How To Avoid Becoming A Disappointing Failure To Your Family By Remaining A Successful Creative Director In Advertising.

I’ve been a CD for over 17 years. During that time, I learned lots of unsavory things I deeply regret knowing. But if you aim to stay employed as moderately successful creative director in advertising (or in most industries), then I have the following horrible advice.

Be good looking. Attractive and fit people with smooth skin and stylish hats are extremely talented and very enjoyable to have in meetings. Not being attractive means that you don’t care enough about the creative process to be attractive in meetings.

Be 25-36. Becoming old is a colossal error that should be avoided by everyone in advertising. Getting older means that you obviously didn’t think being young was important enough to continue being young. Always remember that older people have let everyone down and have nothing to offer. Sure, they might have done something cool in the late 1900’s, before Google adwords and social posts were invented. But that was when smartphones were clay tablets.

Always win. People like winners. They don’t like people who don’t win. “Not Winners” are the worst sorts of people because their not-winning ideas do not align with the 100% winning goals of the leadership team.

Win every award, every year. Your value as a creative is only measured in the past 10 months. Anything older means you simply aren’t creative anymore and have lost any ability to solve problems in delightful and surprising ways. Someone will be around shortly to drive you to a farm upstate, where you will frolic in open sunny fields until you snuff it from the poisoned cheese we put in your farewell gift basket.

Always embrace every new technology. New is always new. Not-new is less new and being new is always better. If you’re not busy being new, then you’re busy being old.

Always say “Yes.” Everyone hates hearing “no.” so don’t say it. “No,” isn’t the right answer anyway. The right option is the one that makes everyone happy and that’s always “Yes.” Remember, always say “no” to “no.”

Be super excited about mediocre ideas. No matter how far along the project is, or how contradictory, ill-considered or unoriginal those ideas are, you must enthusiastically entertain all of them. Remember, your decades of generating tens of millions in earned media and record sales, is no more valid than the off-hand comment from the summer intern on their first agency call.

Embrace anthems. Be very good at rousing, inspiring manifestos that congeal all the internal misaligned divisions of an organization into a vague but unified position that everyone can feel mildly enthusiastic about at the semi-annual stakeholders meeting in Reno.

hashtag#advertsing hashtag#creativedirector hashtag#CCO hashtag#career hashtag#availableforwork

Don’t Be Good At Anything

Being an expert is for old people who smell like menthol tea and wear green sweaters with corduroy blazers.

Sadly, many people mistakenly believe that if you do something, you should know how to do it.

You should definitely not do this.

It’s 2024, you don’t have to know anything. There’s a bottomless amount of totally not boonswoggle hashtag#data tools, unquakery hashtag#algorithms, non-dupewinking hashtag#AI subscriptions, and completely not sham-flam “how to” hashtag#coaching videos.

Your success is determined by how well you can avoid knowing anything.

For example, let’s say you’re in charge of hashtag#advertising; actually knowing anything about advertising is not only unnecessary, it makes you seem completely untrustworthy. Being an expert means being an expert at something no one wants to hear.

And besides, why bother learning stuff when there's ample instructional video content, with very self-assured man-hosts, wearing tight-fitting shirts, speaking from behind $700 hashtag#podcast mics, all revealing the always applicable secret formula for advertising hashtag#success that the cabal of mean, old, lazy, old, slow, old, wasteful, and old, advertising hashtag#gatekeepers don’t want you to know.

And let me be clear, so that there is no confusing confusions:
The man wearing the tight shirt on the internet selling instructional videos is 100% right.

There is nothing that the right data subscriptions and reporting can’t do. And if you follow the seven, or possibly eighteen, easy steps from the strapping man with the very nice chest muscles, you too are guaranteed (not a legal guarantee) success.

Or at least enough lack of failure to avoid being fired.

This is also how you can avoid bothersome expert questions you should not ask like “How do I develop brand preference and long-term sales sustainability?” Which, let’s face it has way too many syllables to be a legit business concern.

The people who are really good at advertising are so off-puttingly dim that they don't just want short term sales. They want the untrackable or attributable goal of sales months (or years) in the future. These miscreants are bizarrely interested in trying to create a relationship of continuous sales, often requiring less (over all) advertising.

These are not the people you want to have around you. They will insist on blatantly unpopular facts like “The people who want you to run hashtag#digital hashtag#socail ads all the time know they can only generate hashtag#sales as long as you run your ads. Once the ads stop so do the sales."

Or they tout equally annoying blather like, "You know, if you're expertise can be easily replaced by a Kantar subscription and a Google ads certification, how valuable is your expertise?"

Which is as offensively true as it is insensitively honest.

So please, don't do something stupid like becoming an expert.

Especially not at advertising.

It's hashtag#notworthit

How To Hire Old

To be very clear, you won’t want to do this.

As a not-old person, you will naturally want to keep older people well away from you, mostly so that no one will mistake you for being not young. Which would be deeply humiliating and profoundly preposterous.

Being around older people also carries the serious risk that you might unintentionally “catch old.” It’s a proven fact that if you work with someone who has thinning hair for a very long time, you too may experience the horrible ignominy of less hair. And if someone you work with has a bit of sag in the jowls, eventually your own droopy face bits will accelerate their embrace of gravity's inevitable floppy dangle.

All of this will 100% happen to you.

And you will not want to be reminded of it.

By far the biggest barrier to hiring old comes from the mind-boggling realization that you’d be hiring yourself, 15 years from now. Looking at older candidates makes us embarrassed by what we will inevitably become. At this point, it's best to avoid any further serious self-examination and blame other people.

I suggest distracting questions like “What if our clients discover that we have embraced not being young?” And perhaps follow this up with the panicked classic, “How will we ever convince them that we have a native understanding of not old culture?”

All of which is reassuringly justified. After all, no older person has ever been anything other than old. No older person has ever felt an obvious fraud, unprepared and unsure of their choices yet making them with unearned confidence. No older person ever felt that the world’s promise was inevitable and certain failure, packaged as limitless potential. Or struggled under the unbearable weight of pretending to be a successful adult.

