Next March, it will be five years since our industry embarked on a roller coaster ride that has never stopped.
I mean, our industry is constantly evolving. It’s worried about the latest trend, the hottest company, the next offering. But the reality is that our industry hasn’t evolved much in a very long time.
Until March 2020.
Of course, the onset of Covid has changed everyone and everything, but I only see the world through the prism of the advertising industry, so I’m really only interested in the impact it’s had on us.
To talk about our current situation, it seems helpful to do a quick recap of the chaos (since most of us who were homeschoolers have frankly erased it from our memory).
March 2020: Go home and lay off a lot of your staff. Probably the older ones. They’re expensive. Panic.
June 2020: Stay home, but hire a ton of people to do the work. Didn’t work! We’re really busy. We’re just doing it on Zoom now. So hire young people, they’re apparently good on the internet.
Insert somewhere here the Great Resignation. The silent surrender. The zoom fatigue. Lots of emotions.
September 2020 to September 2022: Oh my God, we don’t have enough young people for all these jobs and our borders are all closed. We better pay these middleweights what they ask and let them make all the rules for us to win, because kids. Internet. Chaos. Panic.
October 2022: We hired too many people!
Massive layoffs in the tech sector around the world are starting to shift the balance of power back in favor of employers. Layoffs continue to flow across the industry over the next two years. But no one says the word “recession.” Let’s all make sure we feel alone in this madness.
September 2023: Things seem tough. Seniors are really feeling more like mids. Managers really need to dive into the work. Leaders spend a lot of time wondering about everyone’s feelings.
Customers are asking for more “adults” in the room.
Oh shit. AI!!!!!
August 2024: Oh hello, welcome to the Long Covid of the industry.
By long Covid I mean we have sort of the same symptoms as when you are not fully recovered from an illness.
We’re a little tired. We’re not running at full capacity. Something still hurts, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. Our immune systems are a little fragile. A little cough could make us all very sick again.
But we didn’t have time to rest properly, to recharge our batteries, to rejuvenate.
We simply succeeded. It’s our job!
So, let’s look at some of these pain points.
Our Seniors who are Mid-Stage.
If we overpaid and overpromoted this mid-level a few years ago, we probably now have an agency full of “seniors” who aren’t quite where we expect them to be.
Not only did we push them faster than we should have, but they also spent, on average, 2/5 as much time “in the room” as any previous generation.
So they are truly behind in their technical and social skills. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we need to catch up. Training has never been our industry’s strong suit, but this generation needs it more than any generation before. Identify the gaps. Invest in those gaps. Give them a chance to catch up.
But also give them the message that they rode a wave that crashed and that they too must do the work.
The directors are tired.
At every level of the industry, it feels like you’ve taken a seat on the bench.
ECDs look more like CDs. CDs look more like seniors. Seniors look more like mids, etc.
In all disciplines.
We removed a lot of adults from the room in 2020 and that had a major impact on the progress of work downstream. Everyone needs to be brought back up to their pay grade.
It is essential to be aware of how the management level is used and while the lower level needs training, this level needs empathy. They not only take on a workload, but also a work ethic.
So many emotions. We let those emotions into the building during all that chaos. We had to. It was a lot.
But today, the time spent in this part of the business seems disproportionate to the time spent “working.”
Invest in people management. Someone or several people who take that burden off the rest of the team. Not to ignore feelings, but to compartmentalize them. To set boundaries. An unfair share of this burden falls organically on women leaders and I can’t tell you how close they are to leaving the industry because of it. Do it for the future of female leadership!
I don’t share any of this to make anyone feel bad about the inevitable choices everyone has made or the state of the industry in general. I love this industry and despite our self-loathing and fatalism, we are a hardworking and resilient bunch and we usually manage to overcome any good challenge.
I share this because I spend my days talking to people who all seem to feel very alone in facing these challenges.
Whether they are seniors or not, they wonder why they are not congratulated.
Or a director struggling with fatigue.
Or a leader trying to figure out how to restructure an entire department or agency without laying off people.
Or an adult without a job.
Or a newbie wondering why the industry isn’t hiring.
I share this so that we all feel like we are on the same team. We are simply trying to move our industry forward through what has been a time of unprecedented upheaval.
You are all excellent. And tired. Keep doing good things. And rest a little.
