A 100% accurate accounting of how sacking decisions are made in advertising

A 100% accurate accounting of how #sacking decisions are made in #advertising. From someone who has been in the booting room.

The mystical decision to unjob rarely comes at the hashtag#agency level. Nobody who uses the same restroom as you wants to see you go. And as much as they seem indifferent, belligerent, with no professional boundaries, your local hashtag#leaders see themselves as semi-toxic parental figures and are surprisingly fond of you.

No, the enigmatical call to throw a sacking party comes from a different floor, in a different building, in a faraway state with much more permissive tax laws.

These decisions are typically made by exalted and spectacular beings you have never met and who have no idea of your value. As they studiously examine goat entrails, looking into the inscrutable future, if they mildly suspect the slightest woe or measliest whammy, they pronounce a season of joyous rightsizing to commence, to generate quick hashtag#profits.

The time of canning will typically happen at the end or beginning of the year.
Un-onboard occurs in the 4th quarter to bury losses in a mountain of otherwise end-of-year good news.
While de-gigging in the 1st quarter creates a fun “recovery” narrative.

Each agency is given a cost-cutting number that they MUST meet.

The number is always big. And some big cheeses and bananas try to make a dent in it BEFORE defenestrating. Pizza Fridays? now pizza no days. Holiday party? now just spray cheese and saltines. But even after rebudgeting for the world's least absorbent toilet paper and the most caustic soviet era hand soap, we will still need triumphant sackings.

The actual canning decisions tend to follow the Star Trekkian ethic of, “sacrifice the few, to save the many.” So, if you can cut two people who make as much as five others, you cut the two to save the five. The fact that the two being sacrificed are responsible for 3-5x the business as the other five is very rightfully never considered.

Typically those who have stupidly chosen to lead and support others, offering hashtag#guidance and hashtag#strategies, also tend to get paid a bit more. And as such, are the first to be given a box of mostly broken personal effects and shown the door by Daryl from security.

There's no ephemeral spreadsheet that accounts for your radiant talents or golden experience. With no column or row documenting the precise resources that drive hashtag#profit. You.

Thus 2023-2024 problem. Many agencies were made far weaker, with their overworked remnants having less leadership and support with far less resilience.

It has also made clients feel as though they have been left with the least expensive players rather than the best suited, further damaging the hashtag#reputation of our agencies, our industry, and the hashtag#value of what we make.

It should surprise no one in the business of communication that an obsession with numerical over human value has resulted in vigorous disinterest.

Ad Recruiters, We Love You

No, we really do.

hashtag#Recruiting in hashtag#advertising is an impossible job.

It requires hashtag#creativerecruiters to have a detailed understanding of the discipline, the subtle context of the role, while connecting with the expectations of hashtag#culture, hashtag#economics, and hashtag#trends of the moment.

It also requires an understanding of the organization's spoken and (most vital) unspoken needs. There are huge pressures to find ideal candidates, that perfectly fit a confusing and conflicting set of criteria.

Which is just any given Tuesday for a hashtag#recruiter. But over the past year, the response to each opening is 500% higher. And more of these applicants are more qualified than ever.

Sr executive hashtag#decisionmakers don't have the time to sort through hundreds of resumes and hashtag#portfolio links. Which leaves the recruiter to make 87% of the hiring decisions. Recruiters know that it's wrong to cut people for reasons that don't directly impact the duties of the job. But to make the search manageable, they look for any reason to say “no.” hashtag#overqualified - no. hashtag#inexperienced - no. Resume not formatted the usual way - no, Taking longer than 6 hours to respond to the initial job post - no. Employment gap - no. Too few recent hashtag#awards - no. Worked in QSR but not specifically in “Bunless” QSR - no.

And what about hashtag#age? Do you cut people who are over 55? Over 45? It’s not legal, but how does it look when you invite a grey hair to an interview, and they show up in their unfashionable shirts with weird neck folds, and middle-aged jewelry? What is this, an hashtag#adagency or a gas station? Maybe if they’re a super hot older person who wears swank outfits and has cool neck tats, then possibly, but otherwise ick.

How do you tell your eminently qualified, clearly interested applicants that you will not consider them because their hashtag#resume only had 12 of the 18 hashtag#keywords listed in the job description? Or that their enormous wealth of experience or potential is completely negated by the choice to use the hashtag#opentowork notice on their LinkedIn profile.