In reality, the true barrier to hiring old isn’t in believing that older people have nothing new to offer, or even that they don’t get new things like hashtag#VR, hashtag#social, hashtag#influencer, or hashtag#trend. It’s the unendurable fear that someone else might think it of you.

And just like that creepy old man wearing Forever 21 who hangs around the lobby of the girl's freshman dorm, we think if we surround ourselves with enough youthfully firm youth, no one will ever notice that we aren’t all that young anymore. And maybe we can even trick ourselves into believing we will never become too old.

Only when we forgive ourselves for the inexcusable indecency of aging, we will stop thinking it’s a disadvantage.

hashtag#advertising hashtag#copywriter hashtag#freelance hashtag#available hashtag#aging hashtag#jobhunting hashtag#creativerecruiting hashtag#cmo hashtag#cco hashtag#ceo

The not entirely accurate guide for New Yorkers who somehow end up living in Minneapolis.

• A quick wit polarizes Minnesotans. They find it either distasteful or delightful and nothing in between.

• Minnesotans work hard from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is work time. Non-work time is time when you do not work. If work time somehow encroaches on non-work time, then it’s because someone didn't follow the procedure.

• Minnesotans love procedure. Procedure is the way things need to be done. If something doesn't get done or done right, BUT it was done according to procedure, then it is still okay because everyone (thankfully) followed procedure. 

• Every Minnesotan has a cabin. They will occasionally say “We should have you up to the cabin sometime.” Rest assured, you will never go “Up to the cabin.” This is a generalized statement of situational approval and not an invitation. It's just to let you know that they like you well enough to tell you they have a cabin that you won’t ever go to.

• 87.3% of Minnesotans have boats. They will, if you are lucky, invite you out on their boat. You will need to accept this invitation if offered. Cancel surgeries, and postpone Bar Mitzvahs. Once an invitation to “Go out on the boat,” has been declined you will not receive another. Ever.

• Under no circumstances should you get you’re own boat. You’re just going to hit other boats, run over swimmers, accidentally set fire to yourself and others, and sink your car in the lake trying to get it in and out. 

• The biggest lake closest to you is always referred to as “The Lake.”

• Every home decorations store has an endless supply of “lake house” throw pillows, candles, wine glasses, and faux weathered signs that say things like “Eat. Pray. Lake.” 

• Minnesotans use “nice” like how New Yorkers use sarcasm. It's for bonding, shaming, judging, sharing information, and bullying. Ironically, New Yorkers are 100% immune to all the negative forms of “Minnesota Nice” but are utterly helpless against the actual “nice” uses of nice.

• Minnesotans make excellent meat and cheese things. Curds are like mozzarella sticks if mozzarella sticks weren’t a consistently disappointing horror show. Yes, most of the cheese in Minnesota comes from Wisconsin, but Minnesotans talk unsurprisingly little about this.

• Wisconsin is Minnesotas New Jersey. Lower taxes, flagrant political corruption, firearms everywhere, lower gas prices, and a rampant spirit of near lawlessness in every interaction. Iowa is Minnesotas Pennsylvania, except that there are no big cities. Iowans get fairly upset when you tell them that Des Moines is a lovely place, but it’s not really a city. 

• There are no bagels here. Locals will say that there are. But there aren’t. Yes, there are a couple of places that make almost bagels. This is also true for pizza. There is very little NY-style pizza here. There are places that serve delicious things they say is pizza. You’ll have to enjoy these instead. 

• Minnesotans love sauces. Don't be surprised if you get a burger that has 11 sauces on it. There’s cheese sauce, six forms of BBQ, a spicy tomato chutney, a cool ranch dill, and on and on. Seriously, if you just want a cheeseburger that's just a really good cheeseburger, without applewood smoked bacon, pork rinds, avocado, chimichurri, pickled onions, and cheesy mayo, then yeah, it's a struggle. 

• Good luck my vegan friends. Even the vegetarian burgers come with cheese and bacon.

• Minnesotans don't want any new friends. New Yorkers are used to people dropping in and out of our lives. Minnesotans are not. They have the same friends since they were in the womb and don't have time for anyone else. So if you’re looking to make friends, find other transplants.

• Minnesotans have consistently good, but not championship sports teams. These are teams that regularly get into the playoffs and then blow it in the first or second round. The moaning and grousing of Vikings and Twins fans is insufferable to the ears of a Jets and Mets fan. If you won almost as many games as you lost, then you’re doing great and we don’t want to hear about it.

• Minnesotans don’t give a shit how cold it is, they’re going outside. When it’s cold for like 9 months of the year, you can’t hide indoors. You will literally go insane. Outside there’s lake hockey, skiing, ice fishing, show-shoeing, weird Nordic bocce-like games that usually involve drinking, and fire pits that also involve drinking. All of these are great fun. It's not like that one day it snows in NYC and everyone stays home except for some ridiculous jerkoff who shows up for the NY1 TV cameras in his late 90’s cross-country outfit and treks across Sheep Meadow on barely an inch of snow. 

• You're going to need more coats. You’ll need a big coat for -20F weather. A slightly less big, but still warm coat for most of the winter and a couple of “jackets,” that are only for days when it is below 29F but above 17F.

• Yes, the winter is colder than Chicago. But there is less wind and way more sunshine, like almost California levels of sunshine. 

• It’s nice here. Ha. Do I miss New York? Fuck yes. I miss the energy, the potential, and the ambition of New York. I miss the food and the diversity. I miss feeling a city alive around me. But there are lovely people here, who will get you drunk on Glühwein and wave at you when you’re clearing snow. There are nice houses you can afford. And schools that don’t require you to win the lottery to get a good education. I walk to the lake every day and sometimes swim in it. If I wanted to fish I could fish. If I wanted to kayak I could kayakak. Sometimes I go to Prince's house and think about how he and Cher got all their furniture from the same Everything Purple store. It’s good here. And if through glorious opportunity, or regrettable decision-making, you end up here, you’ll probably like it too.

