What Kind Are You?

A lot of old people in what's left of the advertising industry spend a lot of phonemes and morphemes lamenting how the industry has changed--and not for the better.

A lot of that getting-worse-ness is due to the economics of the industry. When agencies and media companies were together, or when agency fees were based on media commissions, money flowed more freely. Salaries were higher. Jobs seemed more secure. 

Economically agency life seemed better when agencies were independent. They weren't on the hook for some giant holding company's margins and to pay giant holding company overhead.

Some more worse-ness is due to the fracture of media channels. The pressure of time. And the general reduction in production budgets. More might be attributed to a timidity on the part of both agencies and clients. Work seems safer, blander and more tested now.

Yes.

You could say that lots of the worsening is due to economics. Or scale. Or the death of the three network hegemony.

Things over which people like you and me have little control.

But 

But a lot of the worsening is self-inflicted. 

We did it to ourselves.

We often rely on freelancers to punch above their weight, to manage client relationships, to teach and train other creatives, but when the dollars run out--whenever they run out--and without notice, they're usually taken out like yesterday's trash.

Or, we ask people to work nights and weekends (for no additional pay) or over a holiday, and there's scarcely any thanks, save for maybe a stray AI-generated email--addressed to you and eighty-nine other people on the job.

We did it to ourselves.

I did a couple days of freelancing for an agency last week. Accepting the assignment was more about helping a long-time friend than it was about me needing the work. 

To be completely honest, I'm not sure I did a great job. I worked hard, but maybe I missed. Of the four ideas I presented, only one was liked, and that died just before the client meeting. 

Nevertheless, some moments ago, I got this from the agency's creative manager (a long-time friend.)

Similarly, a friend who is a long-time freelancer was abruptly terminated last week--and by a project manager. (No offense to project managers, but senior creatives should be let go by senior creatives. Especially if you're wise enough to realize how small our business is, and that eventually you'll likely work together again.) She's already negotiating a freelance job at another place and just got this note via text.

The point in all this is that regardless of all the materiel changes to how advertising works and how ad agencies and their employees get paid, it's not really that hard to make a little bit of extra effort to let people know that they matter.

Industry-wide the value of ad agencies seems to be perceived as lower than ever. As an industry, we seem to be selling commodity creative at commodity prices.

But depreciating the value of people, and of kindness, makes no sense, either economically or from a human point of view. It seems widespread, ubiquitous even.

When it's so simple to show, instead, a little decency.

A friend sent me this a decade ago. I've saved it for all these years. My friend snapped a photo of it hanging from the ceiling of the studio of TBWA\Chiat\Day in LA or its environs after everyone sweat through long nights of getting a presentation ready.

This is what I mean. 

Kindness. It's free.