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