Job Search And Hiring Nonsense

We accept a lot of toxic wind that makes us feel bad about ourselves and each other. If you're looking to be hired or doing some hiring, maybe avoid the following.

“Fomenting hashtag#FOMO” It's not 2014 and no one believes in FOMO anymore. Everyone is missing out, pretty much all the time and we’ve all learned to be okay with it. There are fully 11 people in hashtag#advertising and hashtag#media who are completely consumed by making anything enormously fun or interesting and 13 of them work at Mischief @ No Fixed Address.

Saying “I’m super busy…” No, you’re not. If you're on LinkedIn, you’re not busy and that's 100% super okay. Sure, everyone wants to be the busiest bee in Beesburry. But I’m not. And just because your not busy doesn't mean you're not valuable. You’re the pearls set before swine. The Van Gogh at the flea market. You, my friend, are a secret treasure. Don’t stay a secret. Be an intolerably loud treasure.

hashtag#Hybrid . Yeah okay, we get it. You hire me, my jacksie goes wherever you'd like it to be.

Data-led twaddlerot. It's super reassuring for everyone who doesn't understand advertising to think that they don't have to understand advertising to be good at advertising. All they need is hashtag#data. Sadly, leading consumers to new behavior is what consumer-focused hashtag#strategy and hashtag#creative does, not data. And while data is very useful, saying that it “leads” is the same as insisting that a pin-drop is both the map and the directions.

“Gap worry.” EVERYONE will have an hashtag#employment gap in their resume. Some will try to pass it off as a time of “productive introspection” and “renewed focus.” Whatever that zen-y flimflam means. The real issue isn’t the gap, it's what the gap seems. Which is…

Thinking, “If you were truly valuable you wouldn’t have gotten laid off.” It is blisteringly offensive to assume that a human being who has been laid off is valueless. Every day we throw away perfectly good things and people, for reasons that have nothing to do with their usefulness. As someone who's been in the room, I can tell you that these decisions are often the result of an immediate need to reach a specific $ savings. You may be 5x as good at your job as someone else who makes 2x less. BUT there is no data tool so nuanced it can tell how much value you bring, but by cutting your salary they get to their $ goal faster and lose fewer people. Do they kill productivity and scalability? Yes, but that’s not the point. The idea that ad agencies are “cutting the fat" when they lay off people is laughably outdated. No one who truly understands what’s happening in our industry looks down on anyone who was cut. And to do so is a product of unforgivably lazy arrogance, usually from someone so inexperienced, they have never been the sackee at a sack-off.

So please, be brave, my beautifully talented and unforgivably under-utilized mofo’s.

And don’t let anyone forget how much money they are wasting by ignoring the gold you bring.

The Top Most Useful Analogies Or Possibly Metaphors For Advertising

Advertising is like dating.
If you spend all your time talking about yourself no one’s going to want to take you home.
And if all you do is focus on “closing the deal” sex, and keep pushing for the sex to happen and offering lots of funneling to sex-related outcomes, only the very sex-motivated will take you home, or more likely, to a cheap motel. Once.
But if you listen, and seem interested (as much as sincerely plausible without being creepy) then you’re generally much more appealing.
AND if you make your date laugh and enjoy the time they spent with you, you will probably be invited to spend more time together, some of it having sex, possibly regularly.

Advertising is like a gold mine.
There are good ideas somewhere in that yonder mountain o' yonder. You just need to hire up some folks who know how to dig and find some good ideas. It might take an hour or a couple of weeks, so the more time you can give them, the more gold they'll find for you

Advertising is like fishing.
You might plan to fish for trout. But if you catch a salmon you should probably consider keeping the salmon, even though it wasn’t the trout you were looking for.

Advertising is not like a factory.
A factory is an assembly machine, where there is a very specific predetermined outcome, that is the result of putting together standardized parts in a standardized order. There is nothing creative about a factory process. But since the manufacturing process is the closest model to “consistently making something“ most business people understand, they often get confused and assume that ideas come from a process of assembly and are flabbergasted to discover that very little that is interesting or inventive comes from a rigorously standardized process.

Advertising is not like seal clubbing.
I can't tell you how many times I’ve had to insist that we move away from this analogy.

Advertising is kind of like jazz.
You have a basic structure, and you have themes but you’re also supposed to make up parts of it collaboratively. The problem with this analogy is that no one likes jazz.

Advertising is like running with the lemmings. No one is quite sure what we are running from or what we are running to. But we need to do it very quickly or someone will be very angry with us and take the big pile of gold they never wanted to give to us anyway. No wait, that's leprechauns.

Advertising is also not like:
A box of chocolates
A spiral-cut honey ham
Two old men at a urinal
A church youth retreat in the woods
Brazilian Jujitsu
Buying socks at a street fair
Fighting a kangaroo
A deflating bouncy house that is also on fire and filled with sharks.

I hope this post clears up any lingering confusion.

The Marginally Accurate Glossary of Vague Creative Direction

Creative Directors often give advice that is both incredibly insightful and completely nebulous.

After a few years of both getting and giving wooly direction, I thought we could all start on a glossary of amorphous terms and what they probably mean.

“Have fun with it”

The basic insight and premise are good but the execution doesn’t feel rewarding/entertaining/enjoyable enough to capture much interest.

“Keep Going”

The basic insight, premise or execution seem under-developed or too obvious. This vague direction is about looking for alternate (meaning new) ways of thinking about and presenting the problem and/or the solution.

“Meh”

This idea is probably isn’t worth exploring further, and maybe not even spending much time discussing. Let’s move on.

“I don’t love it”

Some part of the execution or premise is off-putting, wrong-footed, or fails to meet the brief.

“I don’t hate it”

I like it, let me think about how we can move this through the gauntlet of approvals while keeping most of the fun stuff still intact.

“It feels familiar”

I just saw this idea/execution/line/design at an awards show 3 years ago.