I’m glad I don’t have to say any of those things.

Which is why we are often hashtag#ghosted .

Ghosting is not the result of people who don’t care.

It's the result of a process that is indefensible.

So next time you don’t hear from a recruiter, realize your application was rejected for some reason other than your majestic greatness. And telling you about it would only make you sad for not being enough of some arbitrary measure, entirely unrelated to how hard you would kill the job or how much gold your brain can shit.

Ghosting isn’t you being told you’re not good enough.

It’s being told the reasons for your rejection aren’t worth the breath to mention.

Or the eyeball juice to read.

Your hot take on AI doesn’t matter. Mine neither.

It doesn’t matter a tinker’s cuss if I love the idea of AI creating advertising or hate it.

All our well-considered and sage opinions are tragically unimportant because the real value of AI isn’t about expanding creative opportunities. It’s about the money.

Well, money and being at the forefront of a very enticing tech trend. Not that there is anything wrong with that, no one wants to seem like an advertising codger, metaphorically smelling of urine and menthol cigarettes, leaning on a walker, shouting at teenagers about how the music these days isn’t like how it was at Lollapalooza.

For better or for worse, advertising is married to tech. Not that new tech always brings that much to the table and is most often used to annoy consumers in places they’ve never been annoyed before.

The unspoken truth about new technology is that most consumers don’t use it.

In most cases, innovation just isn’t all that personally relevant to most people. UNLESS it is used to enhance a customer’s experience. Remember Adam Berg’s wonderful 2009 film for Phillips Carousel, or CP+B’s super fun Subservient Chicken? All good stuff, that captured the imaginations and interest of consumers using new techniques and new tech. Delighting audiences by creating more enjoyable and memorable ad experiences is the best use of new technology in advertising, and that’s why we love it.

The problem is that AI isn’t going to go big because it offers consumers something that they’ve never seen before. The real reason AI will be adopted by almost every ad agency is because AI supports three dominant trends in our industry:

Modest budgets
Tiny timelines
Smaller expressions

AI will be adopted because it isn’t a person. It doesn’t push back on crazy deadlines. It doesn't expect pay raises for doing amazing work. It doesn’t take PTO or ask about maternity leave. AI works overnight, on weekends, and on every holiday. It doesn’t mind creating 287 rounds of a single banner; or a digital anthem film that is exactly like every other digital anthem film. It doesn’t push back on random subjectivity with years of experience. It just does whatever you ask it to do because it’s a machine. It has no sense of taste, no drive to originality, and no mandate to innovate.

AI is the creative vending machine that so many people have wanted for so many years. Is it innovative? Procedurally. Is it focused on enhancing the consumer experience? No. Will it create lasting brands and unforgettable work? There's no evidence of this. Will it create cultural moments that live rent-free in consumers’ minds for decades? You bet it will… JK, fuck no, in fact it’s by function guaranteed to be repetitive and derivative to the point of violating IP. But will it make money? Hell yeah baby, it will print it. All those salaries that went to human hands can now be distributed to share-holders.

So, when we talk about AI, keep in mind the drivers of the conversation. Will AI create opportunities? A few. But it’s not really about more memorable and unique consumer experiences and it’s not about building culturally influential brands. It's about fulfilling an advertising work order as quickly and cheaply as possible.

The Incomplete and Eternal Rules of Advertising.

In all our delightful and never anxiety-producing discussions of AI argle-bargle, SEO shenanigans, performance poppycock, and programmatic bafflegab, the most basic laws of advertising physics get forgotten. Executions, trends, and tech all change, and that's truly the fun part. But every new rocket ever built had to start with a clear understanding of gravity.

No one wants advertising

Let’s start with the most obvious rule ever, the one that we completely forget 100% of the time. Advertising isn’t something anyone is excitedly anticipating. No one breathlessly waits for another HubSpot or Panda Copy ad to appear in their feed, during a video, outside the window, or above the urinal. We forget that just because we make something, doesn’t mean anyone wants it.

Seriously, no one fucking wants advertising

If we’re really honest, and why not, social media is the ideal self-indulgent venue for warts-and-all honestly, the consumer attitude toward advertising isn’t just disinterested apathy. It’s more like an active annoyance to persistent acrimony. Consumers find advertising, intrusive, unrewarding, pedantic, misleading, patronizing, repetitive, and boring. And that's when they bother to notice it. It's super important for each one of us to accept that the starting point for any ad experience isn’t a neutral audience. It’s a passively negative one, at the very least. And yes, this is even true with targeted ads.

