Had a moment of clarity last week where I thought about my time in the industry since my first layoff in 2017 that helped me reframe the instability I encountered and how it prepared me for where I am now. Seems like it resonated a bit.
Had a quick thought and made a visual to support it.
It usually surprises people when I tell them I prefer full-time to freelance because they look at my resume and see how much I've freelanced during my career. Well the secret is I never chose to be a freelancer. I was forced into by layoffs three times.
But I will say there is a lot I learned about the industry and how to work in it from freelancing for so many different shops. They are all things full-time people can figure out on their own, but usually it takes significantly longer since they are exposed to fewer agencies.
If you start at shops that have their shit together, you may think most other agencies are similar. If you work at a "chaos shop," you may think that's just how advertising is as well. The truth is that every place is different and freelancing for a ton of them teaches you that. It also helps you learn how to deal with different situations that can pop up at them, so the next time it happens you'll know how to deal with it.
Again, all things that anyone can learn, but being freelance just puts it on a fast tracked schedule. Regardless, the post seems to have struck a chord and got over 500 likes and 29 reposts in under 24 hours. Its still crazy to me that people react this way to some of the stuff I write, it's really me just getting assorted thoughts on paper for myself, but I'm glad there are people out there who feel the same.
The funny thing to me about ad agencies is that, especially as you get to the higher levels you aren't paying people to work for you as much as you are paying them to not compete against you.
I wrote this the other week and it mildly blew up. A week later the former ECD's at GS&P New York announced their new agency (post layoff) would be taking Liberty Mutual with them.
I posted about my AIDC boxes on LinkedIn last week and the post had a minor blowup. 30k+ views and almost 250 likes with lots of well wishes and compliments. Not too bad for the investment.
For a few weeks now I'd been discussing with friends my frustration with agency leaders who had been dead quiet on what was happening in the industry right now. After some encouragement from my friend TJ Bennett I decided to go ahead and write about it.
I do wonder if me speaking up about about issues I see in the industry makes things harder on myself in terms of finding work, but I'm not the type to shy away from hard discussions. After all, we can't fix things we don't want to talk about.
It seems to have struck a chord though with over 13k views and 160+ likes. Apparently I wasn't the only person who had noticed.
Last week Squarespace posted about a new Sr. Art Director position in LA and honestly, on paper it'd be a great match for me. But none of that matters if I can't get an interview. So on Friday I threw together a page on Squarespace to make the case for why I'd be the perfect candidate. It mostly has to do with my history of designing websites (not professionally) and understanding the target demo. Plus to really make the point it took me less than an hour to get the page up. I posted it to LinkedIn today and broke 100 likes, whether or not that'll make a difference is yet to be scene.
It does bring up an interesting philosophical question though. The page received a good bit of traffic and a lot of messages of support telling me they loved the idea. Are stunts like these zero sum games in terms of success? If I don't get an interview out of it from Squarespace, is it a complete failure? Does grabbing the attention of other creatives mitigate that if I don't? We'll find out I suppose.
I really do believe that certain "taboo" subjects should be talked about more openly so they won't be taboo anymore. I've done it in the past when I posted about pay ranges for full-time and freelance and I thought it was time to do it again for one of the mental health issues plaguing the industry.
You normally only see people posting about crying in the office on places like Fishbowl where they can be anonymous. Everyone in advertising fears being seen as weak. I thin it's funny though, because to be truly great at it you have to be empathetic. You need to be able to feel emotion and relate to how others are feeling as well.
Being honest about being humans is the first step, so we should be able to talk about those moments of humanity we have without fear or being seen as somehow lesser than those who don't. And that's before we even get into the underlying conditions at agencies that cause it to happen to begin with.
The other week I made an offer on LinkedIn to take free headshots of any out-of-work creatives who wanted a refresh. I only had one person take me up, so everyone else's loss. Brandi and I met up this past Wednesday over in Santa Monica and these were the results.
With the baby coming soon, I took some time to reflect on what it meant for my career. Seems to have resonated a bit.
I'd been preaching the virtues of kitchen communication to my students for awhile, but while I was watching The Bear the other week I was able to add a new parallel to the comparison. I ended up writing about it and, well, apparently it resonated.
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