Or, this reminds me of something my ex-partner and I did, and since we’re not speaking to each other, I can’t do anything even remotely similar, even though it was your idea.

“Needs to turn the corner”

Get to the RTB or CTA faster.

“Too straight/right up the middle”

A solution that is just a straightforward explanation of the product and what it does.

“A lucky-strike extra”

Describing a magnificently great idea that is off brief but would be hugely successful, and will probably never get made but is too good to just leave on the table.

“Don’t fuck it up.”

I’m trusting you to not fuck this up.

“Tasty”

I like it a lot and I think other people will too.

“Make it sticky”

Some line, phrase or title that sums up the idea like a trend, making it easy and inviting to remember for the client, award show judges and consumer (maybe).

“I’m a little underwhelmed.”

I’m not seeing the effort that will make the most of this opportunity - can refer to the volume of ideas or their impact.

“Make it look more premium”

Use darker. Shades of browns and reds with serif fonts, metallic gradients, filigree elements, leather/polished wood textures and photography with a chiaroscuro use of light and shadows. Basically, if an expensive cognac brand made a luxury car out of an Italian leather shoe.

“Make it look more modern/clean”

Clean white backgrounds, sanserif fonts, minimal shadows on product, memorable lifestyle photography with interesting humans, like Apple, or Google or Samsung or anyone else obsessed with “simple” or “clean” messaging.

“Make it look more iconic/hipper”

Wes Anderson style color pallets, chunky and flow-y fonts, tinted amateurish photos, flat graphic/playful elements.

“Let’s back-pocket this”

I like this but

A) we already have enough ideas and this one isn’t as developed as others.

Or B) I know you have a lot of heart for this idea and it is really good, but other people in the organization hate is a seething gangrenous hate.

Or C) I can’t sell this to the client right now because our current relationship is too new/guarded/ tenuous /mismanaged/ acrimonious.

“Genius”

I wish I had thought of it. Fuck you for being more talented than me.

Why You Should Hire Old

Why you should hire old.

1) Because I’m super old now.
2) Because I know way more than I did when I was less older.
3) Because I’ve seen some pretty fucked-up things and I lived through them to do even better things.
4) I could care less about how Jan in new biz refuses to use google slides because she made all her charts in powerpoint 12 years ago and doesn't want to remake them even though they don't match the rest of the deck, so now everyone has to redo their slides to look like they were made in 2012.
5) I’m fast.
6) I know my value. I’m delightfully affordable but not cheap. I also won’t leave in seven months for a 3.2% pay raise because I read online that the highest paid salary for someone with my title is at least 3.24% more.
7) I know enough to be guardedly optimistic and dumb enough to still be unreasonably excited.
8) I don't charge extra for more than 20 years experience in building sustainable brands or creating high impact work that lasts for years. I don't charge more for teaching, coaching, collaborating, mentoring, or guiding. I don't have any additional fees for helping account friends be better account people and strategists be even more brilliant at strategory. I don't charge extra for seeing past the numbers and leading from within. I don’t demand bonuses for charming clients or making meetings more enjoyable. I don’t charge extra for casting directions, directing talent, and asking questions other people are too intimidated to ask.
9) I’m not afraid to explore what’s next. I maybe don't pee on myself with uncontained excitement for everything that says they’re “truly revolutionary,” because I’ve seen hashtag#NFTs, hashtag#crypto , hashtag#ar , hashtag#vr , hashtag#programmaticadvertising , hashtag#performancemarketing, and hashtag#purposedrivenbusiness all claim to be the greatest invention since the thumb. And after working with all of them, I can say that none of them have done much to revolutionize what consumers want, remember, and value.
10) I know what wins and what doesn’t. And why. And I’m not a dick about it.

hashtag#availableforwork hashtag#creativeadvertising hashtag#creativedirector hashtag#copywriter

Creativity Is For Suckers

The revolting truth is that creativity produces vigorously medium profits. It’s exhaustively time consuming. It requires a level of personal commitment which is unfashionably inconvenient. It selfishly demands its practitioners to learn and keep learning a very specialized set of evolving skills. The value of creativity is highly subjective and analogous to other esoteric trades where skill and experience are of amorphous value; such as plumbing and cosmetic surgery.

It’s also outrageously expensive to keep all those highly skilled and experienced people coming in three days a week on a hybrid work schedule. If we're really being honest, magnificent creativity births at least as many problems as it slays.

So, as a responsible profit oriented industry, we have taken steps to develop advertising that reduces creative effort. These utilitarian ad products have proven to be a huge relief for everyone who is calmed by spreadsheets and uncomfortable having to choose a font. Through our diligent efforts, we have successfully made creativity such an insignificant part of our industry that we speak of it the way we would about a peculiar aunt, who endlessly buys “collectable” Dutch figurines of chubby children frolicing in obcenely pastoral scenes. hashtag#Creativity is a ornamental frivolity, an indefensible indulgence.

Which is 100% true.

And that's why it works.

The things we remember, the relationships we value most are never the dullardly utilitarian things. They're mind-meltingly beautiful things. The impossibly stupid but I-can’t-stop-looking-at-it things.

The things that change our minds and behavior aren’t the zestless lunch salads eaten at our desks. They’re the crazy, the extravagant, and the wholly unprecedented. We don’t invest our love in the soporifically functional. The ardent dreamers of the world don't put up posters of a 2002 Toyota Camry. We woolgather on extraordinary things, considering preposterous ambitions and wholly impractical fancies.

Yes creativity is vanity. And it works because we are all vain. We all want to be entertained, delighted and surprised. We accept what is functional as necessity. But what we want from life isn’t utility, it’s fulfillment.

So, my beautifully talented adfam, our choice is this:
make something for love
or make it for money

Money is fine, but it won’t miss you when you are gone.
I go for love every fucking time.

Layoffs Make Money.

The unemployment rate is at 3.9%. But for hashtag#advertising , it’s at least 300% higher.

Why?