If you can be ignored you will be

Consumers only see what they care about. Everything that isn’t immediately interesting, entertaining, or relevant is quickly dismissed. And why the assballs shouldn’t it be? Everyone has something else more fun to listen to, read, or watch than another ad. Attention is earned, not paid for. Advertising doesn't compete with other advertising for consumer attention. It competes with everything else in the world that’s more interesting.

If you’re not always asking “Why would I give a fuck about this ad,” nobody else will either

People aren’t looking for reasons to look at your ad, they're looking for reasons not to. Don’t give them one.

Being irrelevant is easy, just talk about yourself

I was in a meeting last week where I had the opportunity to present my observations, informed by my 20+ years of advertising expertise, that resulted in my best-in-class decision-making process, and why the fuck would you read any further? We’re all so scared of not being valued that we gleefully waste everyone’s time talking about how valuable we are. If you want to be valued, make something that your audience will value.

Consumers don’t care how any of the c-suite stakeholders feel about the brand positioning initiatives outlined in the 2024-26 planning session

Unless every decision starts with “Because the consumer feels X,” then the message will get lost. Consumers are engorged with self-interest. They don’t care about the recent merger resulting in the misalignment of key marketing objectives. They only care how they feel about the world they work and live in. And that's it. They want their fears, ambitions, and problems honestly and uniquely represented in entertaining, empowering, and validating ways. Anything else wastes your money and their attention/

The thoughtfully rational argument already lost

Wouldn’t it be great if the world was full of thoughtful consumers, who carefully weigh the logic of their decisions? Sadly, we’re a planet of emotionally needy turbo-Karens who desperately want to be heard, adored, and amused. That's just who human beings are, and the more you’re okay with the inherently irrational nature of our decision-making, the cheaper, better, and more successful your advertising will be.

And yes, to all my “content” fam, informing your customer can be persuasive, but first, they have to decide to listen to you, which they won’t do until you prove you love them for being the shameless needy stimulus junkies that they are.

It's not what it does, it’s what it feels

No one buys a Lambo because they need a car. Nothing about it is at all practical or even terribly useful. It is, however, a lovely car to turn up in. Everyone looks at you with envy and admiration. Or at least it feels like they do, and that's what matters. The same goes for using Tide, eating Progresso soup, or wearing Ferragamo shoes. We don’t choose these things to solve the problem of transportation, dirty laundry, lunch hunger, or tender bare feet. We buy them because it feels good to have brands that tell us we aren’t losers driving a ‘92 Geo Metro, smelling like no-name detergent, and breathing store-brand soup breath, while hobbling through life in our dollar store crock-offs.

Advertising isn’t about sales, the same way that dating isn’t about not dying alone

If the whole reason you date is so someone will be there when you snuff it, you’re not going to have many second dates.

The goal of advertising isn’t to generate sales. It’s to create a relationship where every sale doesn’t require another new ad. The goal of good advertising is to need less advertising. When your message affects consumer behavior for months and years, that’s when you’ve gotten an ROI worth the highest of business bro high-fives.

Advertising, like dating, is about building a relationship so that every interaction doesn’t have to start from 0.

The worst possible decision in advertising is not making one

Absolutely nothing is gained by doing nothing. Some might argue that doing nothing also costs nothing. Which is outrageously untrue. Cultural moments pass, opportunities cool, ideas are forfeited, and expert resources migrate away. Inaction causes all the thinking, planning, and expertise assembled to melt away like butter in the Texas sun. And that cost is real, actual money. Not just in the loss of utilization, but in the inevitable rebooting of the project, only now with less time, new resources, and no money.

Just because no one thinks to put a line item loss on a spreadsheet labeled, “inaction,” doesn’t mean it’s not a big loss.

Adequately Successful Advertising Creative Directors Do These…

I’ve been a CD for over 17 years. During that time, I learned lots of useful and horrible things, many of which I never wanted to learn and deeply regret knowing. But if you are sufficiently misguided and aim to become a highly successful creative director who makes loads of money, wins tons of trophies, and gets black-out drunk at awards shows (which, to be clear, you should definitely not do at the 2009 Mercury Awards) then I have the following unsavory, and only slightly useful 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 a famous actor. Being a famous actor means that you always have great ideas that no one else has ever had and you’re totally relevant to everyone, even all those people who lacked the ambition to become famous actors. And of course, working with a famous actor who is a creative director means that they will occasionally come to critical meetings. And this means that people get to say they met someone famous in a meeting. Which makes everyone very excited about meetings.

