The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Obviously I’m not going to give details about who they are or where they work, but what I can tell you is their stress wasn’t because of workload, but because they were working with a client who could not clearly define the business problem they needed addressing, and then was blaming them for not giving them a solution they felt was appropriate.

In many ways, this is one of the most frustrating challenges in advertising today.

Where someone uses rounds and rounds of creative work to try and work out what’s the problem they need/want to solve.

Now there’s many reasons for this …

One is that too many companies have completely undermined, destroyed and devalued the role of marketing within their organizations – resulting in a lack of training, a lack of standards, a lack of C-Suite credibility and an unspoken rule that you are only empowered to say no to proposals and opportunities.

But frankly, the blame for this scenario is shared.

Because too many agencies have also completely undermined, destroyed and devalued the role of creativity within their organizations – resulting in a lack of training, a lack of standards, a lack of backbone and an unspoken rule that yo are only empowered to say ‘yes’ to a lack of clarity on problems and challenges.

What a shitshow.

Worse, what a waste of time.

So what ends up happening is both sides throw shade and blame at each other without realizing their own complicity in what’s going on, which results in ..

+ Everything taking 10 times longer than it needs to.
+ Everything getting more complex, confusing and opaque.
+ Everything being designed for – and decided by – committees.
+ Everything requiring more presentations and rounds of work.
+ Everything getting shaped by internal politics/managing up.
+ Everything being chipped away and diluted to beige.

Now of course, not every company, agency or brief is like this.

But a lot are – increasingly so – which is why it’s not exactly surprising the planner who reached out was feeling so burned out. And I’ve not even mentioned the role of procurement, the toxicity of the ‘sprint‘ or the outsourcing to AI to make things feel even worse.

And while this situation is no good for anyone – literally no one – what really bothered me was the fact this planner felt completely isolated by his boss, the team he worked into and the client he was working for.

Everyone appreciated the issue, but no one wanted to address it.

And there lies the fundamental issue that is killing the industry.

Because as I’ve said many times, the only way you get to make great things is if 3 things are present.

1. Clarity on what problem you are solving.
2. Shared responsibility in how that can be achieved.
3. Trust each other and be transparent with each other.

All three are needed all of the time.

And while that might seem like fantasy, I can tell you, it can – and does – happen, even though I appreciate it is seemingly becoming rarer and rarer.

But it can change, though it needs everyone to take responsibility for it – specifically senior people – because without that, the ‘stress reduction’ system shown at the top of this page will become the next global marketing tool found in every marketing department and ad agency around the World.