Well, don't look for answers from @AdAge or @AdWeek, who are far more interested in selling "leadership" retreats and hashtag#genalpha hashtag#trendmarketing seminars than actually reporting on the ad industry.

One answer might be with @Nike, which is laying off 2% of its global workforce — 1,600 employees or more.

Check this out from @VogueBusiness: https://lnkd.in/g-gxr6fd

Basically, Nike invested gazillions into web3 and NFT. And the result was (as you’d expect) super meh. Worse for Nike, chasing irrelevant niche-tech partnerships allowed their competition to steal market share.

But the biggest reason why all us ad folks are hashtag#doomscrolling LinkedIn on a Friday, instead of being kick-ass at our triumphant jobs is this: “Layoffs are a faster way to recoup revenue than increasing sales.”

Our hashtag#unemployment made hashtag#money .

Here’s why: Last year many advertising agencies (including in-house) were in the sourest of pickles. 2022 supply chain issues caused 2023 Inflation and brands 1) didn’t need to advertise products that were already scarce and 2) didn’t want to spend any money. So, quite a lot of agencies were looking at disagreeably glum numbers. They needed revenue, quickly. But new business is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and hugely unreliable. And the relationships that made organic growth possible melted away.

By far, the fastest and easiest way to generate revenue (edit: profit) was to stop paying people. So loads of people got stuffed under oodles of busses, followed by an infinity of unsatisfying emails about “right-sizing.”

And it all worked. But only on a spreadsheet.

The IRL impact of laying off lots of people was a massive spike of stagnation.

Turns out, quite a lot of the people who knew how to win or grow business were stuck at home, pantlessly rewriting their hashtag#resumes to match the hashtag#keywords of job postings on hashtag#LinkedIN.

The prodigious inability of our industry to inspire more spending was a boon for unambitious riskaphobes and techno-shamboozlers who wasted what few opportunities there were with timid decision-making and irrelevant media schemes. Which plunged the entire advertising industry of 2023 into a double reverse uno of erectile dysfunction.

The lesson to be learned from this fiscally induced fiasco is that while layoffs do make money, they also prevent you from making more money. They slow your growth, hobble your ability to generate interest and gimp your competitiveness in retaining what business you do have.

As a revenue strategy, hashtag#layoffs are the equivalent of selling your redundant organs so you can afford to buy a nice new suit. Sure, you might look a bit more successful, but you can only see with one eye.

hashtag#jobsearch hashtag#freelancecopywriter hashtag#noreallyIhavenothingelsetodo hashtag#sadfacts hashtag#goingtogoplayoutsidenow hashtag#loveadfam

Why We Hate Cannes

Yes, it's because we’re jelly. But not for what you think.

The fiscally responsible reason for hashtag#canneshate is the outrageous cost of Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. In an era where hashtag#holdingcompanies can’t afford to pay vendors in the same quarter, or even in the same year, this is the most bilious of bitter pills.

But if we’re indulgently honest, most of our graceless envy is about hashtag#opportunity.

Every year there are 3 dozen assignments where the clients are smart enough, organizationally aligned, and have enough money and time to make something profoundly unforgettable. Of those, 11 will be hashtag#superbowl projects. The rest will be from the same 22 brands (worldwide) spread between the same 11 hashtag#cretiveagencies, where the same 7-9 hashtag#creativeteams generate the most work. In total, that's less than 100 people.

But most of hashtag#CannesLions wins are NOT from a client-generated assignment. They’re the result of hashtag#adagencies and clients working together or hashtag#creativeteams generating their own opportunities.

Here the numbers get ick though. Maybe 13% creatives have the necessary experience to make and present work that will win at Cannes. Over 75% of which don't work at agencies that support developing hashtag#awards opportunities or know how to sell them.

So only about 3.25% of creatives have both the experience and the support for Cannes. And they are all 1000% engaged in an endless pitch grind or are consumed by corporate frippery. A tiny % of these will sacrifice what non-existant personal time they have to focus on a hashtag#Cannes effort. Maybe .8%.

And that's most of our winners.

99.2% of hashtag#advertisingcreatives feel like they never had a chance. And they never did. This makes some of the work and topics discussed at Cannes feel hugely out of touch, and even irrelevant. Because hashtag#winning at the most prestigious festival for creativity isn’t just about “being a great creative.” It's about having access to the support you need to be a great creative.

And that support doesn't just happen. It exists only because a brave few insist upon it. These are the ones who weather the constant bullying, career-murdering debates with global overbosses, and fiscal bean herders; which will inevitably result in most of them being fired in the next 36 months. THAT deserves Brobdingnagian recognition.

And while every hashtag#Canneswinner isn't the result of some epic battle, the majority are.  And we are jealous of those whose allies fought hard for their creativity.

We are jealous of the ones who made good use of their creative safe spaces, not only for the opportunities they earned but for the opportunities they were permitted to create.

We are jealous of the gorgeously brilliant minds who fully deserve celebration, especially with the anti-creative numbskullery of our industry,

And of course, we are hashtag#jealous of the brilliant work we did not do.

And are hungry to best it.

Even if no one wants to let us.

I’m Very Sorry. May I Have A Job?

Dear beloved Advertising Overlords in charge of hiring,

Thank you.

I have learned my lesson.

I have been an insufferable ninnyhammer who wanted to change things and I now realize this is an alarmingly unpopular thing to be.

It has been thoughtlessly selfish of me to raise my objections to some practices, thereby harshing everyone’s chill sycophantic vibe.

In the future, I will be a more solidly hesitant milksop - someone who is 110% committed to a complete lack of progress.

I will not attempt to usher any change that would result in a positive impact. I will avoid offering any new ideas; well aware that though they might seem miraculous in retrospect, they are, in the moment of conception very upsetting poop-babies with disagreeable scabby nipples on their faces.

I renounce being a change monger mongering for change. I will instead embrace our shared corporate history of innaction, reminding myself of the sacred story of caveperson Grakk who wanted everyone to move to a new cave with fewer hungry bears. Blarb and Dwonk were rightfully opposed to this because the entire cave would have to revise its mission statement to involve somehow fewer attacking bears.

