Fraud, Cried the Maddened Thousands.

I had a row with a friend of mine not long ago.

I pointed out that she's making the same money now that she was making over 18 years ago. But if you plug those figures in an inflation calculator, she's making about 35-percent less, or an income drop of about $140,000.

We haven't really talked since then.

That's something that happens to me with more than a little frequency.

People often dislike people who have command of real facts and a head for numbers.

I started thinking, I suppose to be all deep-dish about it, about the ad industry in macro-economic terms.

When most people hear the prefix macro, they think of pasta. Or Yankee Doodle.

Nevertheless, I've seen various ad people, usually scowling and not from the part of the ad business that a) works with clients or b) makes actual ads, attribute the contraction (leading to the demise) of the industry to various factors.

They'll talk about the divestment of media agencies. They'll talk about the splintering of media channels. They'll talk about the "agency model." They'll talk about short attention spans. They'll talk about always on content, bots and ad fraud. They'll talk about all those things and dozens more I'm too sane to even try to remember.

What I've never heard from anyone is that salaries are about 40-percent lower than they were two-decades ago and probably about 75-percent lower (in real dollars) than they were in the 1960s or 1980s. And that means the industry attracts, not the best and the brightest, but the dull and the dimmest.

I've never heard anyone say anything close to resembling this. "The industry used to be a way for people to live the American dream. It offered good money and  upward mobility. Because we paid well, we attractive BBAs." (Best and Brightest Adjacents.)

What would happen to the National Basketball Association if they lowered their salaries as severely as advertising has lowered our salaries? Especially, if there were other sports leagues that weren't lowering their pay scale?

A game would look like a brick-fest.

My salary stayed virtually the same for the last 16 years of my agency life. Each time I'd ask for more money, I'd hear, "you're already at the top of your salary band."

No one even told me there was a salary band.
No one bothered to keep salary bands competitive with other industries. 
No one bothered to say, "hey, with salaries this uncompetitive, we'll lose the talent battle and good people will go elsewhere."

You might remember this image and caption from the fabulously off-brand "Ogilvy on Advertising." It's off-brand because Ogilvy no longer has anything left of the Ogilvy-ethos. The statement applies, of course, to talent. But also to opportunity and money.

When I was at Ogilvy the first time, from 1999 to 2004, they paid well and, at times, people hired people bigger than themselves. When I was at Ogilvy the second time, from 2013 to 2020, the payscale was lower than it was the first time. Senior executives sat out in the cacophonous open, the physical plant, including the bathrooms, was slovenly, and anyone who wanted more money was told they were "at the top of their salary band."

Decreases in pay aren't happening only in advertising. It seems to be happening in just about every field outside of investment banking, men's sports, and Larry David. 

It's really simple.

You can't have a strong industry or a strong business, a strong economy or a strong country in a world where it seems everyone is living paycheck to paycheck. Where no one wants to pay anyone, except the few malefactors of great wealth at the top that make the rules, take the haul and skirt the taxes.

The American metaphor is gated communities and Hoovervilles. That's the seating currently at every agency in New York.

If the work you do is important, if it helps companies succeed, if one dollar spent equals two dollars of growth, you have to pay for that.

We have all kinds of calculus that allow us to avoid valuing people. We have all kinds of calculus upon which to blame shrinking what was formerly the largest holding company from 200,000 employees in 2017 to just over 100,000 today. I suppose if there were an ancient Roman about, we could even find a way to blame our bad-fortune on bird entrails or some cryptic words from a Sybil. 

I think the world is simpler than that.

It certainly is at GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company.

Provide seminal value and charge for it.

It's not easy.

But it beats the alternative.