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weekend pickup, digging the sunburst dial
Worried about potential recession and layoffs...
Chief
Additional Posts in Advertising
Is the emperor wearing any clothes?
Cool job offer for AD
Any advice on nailing the perfect headline?
I got the job. That is all.
Any word on Swift in Portland?
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Client fees down, spend down, AI, lunatic in the White House so uncertainty. Also it’s cyclical. I’ve been doing this 25 years. Heading into the 3-4th downturn (9/11, 2008, I can’t remember one other one). I cannot count how many layoffs I’ve seen at my company in 15+ years.
lol duh
someone made a wish on a monkey’s paw that everyone would get to spend more time with their families
Best thing I’ve read this week.
Chief
Decoupling media buying from creative services and rise of the holding company. It just took longer than expected.
Can anyone elaborate on this? I’ve been in the industry for ten years and I’ve heard “holding companies” ruined it and consultancies were gonna eat our lunch but it’s yet to happen.
The democratization of creative tools. Cameras, software, knowledge, etc are all cheaply and accessible to learn. Hence the rise of content creators, influencers, and stuff going in-house. Now there’s too many creatives but not enough roles. Hence why it’s tough.
ACD 1…100%
agree on many things mentioned above. also want to add that the overuse of analytical data = death of creativity. Brands/CMOs are hesitant to take creative risks and want to go with the approaches that is driven by data (hence more celebrity endorsements than ever since they almost guarantee clicks and likes).
Too many people in the last 20 years pursued it as a career without bonafide advice or sponsorship
Mad men
Greed and a new round of covid graduates freelancing at dirt cheap rates since full-time is rarely hiring
Easy 2:1 short term roi from digital spend
There's hardly any need to hire perm below ECD level roles. You hire under FTCs and renew every 3 months and keep budgets low. I believe this is also a weird consequence of the iR35 legislation in the UK that affects freelancers. They hire you under an FTC on a lower day rate. Both combined I think explains the scarcity of perm roles. (And Ai ofc)
Yep this happened to me, a full year of freelance with no benefits so they could double the team’s staff for half the price
High interest rates
Agency business model is outdated and being hacked away by hacks. Many factors driving this, especially the adoption of AI and the speed of snake oil that can be produced by just one person. 💩
It’s every industry right now and there’s only one right answer.
Which is … a revolt (against Ai)?
Holding companies. They're the providers of most jobs in the industry and they sell time. Clients' marketing departments got bigger so the money pie used for marketing had to be divided into smaller pieces leaving a smaller piece for advertising. Since they sell time, holding groups had less time on their hands because clients wanted to pay less. At the same time, the holdcos wanted to still give the same dividends so as timelines got shorter, they shed the one cost they could control which is overhead. Then they realized that AI might allow them to take less time making stuff and potentially charge the same money so now they're putting all of their investment money into AI hoping that the current overhead count will hold them afloat until they get to their goal. The goal is probably around 90% of the work being done by AI.
You're an art director and you have no concept on how the economy impacts the businesses who advertise - who provide revenue for your ad agency to pay for your salary?
It's very simple. 1) the ad industry is always going to be volatile no matter what. It is inherent in the nature of the business model. An agency's revenue comes from having clients that have marketing budgets to pay you guys. When those "brands" aka, companies marketing budgets are slashed because of a variety of economic factors, then guess what - that client can no longer pay your agency and jobs are lost and it's just hard to find a job in general. 2) Right now, particularly, on top of what I just mentioned -- there are tariffs that are heavily impacting a lot of companies / or those companies are uncertain how tariffs will impact them and they could be told their marketing dollars are on pause -- aka an agency loses clients and then has to lay people off and is a trickle down impact etc etc.