more conservative so for all the award winning work that comes out of here there’s also a lot of work that you won’t hear about that is less likely to win awards.
As a strategist though there’s a lot of opportunity to get in on things that are not just advertising if that is interesting to you. I’ve done more product dev and innovation work here.
NZ, AUS and Canada are “smaller markets”? Those would be a huge step up from working in SEA, where I am.
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I think your best chance is an inter-agency transfer, because your agency and higher-ups can help support the transition. Outside of that, I wouldn’t hold huge hope for sponsorship unless you are a very senior level with unique skills, due to the resources and costs around visa sponsorship.
Senior Strategist. I'm on an H1B. And no, I have no major awards at all and I'm nobody special.
Strategist 1: It was in 2016, so not exactly current.
Copywriter 1: I'm one of those mediocre people you are describing. Hi!
Agree. I’m not even expecting anything like that.
Just want to be at a place that gets a decent *chance* at doing that based on their culture, talent, and ability to convince clients to do interesting work. I’m a minority in a small market so just feel like I’m on the sidelines and not making the most out of an important time in my career.
Just a reminder, Aussie can get E3, your employers don’t actually have to do much.
Have you considered doing stuff on your own and publishing it? Maybe not advertising per se but other contributions to the culture? Maybe that would scratch your itch.