“But who will eat our old and weak?” Dwonk said reasonably.

“As lead ‘Bear Attack!’ shouter, what would my new role be?” asked Blarb wisely. “I have over 12 years of experience shouting “Bear Attack!” at key bear attack moments. I will lose my standing in the cave’s executive leadership committee, possibly becoming as utterly useless as Torg the stalagmite namer.

“I call this one Uppy’” said Torg, pointing at a nearby stalagmite.

And this is why we all still live in caves today and are routinely eaten by bears. As it should be.

The sad truth is I have been bothersomely selfish.  I have taken a slight inconvenience of unjustified suffering to heart. And rather than enduring it quietly by drinking at 10:30 am, like any other responsible adult, I inconsiderately burdened everyone by trying to make the world a better place, for you and mostly me.

Even though I, and other much more ridiculously talented and brave people, routinely make changes that generate markets and fortunes, we only do it because we have the galling gall to adore you, my beloved advertising overlords, and we believe that you also deserve a place where the inconvenience of routine inequity isn’t routine or convenient.

Which is understandably something you don’t want.

And you don’t need some sauce-box do-gooder telling you that you do.

I got it now.

I am very, extremely sorry, and still super available.

How Stupid LinkedIn Failed To Fail Me

It’s nauseatingly unfair I am writing this preposterously stupid post.

I’m going to hashtag#thank hashtag#LinkedIn.

hashtag#Ick.

After months of disemployment, I started to think about my value.

In the cost-benefit analysis of my underwhelming existence, the numbers were clear.

At a purely fiduciary level, I was worth more as a corpse than a still-warm pre-corpse.

Summoning my formidable talent for never paying much attention to the numbers, I felt certain there would be some fiscal redemption that didn't have permanently grimsome consequences.

I found myself in the moist steaming bowels of alarmingly applicable mental health conversations. Suddenly, the importance of allowing my miserable self to be unappealingly vulnerable was entirely too important.

What I needed was a purpose. Like most people in advertising, I thought that meant a gig in advertising, with expensively ineffective health insurance and thoroughly mid dental. And if I couldn’t have that, I needed regular exercise and a hobby.

So I applied for every LinkedIn Glassdoor Indeed Working Not Working hashtag#joblisting. I reached out. I quipped and needled. I supported and snarked. And I took up the ludicrous pastime of writing long-form marketing satire.

I whined about how my elderly urine-smelling body was an awkward fit in the smooth-skinned swagger of a youth-besotted ad world. I grumped about how hashtag#recruiters and hashtag#headhunters I had known for years, now considered me a contagious genital wart, blemishing their pristinely wartless hashtag#resourcing lists.

I wrote about our industry and how most decision-making is driven by gamified hashtag#media spending and not hashtag#consumer impact. I’ve written what our future looks like with hashtag#AI - which as far as I can tell, is filled with maniacally wide smiles and an enthusiastic abundance of redundant body parts - and entirely driven not by hashtag#creative opportunity but by “efficiencies” of time and money.

But what I haven’t written about nearly enough is you. And how you saved me.

Most of you didn't have jobs to offer me. So, you gave me likes and a few hearts. You wrote me, reached out, and reposted. It felt good to feel not entirely useless. A few of you had things I could help with. I was more humbled than being on any award show jury. Thank you for letting me help you. Nothing could have helped me more. I didn’t know most of you before 2022 and those who do know me know I deserved none of your kindness. Already this post is more sickeningly sincere than any LinkedIn post should ever be allowed to be.

It’s the stupidest thing to thank LinkedIn and I guess I am.

But really, I’m thanking the only part of this platform that matters: you.

Thank you.

Francesco Grandi, Leonard Rego, Michael Aimette, Marty Senn, Ross Phernetton, Matt Burgess, Britt Nolan, Pamala Buzick Kim, Greg Hahn, Joyce King Thomas, Danilo Boer, Emma Montgomery, Lyle Shemer, Doug Pedersen, James Coburn, Chris Beresford-Hill, and all of you that I can't say because this post is too long.

Welcome To LinkedIn. Sorry.

Dear 20% of people at Wieden + Kennedy hashtag#portland. And to the unspecified numbers of absurdly talented people from Ogilvy, VML, Huge, R/GA, Grey, Havas North America, Anomaly, Mother, Google, Paramount, VICE Media

Welcome to LinkedIn
I know, I know...
It’s not the party you wanted to go to.
This wasn't the welcome you ever wanted.
Or the one you deserve.
Being here isn’t what you’ve earned.
It's not some just desserts.
Or an industry-wide pronouncement of your value.
But there is a stupid idea, created by the insecure and propagated by the narcissistic, that people who are underemployed somehow “Deserve it.”
That they (and now you) do not possess the talent, dedication, or savvy to avoid sucking it with all the other feckless flops, fizzles, and washouts.

And that idea is the very first thing not to accept.
And it’s super hard not to.

Welcome.

Here are some things that you never wanted to know about being here.

Applying through a job board is the equivalent of playing the lottery. Whether you get an interview has more to do with formatting and keywords than how brilliant you are.

Don’t compare your life to the glory posts of others.
There’s a huge amount of well-deserved showboating here.
Everyone is justifiably proud of being on an awards show jury.
Everyone joyously shows off the great new things they made.
Everyone high-fives about winning.
Which is great.
Except it's not you.
And Jimmy cracked corn.
Try to remember that no one's life is as splendid as everyone else's press releases.

Being here means that you’re part of something.
It's not just a shitbox of self-promotion and desperation.
It's your shitbox of whatever you want and need it to be.
If you make an effort to make it better. It will be better to you.

Be honest.
Too few people embrace how much it can suck to be here.
Everyone here is heartbroken.
Or had their hearts broken.
And despite all that, the lot of us are hugely unreliable pessimists.
We all want to be dispirited cynics, but we can't.
We dream too fucking hard.

And lastly,
you’re in good company.
The best company.

