How much do you actually make?
When I started in advertising I remember a Campaign editorial saying that if a creative team made a TV ad and press campaign in year they were doing well.
At the time I was at Y&R and that seemed about par for the course, but when I got to AMV I discovered that it was possible to find yourself making much more work than that. Many more briefs went through AMV, but the situation was also far more positive – if you answered your brief well the ad invariably got made. Clients came to the 1998 version of AMV because it was one of the best agencies in the world, so when work was presented to those clients on the understanding that it had gone through AMV’s rigorous internal standards process, then it was surely worth running.
Then, obviously, clients became less in thrall to that halo of brilliance and started to get pickier, but even then I made way more ads there than I did at Y&R.
Which leads me to a comment left on the blog a couple of weeks ago. When I put my first ad up for your delectation and asked for yours in return, an anonymous person suggested that many readers of this blog may not yet have made their first TV ad. Initially I thought that was because my readership is full of youngsters, still hacking their way through the jungles of college/junior life (I should point out that I have pretty much no idea of the readership of this blog. I used to check the stats every day, but then, around five years ago, I got to about 2000-3000 daily readers and it didn’t seem to fluctuate enough for me to keep going back to see if one Wednesday was bigger than another. Maybe there’s only a few of you left; maybe I now rival the viewership of Pornhub. I kind of like not knowing. It feels like the motives for the writing are a little purer as I’m not chasing eyeballs, the number of which doesn’t matter anyway), then I thought again and wondered if the average 2014 creative (or at least the ones who read this blog) is getting much made.
I’d guess that more stuff gets made these days, what with the proliferation of media channels, but are more TV ads happening? More print? Maybe I should categorise traditional media thus: are more ads getting made that are ‘tell-your-mum-worthy’, or are people making more things that are a bit boring to explain to her (‘But the KPIs are through the roof!’)? Or are you making fuck-all and wondering how long you can keep doing that before you get sacked or feel an overwhelming urge to give it all up and become a private detective?
I know quantity ultimately trumps quantity, but then again, practice makes perfect. Fewer opportunities means fewer chances to hone your skills and a slower progression to the next level. So is the current somewhat un-purple patch of advertising anything to do with a reduction in chances to improve, or is that reduction in chances a consequence of clients wanting less of what they might think of as un-purple patch work?
Who knows? No one, but one thing you do know (if you’re an advertising creative) is how much stuff you generally make. So TELL ME HOW MUCH IT IS by using the comments section.
Thanks.
I work at a good agency in NZ and my partner and I get a lot of work made. Not all of it great, but enough good stuff to refresh our book more than a couple of times a year. It’s just the culture of the place. They’re good at selling great ideas. They’re good at making great work. And they actively put proactive ideas in front of clients. And the clients buy them.
I produce absolute tons of “routes” but no actual ads. Bizarrely I’m still employed.
I’m under 10%.
Will constantly referring to advertising’s current shit streak prolong said shit streak?
Doesn’t seem like a positive thing to keep doing to me if you actually want things to get better.
….just to give you a bit of a historical comparison….I joined BBH in 1984 as a relative lightweight and stayed for 2 and a half years. In that time I clocked up 9-TV commercials, 10- 48sheet posters, 5-16 sheet posters, 13-colour DPS’s, 15-full page press ads and around 10- radio ads.
We left to join Lowe Howard-Spink as middleweights in ’86 because we wanted to do more telly but only stayed eighteen months before we set up SPDENTONC&J. In that time we shot 11 commercials, and made 7-48sheet and 2-96 sheet posters, 4-DPS’s and 3-full page press ads….I can’t remember about radio.
…and before you ask, yes, it was a very quiet Bank Holiday.
Most of my boring everyday stuff gets made. Unfortunately the stuff I could put in my book never does. Time to move on.
My last TV ad was March 2013. Since then I’ve made nothing, pitched loads, lost all but one.
@ Ed: The first stage on the path to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
I’m closing in on 2 years in my first job, and in the first 6 months or so my partner and I made nothing. The next 12 months we made a TV ad, 3 print / poster campaigns, and an interactive digital project. Then in the last 4-5 months we’ve not really made or sold anything.
Perhaps these things fluctuate. I’m hoping, anyway.
I’m quite good at my job. Unfortunately I have very little proof.
Noticed one of the teams here doing some spec work for their book, simply because they’re not getting anything made at their day job. Oh the irony…
Damo. Ditto.
How much do the guys at Huge (social media agency in NYC) make? Perhaps not as much as you’d think.
This story tells you how it took them two months to create a single tweet for Mr President cheese. A tweet that generated exactly zero retweets and two ‘favourites’.
http://www.businessinsider.com/huge-social-media-manager-does-all-day-2014-5
Two months. Sheesh.
i’d be happy martin.
the east coast stuff is lovely.
look at your output as a percentage of the agency output.
are you batting above or below the average?
are you getting more awards or less?
but take it with a pinch of salt, as how busy and productive you are will fluctuate.
if you can replace 25% of your book each year. you’re doing well. unless your book is 4 banners and a tweet.
In 3 and a half years working in advertising, consisting of 2 different agencies, 5 campaigns I’ve been involved in have gone live. I think that’s about 2% of the stuff I’ve worked on. Ouch.
2% is about right. When I was at BMP it was 2% and it is about the same here now. That is 2% of the work that actually gets in front of clients, not 2% of what you put onto the layout pad. As someone much better than me said back then, “if you want a good year, your 100% has to be a huge.”
I’m not counting pitches. You tend to make none of it, even if you win.
Obviously, he didn’t say “has to be a huge’. Otherwise ‘A huge’ would become some sort of measurement of creative work. Which it isn’t. Though, on reflection, it probably should be.
I think a ‘huge’ should now enter common parlance.