Wear stylish outfits. No one who isn’t stylish is at all relevant and not worth listening to. Being super on trend is a sign that you are committed to always being on trend and therefore know what is trending, which is enormously reassuring to every consumer who sees familiar trends being used as marketing tools. 

Embrace anthems. Be very good at anthems. Rousing, inspiring manifestos that congeal all the internal unaligned divisions into a vague but unified position that everyone can feel mildly enthusiastic about when it’s made into a sizzle video for the semi-annual stakeholders meeting in Reno.

Smile. A lot. Be completely easy-going and collaborative, entertaining every idea from every person during every meeting; no matter how far along the project is, or how contradictory, ill-considered, or unoriginal those ideas are. Remember, your decades of experience with millions of $ of work, generating tens of millions in earned media and record sales, are no more valid than the off-hand comment from the summer intern sitting in on their first agency call. 

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 most organizations. Always remember: winning always wins. 

Make every hire “The best hire.” Only hire affordable people who will make great work very quickly and with very little effort. Make sure that you don’t hire people who need extra help or have any life demands placed on their time, like children or relationships with people who aren’t coworkers.

Be a managerial natural. Intuitively know what to say and do to manage an ambitious, talented, unsatisfied group of emotionally needy creatives, who both rely on you and resent you; helping them work better with each other, generating their own opportunities, and guiding them along their career path - without having a single minute of managerial training, other than the dysfunctionally toxic work environments that you lived through.

Win every award, every year. Your value as a creative leader is only measured in the past 12 months. Anything older means you simply aren’t creative anymore and have totally lost the ability to solve problems in delightful and surprising ways and someone will be around shortly to drive you to a farm upstate, where you will frolic in the open sunny fields until you snuff it. 

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 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. Your agency and the entire micro-network of agencies that were randomly put together by the holding company, all depend upon you 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 ad words and social posts were invented. But that was ages ago when smartphones were clay tablets.

Be right. No one likes someone who is wrong. Being wrong is bad, don’t be wrong. 

Always be upbeat. Everything is always going to be great. You’re always super excited. Everyone is going to “hit the ground running, jumping right in,” with “all hands on deck,” to work on the project, all day, every day, overnight, and on weekends; canceling vacations, Dr’s appointments, and celebrations to create something that strategically aligns with the client’s goals and is within the budget that was never defined.

Be a better business person than business people. Even though you did not go to business school, and were in no way offered business courses, and you neither wanted nor were even slightly interested in learning business stuff, you must understand business situations and jargon better than 98% of people who did go to business school and who have decades of experience being business people. 

Embrace every new technology. Who are you to decide which technologies are ridiculous and irrelevant snake oil that will only waste time and money? Functionality and relevance aren’t the point. The point is being on the leading edge of something new. 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. 

Leave. Develop a persistent casual paranoia of the Machiavellian plots that are working against you. If you are a force for change, know that change causes fear and disruption. If you are a force of stability, know that people bristle against rules. There is no amount of kindness, experience, or value that will counter the inherent discontent of differing agendas. Be your own Nostradamus. Look for the unspoken expectations and the poisonous narratives. Establish key goals that will positively impact your people and the organization.

And when those are met, leave.

People are impressed by someone who creates positive change and wants to create more somewhere else. They are never quite as impressed by the “team players” who stuck around. Remember that the only team that really matters is yours.

Don’t listen. It is everyone else’s job to be a cautious realist. There are armies of people who can scale down, put up guardrails, and sand smooth every rough corner. You will NEVER be better at it than they are. In the world of worried suits, not only do you have fewer suits, you cannot possibly worry more, deeper, or longer than they can. There are countless multitudes of marketing people whose only job is making safe decisions. There’s really no talent to it, that’s why there are so many of them. And there are just as many cynical defeatists who protect their traumatized souls with negativity.

But that’s not you. Your role isn’t to embrace the nagging minutia of infinite concerns, and it’s not to give in to some defeated “realism.” Your job is to help your people make greater things. And doing something great usually means knowing when not to listen.

Even to me.