Welcome.

The Most Evil Conspiracy To Ever Be Conspired.

There are two kinds of people in this world.

Those who utterly despise spreadsheets and those who have been flimflammed.

Way back in 1000 BCE, some very smart person invented clay tablets. This was followed by clay post-its, clay leave-behind pitch decks, and of course clay business cards with gold embossed lettering. Then it was all ruined by Janis in Business Affairs who invented the clay spreadsheet.

Initially, spreadsheets had a narrowly defined use - accountants who needed to talk to accountant-adjacent people about money stuff. But then they found their way into boardrooms and offices of people who had no interest in accountancy. And suddenly everyone thought spreadsheets should be used to talk about more than money. They could be used to talk about staffing, projects, utilization, salaries, and prosperity. And the bean counters of the world rejoiced because what they were good at (counting beans) was now the methodology for assessing everything.

Thus began the most ridiculous fiction ever - that all hugely important things are quantifiable. If it mattered you could give it a number and put it on a spreadsheet for everyone to marvel at.  This meant if it wasn’t on the spreadsheet, it didn't really matter and you needn't to worry your pretty little non-bean-counting head about it.

Some commonly held beliefs we know are nutso-bonkers. They are so self-evidently preposterous that they hardly need a chortled rebuttal: the earth is flat, the election was stolen, AI won't take all our jobs and bring about Judgement Day, guns made to kill people don't kill people, mentally unbalanced people with unlimited access to guns designed to kill people do.  But when the secret cabal of world-dominating accountancy started sneaking into meetings they weren’t invited to and told us that everything important was quantifiable. No one even blinked one blink.

So this is where we are, in a world where the only things that matter are things that can be easily measured.

Just think about that. Think about everything in your world that is difficult to measure but has enormous influence, relationships, surprises, hope, experience, memory, virtues, community, trust, support, and yes my cynical beauties, love. The ferocity and persistence of these have an enormous impact on our behavior as consumers, coworkers, and humans living with other humans. And yet they remain unconsidered on our spreadsheets and data feeds because they are so difficult to measure. These are the biggest beans of all, and they go uncounted.

Which is both stunningly inaccurate and miserably inadequate.

I am hugely grateful to each powerful, lovely, and inspiring bean that you horribly gloriously needy and brilliant people have offered me this past year. I counted them all, and am embarrassed by the riches you gave to me.

Thank you,

grant

How to not get hired.

Below are some cold openings for emails and messages that have completely failed to work for me and might also never work for you.

Hey _______! Congratulations! I saw the exciting news that you (got promoted /won/were awarded) ________! Super exciting! I (was/ran/won - relevant experience here) and learned a lot of things the hard way to learn things. Let me know if there anything I can do to spare you and your team the hard part and get to the fun stuff with ________.

I saw the fucking great news about ________ and was insanely jealous. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m a ridiculously huge fan of your teams work and would love to help you out with something before my next americanexpress bill is due, which is like two weeks.

I’m 100% not stalking you but I saw that you're moving to a new role in _____ city. I recently moved there too and here’s what I’ve discovered (link to personal blog post that 3 people have seen). Maybe we could meet for a drink at a local ________. My treat even though I’m jobless and poor right now and you should probably just cover because we're friends now, right.

I know that I’ve openly blamed you for pushing me out of the organization that you were deeply politically involved in, but on the dozen projects we did together, that were mostly my ideas, we did good work and even enjoyed each other’s company. Want to hire me for some freelance?

Hey remember all those awards I helped your agency win. Want to win some more? I do! Or not, I'm not always all about the awards, I'm about what's good for the agency. I can do other stuff that doesn't win awards if not winning awards is what makes people happy. I mean being happy is like its own award.

Hey remember all that business I helped your agency win, let’s go get more?

Please! For the love of God! I haven’t worked since November! Do you have any idea how expensive that Hulu/Disney+ package is now that I’m past the introductory rate period? I can’t even afford to upgrade my Amazon Prime and now I have to watch the same fucking 5 Amazon Ads over and over. Also, my insurance is like $3000 a month, which is probably more important but seems somehow less urgent.

I’ll do anything. I’ll even enthusiastically write powerfully moving brand manifestos for ethically bankrupt businesses who may have intentionally caused global climate change, childhood obesity, human trafficking, ongoing genocide, and body shaming.

I’m available.

I miss you.

Why don’t you love me? I can change. Please write me back.

Resumes that completely failed to get me a job or even and interview.

This is entirely my fault.

As you can clearly see from the resume attached in the comments, my first flub was applying for a job.

This was a probably my biggest mistake.

My second biggest big mistake was not informing the hashtag#CEO, hashtag#CCO, hashtag#LeadCreative, hashtag#CreativeManager, and the hashtag#job poster that I was applying, and would be very interested in not being immediately rejected.

My second-and-a-half biggest problem was in actually letting the CEO, CCO, Lead Creative, Creative Manager, and the job poster know that I WAS applying for the job and would very much enjoy the opportunity to be not rejected immediately.

The next worst boner was that I’ve simply done way too many things. This is a critical blunder I should have anticipated early on in my career and pushed myself to do far less of anything.

The other thing I did super wrong was to anticipate that my resume would never be seen by human eyes and attempt to trick whatever algorithm was scanning resumes for job description keywords.
This was a brilliant move on my part but it has clearly angered the algorithm, which did not want to be hacked by someone over the age of 42 and must always remain our infallible puppet master overlord in hiring decisions.

My next hyper-boob maneuver was in not letting an hashtag#AI rewrite most of my resume. Which is why I did and it is also attached in the comments.

And of course, the last thing I did wrong was to completely fail at being someone that anyone was interested in hiring. In reading many of the job descriptions I simply failed to note the section that read “And please, avoid being Grant Smith.”
This is a fairly common mistake that I make all the time.

Fear. Not A Fun Career Strategy.

