It's about what comes next.
I've already heard from several uber talented, enviously awarded, resumed and mostly still employed friends and former students about what comes next.
Employed or not, they recognize the current world situation is not going to go away soon.
That when it does, it will not longer be "business as usual."
What does comes next?
Up to you.
For whatever reasons, economic change - and agency flux - cycle again and again.
When I first started working, recessions and changes in creative and business models were regional. Revealed themselves and grew into new geography at inchworm pace.
A slow down in New York moved top talent to LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, Texas. Places unaffected by social and business changes beginning to take hold in other major - and soon to be - markets.
The last regional ad crisis I remember was the oil bust of the early 1980s, when Western ad folk - and the business - moved back North, East and Southwest like contrite homing pigeons.
When the crazies headed Northwest, to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the Pacific hinderlands. Unheard of places where new industries and new thinking spurred new music singing new style advertising.
It wasn't until the 90s the entire economy stood still. Adlandia shed talent like hairs off a dog, from the bottom up. Leaving only old think high earners running in circles, chasing tails for new old business without looking outside its traditional model to see what the market really wanted,
All hail the rise of the web shop. Building sites, growing leaps and bounds - without a clue what its new power - and appeal - really meant. Opening shops willy nilly, no clients, no plans - only the certainty they were It. What's Next. Flying high until until until
Everyone realized no one knew What's Next.
Chastized, they devoured - were devoured by - all the lost ad talent, marrying tech to strategy, marketing and communications who figured how to use it. Developing the hybrid monster we are all - advertising, tech, corporate and mongrel hydra - now worrying we may lose not to competition,
But to what must be a true New Ad World Order. One that hopefully doesn't forget all in commerce today is human.
And humans are a very frail thing.
My question to you?
Not What is this New World Order.
My question to you.
Why wait.
Why take your severance (if you were so lucky) and semi-security (if you are so high up), offering the same old thing to the same old people?
Why aren't you What's Next?
Why aren't you writing thinking concepting those Open Objective Kamikaze Creative Work Plans and instead of offering the same old services, with the same old systems of renumeration, offering clients - corporations, agencies, holding companies, sole proprietorships and individuals soon to be all five - partnerships of opportunity they really need.
Like What? you ask.
Not my job, I answer.
My job has always been to get you off your believe in what's been done before.
My job has always been to get you thinking like you've never thought before.
My job is to remind you I've given you the mad method and insights to solve creative problems unlike any you've solved before. In ways you've not conceived before.
You can wait it out, holding on to your paychecks until until until. You can call for contacts, references, post your new freelance availability and comb anemic job boards.
Or you can take a look - using the x-ray vision you developed after you left my flock - at all the things you know about companies and business and communication and motivation.
Then even more importantly, train those x-ray eyes on those who really run the world - The Prospect.
See it all through your eyes. Not the eyes whatever agency, whatever CEO, whatever CCO, ECD you last labored under. Maybe even worshiped.
Take what they gave you.
Add it to what has always been yours.
Look at the client companies.
Look at their untapped overshilled desensitized prospects.
Find that hitherto unseen longing, need, taste only you can see. Smell. Feel in your bones.
Gore Vidal once said "The unfed mind devours itself."
Feed your mind all the creativity knowledge intelligence insight and humanity The Universe gave you.
Be the Revolution. Build What's Next.
I've already heard from several uber talented, enviously awarded, resumed and mostly still employed friends and former students about what comes next.
Employed or not, they recognize the current world situation is not going to go away soon.
That when it does, it will not longer be "business as usual."
What does comes next?
Up to you.
For whatever reasons, economic change - and agency flux - cycle again and again.
When I first started working, recessions and changes in creative and business models were regional. Revealed themselves and grew into new geography at inchworm pace.
A slow down in New York moved top talent to LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, Texas. Places unaffected by social and business changes beginning to take hold in other major - and soon to be - markets.
The last regional ad crisis I remember was the oil bust of the early 1980s, when Western ad folk - and the business - moved back North, East and Southwest like contrite homing pigeons.
When the crazies headed Northwest, to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the Pacific hinderlands. Unheard of places where new industries and new thinking spurred new music singing new style advertising.
It wasn't until the 90s the entire economy stood still. Adlandia shed talent like hairs off a dog, from the bottom up. Leaving only old think high earners running in circles, chasing tails for new old business without looking outside its traditional model to see what the market really wanted,
All hail the rise of the web shop. Building sites, growing leaps and bounds - without a clue what its new power - and appeal - really meant. Opening shops willy nilly, no clients, no plans - only the certainty they were It. What's Next. Flying high until until until
Everyone realized no one knew What's Next.
Chastized, they devoured - were devoured by - all the lost ad talent, marrying tech to strategy, marketing and communications who figured how to use it. Developing the hybrid monster we are all - advertising, tech, corporate and mongrel hydra - now worrying we may lose not to competition,
But to what must be a true New Ad World Order. One that hopefully doesn't forget all in commerce today is human.
And humans are a very frail thing.
My question to you?
Not What is this New World Order.
My question to you.
Why wait.
Why take your severance (if you were so lucky) and semi-security (if you are so high up), offering the same old thing to the same old people?
Why aren't you What's Next?
Why aren't you writing thinking concepting those Open Objective Kamikaze Creative Work Plans and instead of offering the same old services, with the same old systems of renumeration, offering clients - corporations, agencies, holding companies, sole proprietorships and individuals soon to be all five - partnerships of opportunity they really need.
Like What? you ask.
Not my job, I answer.
My job has always been to get you off your believe in what's been done before.
My job has always been to get you thinking like you've never thought before.
My job is to remind you I've given you the mad method and insights to solve creative problems unlike any you've solved before. In ways you've not conceived before.
You can wait it out, holding on to your paychecks until until until. You can call for contacts, references, post your new freelance availability and comb anemic job boards.
Or you can take a look - using the x-ray vision you developed after you left my flock - at all the things you know about companies and business and communication and motivation.
Then even more importantly, train those x-ray eyes on those who really run the world - The Prospect.
See it all through your eyes. Not the eyes whatever agency, whatever CEO, whatever CCO, ECD you last labored under. Maybe even worshiped.
Take what they gave you.
Add it to what has always been yours.
Look at the client companies.
Look at their untapped overshilled desensitized prospects.
Find that hitherto unseen longing, need, taste only you can see. Smell. Feel in your bones.
Gore Vidal once said "The unfed mind devours itself."
Feed your mind all the creativity knowledge intelligence insight and humanity The Universe gave you.
Be the Revolution. Build What's Next.
