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It's called title inflation and wage stagnation, king/queen/nonbinary monarch!
I’ll settle for Emperor Palpatine here
My employer last year.
Maybe there aren't that many CD positions available?
This is what I’m curious about!
Rising Star
*Associate to the creative director
Rising Star
Senior Associate Creative Director! Agencies love these kind of half-steps between real titles. Helps them manage staffing costs.
They’re giving people ACD titles with only 2 years of experience as Seniors 🙄
7 years maybe. More. Depends on skill, talent, attitude and experience. Ability to manage a team and sell work in to a client.
Having been an ACD for 5 years and now a CD for 2 I can tell you it’s just agencies that don’t want to pay for CDs. My job hasn’t changed at all… in fact ACD was harder.
I think it’s mostly a politics thing. I’ve been ACD for a few years now and they just pay me at a CD level, which I’m ultimately fine with. That said, it’s pretty baffling how mid some of my CDs have been. Seems to be anything but merit based
Not everyone is ready to be a full CD
The entire hierarchy between ACD and ECD is anemic or absent and I think it’s by design. Why pay a talented CD, let alone a GCD, what they’re worth when you can freelance that level of skill when needed? It decimates the ability to mentor within your creative department but that’s not something most agencies care about. So you have a junior-ish CD (probably billing the client for a more senior CD and taking profit from the difference) doing the higher profile work, managing the day-to-day and teams, and an ECD doing the bulk of client contact and business end of things. Maybe even throwing some creative in when necessary. They shouldn’t be, but again everything is so lean that they may need to from time to time. ECDs used to work in teams. I’ve even seen plenty of CDs working solo within holding companies, somehow never getting that partner that’s always promised.
Yep
There is zero ACD in freelance.
What? I’ve been freelancing as an ACD for over a year and it’s been great, honestly.