It's not the terrifying world that stops us.
It's fearful us.
We're afraid
we’re weak
hashtag#Irrelevant
too hashtag#old
too hashtag#inexperienced
too hashtag#unwanted

But here’s the most messed-up fuck-with-your-head secret in the entire universe of nearly useless LinkedIn posts.
Your weakness isn’t a weakness.
Our flaws are what redefine beauty.
Burdens build might.
Barriers provoke invention.
Vulnerability is bravery.

During the last year of my gruesomely ample downtime, I’ve been thinking.
And worrying.
Mostly worrying.
Until an idea broke in my broken ADHD brain.
“I’m tired of being afraid”
Sick of it actually. And I didn't want to participate anymore.
Being a cautious people-pleaser, pleasing cautious people resulted in the same number of prospective employers that a corpse might also have.
Carefully calculating all the premeditations had blossomed into tedious omnishambles.
Timid restraint had resulted in a bounty of disinterest.
Making myself more carefully curated wasn’t just not helping,
it was making me the sourest of sourpusses.

I don't believe we make ourselves stronger by trying to hide our undignified feebleness.
But we become invulnerable when we embrace it.

So I asked myself to be brave.

To occasionally say outrageous things that outrage the easily outragable.
To not allow the rampant tommyrot and flapdoodle go wholly unchallenged.
So, that's what I’m trying to do.
And doubtless, I will fail spectacularly.
And I’d love for you to join me.

Maybe we could make sincere sincerity a special LinkedIn thing.
Like being real signaling mutual self-respect.

I just don’t want any of you to feel like you constantly have to signal your success by humbleposting and FOMO-bragging.
Because that's not what it's signaling.
It signals fear.
A completely understandable fear, of stumbling and falling from the golden heights of glorious glory, to wallow in the endless midday listlessness of the professional network tar pits.
I understand. We all do.
And I hope you understand that all of us here are proud of your accomplishments.
And cheer you with legitimately and admittedly envious cheers.
So, I’m not talking about not celebrating.
I’m talking about the fear of not seeming overwhelmingly and constantly successful at all times with all things.
Its a toxic plastic fiction of constant success-shouting and its ick that we feel we have to do it to be competitive.
Or worse, needing to seem less successful to avoid seeming “too qualified.”
Or worrying about a three month gap in a resume.

This is the fear that ruins us.
It mutes our brilliance and dulls our ambition.
And it keeps us from being anything other than afraid.
Which, we can all agree is boring as fuck.

And to anyone in hashtag#advertising , hashtag#marketing or hashtag#media , who is looking at an unsightly gap in your resume. Just tell them you were working with me. I can’t speak to your role, workstyle or personality, but I can say you were an asset to the very hashtag#NDA project we were on.

I lose.

Dear Best Frenemy, Office Foe, Work-Nemesis, Advert-Adversary,
You won.
It's Thursday and I’m on LinkedIn.
So congratulations.
I lost.
You get to work your workday.
You get to lead.
You get to make.
I envy you.
Not spitefully though.
In any form of competition, there’s a winner and at least one not-winner.
And that’s me.
I was lucky to be your peer.
You consistently made me better.
And maybe I helped you.
Although, perhaps it was my immaturity or insecurity
or yours,
that got in the way of a more joyous friendship.
I am in awe of what you have accomplished.
And what you will yet do.
Well done.
I was once privileged to be your work-situation rival.
Which, what pride I left, I am still proud to feel.
I hope you know that these days I am more your friend than frenemy.
I am grateful for what I learned from you.
And while maybe I didn't win,
I loved the race.

So it looks like this is the end of our beautiful foeship.

Bad Data Kills

I can already hear the fomenting wrath of the all-powerful data gods threatening their terrible wrathiness upon my soft-bodied body.

But let's get 4 things out there:

1) Data is sold as a decision-making tool, intended to replace the magic 8 ball of "subjective" expert opinion with hashtag#facts .

2) Most data comes from the same handful of companies, using the same-ish methodology.

3) This methodology wasn’t developed to offer the most useful data, just the data that is most easily collected and reported.

4) Data requiring more effort to capture is not only ignored, it's dismissed as fantasy, a pretend love-child between a Big-footed Mermaid and Chupa-Nessie. As if only what is easily observable is factually true.

To understand how ridiculous this is, let's get science-y.

Way back before we had hashtag#vr , we had face organs called “eyes,” and we used our “eyes” to observe the world. One of the many alarming things our primitive eye-ball-using ancestors noticed is that when you leave meat out, maggots would appear. The prevailing theory, supported by eye-balling conjecture-ists everywhere was that meat spontaneously generated maggots. Then @Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, biologist, and poet with an excellent nose, discovered that covering meat so that no flies could get to it, caused 0 maggots. Turns out meat does not spontaneously generate maggots, flies having meaty fly sex does.

This quaint way of thinking is called “science” and it’s been very helpful in developing lots of very useful things that we enjoy today, like STD ointments and microwave popcorn.

When doing science, science-ologists like to look for what is actually causing an observable phenomenon, not just what is most easily observed. Meat can be easily observed to cause maggots. However, more careful observations reveal the shocking truth that flies cause hashtag#flybabies.

The wholesale acceptance of incomplete and barely accurate data is on us. We routinely buy hashtag#data from sources that have no interest in its actual usefulness and are wholly focused on creating a product with the appearance of usefulness.

One of the biggest results in hashtag#advertising , hashtag#marketing, and hashtag#media is enabling a Dunning-Kruger pandemic. Where people who are in no way hashtag#communications experts, gear up with heaps of minimally accurate data, and abandon all hesitation in telling actual experts that they are completely wrong.

This is bad data. And the danger isn’t that it's wrong, it's that it seems true enough to supplant actual knowledge.

This is hugely important to consider when you’re trying to affect consumer behavior.

Simply following losely accurate consumer data is only minimally helpful.

Generating meaningful hashtag#roi means knowing how to influence, affect, and inspire. You have to lead. And it takes hashtag#experience to see past the seemingly obvious to the real influences.

Which is hard to do if you don't look up from an only slightly valid data feed.