Job or Calling?
Imagine this: you’re at the cusp of deciding which career path you’re going to take. A few people are making suggestions; friends, teachers, parents, friends of parents… You take a look at what various jobs might involve, match the favourites to your own skillset, and take some kind of plunge into the world of… advertising.
20+ years ago that process happened within the context of an industry that was both very similar and critically different to the 2014 version.
In broad terms, advertising used to be more of a calling. Sure, it’s never been medicine, the government, the law, or one of those other professions that could be described as an overall service to people who really need it. But despite that, there was a always a sense that the output of your daily job could be part of a continuum of culture-defining greatness.
From the Guinness and Cinzano posters of the 1930s, through Think Small, Snowplow, Hamlet, Heineken, The Economist, Tango, Guinness, Think Different, Honda, Mac vs PC, Cadbury’s Gorilla and many others, the very best of what the industry has produced could be defined as just one rung below actual art.
People have hung great ads on their walls and in galleries; endlines and catchphrases have spread throughout society and culture, sometimes lasting for decades; and advertising has fueled other art forms, giving rise to great writers, directors and entrepreneurs.
In short, it ain’t Motown or the National Gallery, but it also ain’t accounts payable for a valve manufacturer in Gravesend.
As someone who joined the industry in the 1990s, I can tell you that I was very much under the impression that a ‘great’ ad could really fit the definition of that adjective: famous, admired and blessed with longevity. That was what we were striving to create, and we felt that with the right brief and enough hard work, it was very much possible.
I’m not sure that the same feeling exists for people who have entered advertising in the last decade.
Sure, the continuum is still continuing through John Lewis, Old Spice, Channel 4 and the occasional Nike ad, but I think it’s fair to say that, despite LinkedIn’s ridiculous overuse of the word ‘genius’, the number of current ads that are truly brilliant is vanishingly small.
Even smaller is the proportion of great ads. We now make so many, in so many channels, that the percentage of greatness probably starts with a zero and a decimal point.
Now that we’re a couple of decades into the domination of the internet, anyone younger than 25-30, will only know a world of Facebook, Google, smartphones etc.; an online world which rarely offers us remarkable, culturally significant ads.
In this world TV has become less and less important, making it less and less likely that culturally significant advertising is inspiring people to join the industry.
Beyond that, our most prestigious awards are now reserved for purpose- or tech-based initiatives that few people in the real world ever see. Look through the list of Cannes winners and consider how many your mum would recognise (I know many are from other countries, but they still seem to be the kind of thing that made a relatively minor splash outside the industry, despite those ‘3.67 billion media impressions’).
So there’s much to disappoint, and little to inspire. That means that what used to be a calling is now closer to being, well, a job.
Which brings us to an interesting inflection point.
Agencies are currently run by Gen X or older Millennial people, almost all of whom would have entered the industry when it was a calling, or at least more of one than it is today. We had a ton of incredible ads to aim at, and we could realistically dream of becoming part of that continuum, or creating a catchphrase for the entire country.
But like the proverbial boiling frog, we have seen that opportunity slowly ebb away. Sure, it still exists, but the more times you’re given a ‘hard working’ social post to write for ‘lower down the funnel’ the less likely you are to think that greatness is on the cards.
An older manager, indoctrinated in the idea that greatness is possible on every brief, might want to stop for a moment and think about what the new normal feels like: worse work, longer hours, lower wages and fewer opportunities to create something your taxi driver is aware of.
Asking people who exist in that reality to stay later, think harder or sacrifice parts of their life for the minuscule chance to ‘do great work’ is perverse. That’s why many younger people think of advertising as a job, albeit one that is slightly more enjoyable and fulfilling than most.
Add the crushing existence of post-2008 wage stagnation and austerity, along with the the experience of the pandemic, the knowledge that the Climate Crisis is only going to get worse, and the dawning realisation that AI is likely to make your job obsolete, and you have a colossal chunk of the workforce that cannot see advertising as a career, let alone a calling.
Why does that matter? Well, it depends on what the older generation is expecting of the younger one.
One is in the same industry as the other, but with less hope, joy, expectation and inspiration. Management might think they are offering the same jobs they themselves started with, but unless they honestly recognise that many elements are worse, they are going to be frustrated by the reduced levels of enthusiasm.
It’s an unamusing cliche of 2024 that the younger generation ‘doesn’t want to work’ or that they expect all sorts of unrealistic perks. But if you think back to 1990s/2000s advertising, it was full of the kind of ‘perks’ money can’t buy. Imagine being given two weeks to write a TV ad, then being given half a million pounds to make it and having ten million people watch it, all with cheaper rent, better pay and an actual office.
Unless we make the industry as attractive to the new juniors as it was to us, we’re going to continue to attract less engaged staff, who will never be inclined to go the extra mile for the sake of someone’s ill-defined version of excellence.
If that seems to be a bit of a First-World problem, imagine what the industry will look like to the next generation.
At some point we have to find a way to make advertising more of a calling and less of a job. Either that or we start competing for staff with the finance department of Johnson’s Valves of Gravesend.