Do All Strategists Feel Like They're In a Pressure Cooker, Or Am "I Just a Big Dumb Dumb"?

Like all good villain origin stories, mine begins with a psychic.

I was 20 and clueless, seeking reassurance and purpose in my otherwise directionless existence. While my primary objective was to get a lens on whether I’d marry the dude in my year who resembled my childhood crush (Magnum PI), psychic Rose continued to palm me off, insistent on one thing; I was destined to work in creative industries. Deep in the trenches of an environmental science degree, this was a troubling prediction that made me write off the whole exercise as BS and a waste of 90 bucks (in those days, a pack of darts and several weeks worth of supermarket wine).

Without boring you with the details, I’m currently eating a generous serving of humble pie from my desk at Leo’s HQ in Sydney, thinking the old crow would be laughing now.

Advertising is weird like that; there’s a pathway to land here, but just as many fall into it.   

To survive in this pressure cooker means to navigate a minefield of jargon, conflict, and nauseating LinkedIn discourse. Making sense of it is an ongoing and relentless pursuit, so I called on an expert to air my grievances and understand if everyone feels this way at some point or if I was just a big dumb dumb.

Eaon Pritchard is an acknowledged strategy leader with deep experience in creative, digital, and media agencies in the UK, US, and Australia. I have been a fan of his since reading his book ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’. He is funny and patient too, happy to indulge me despite my rough and erratic interview style. 

We talk about the science, and the books, the problem with common practice and what this new generation of creative professionals should aspire to.

The democratisation of behavioural science was a pivotal moment for the industry. 

What was once the exclusive domain of academics was now available to the everyman in agencies, arming them with a level of insight into the mechanics of advertising that was not widely acknowledged.

After working for over a decade, Eaon became acquainted with behavioural economics as a result of Dan Ariely’s book ‘Predictably Rational’. Overnight it changed his outlook on a profession he thought he understood.

"I’d been in the industry for a while, doing stuff, but I realised I was just blundering about, taking received wisdom and assuming that’s how things were done. I used all the language and terms that advertising people use, but it wasn’t until I read that work that I became truly interested in the psychology behind it all."

Copying is a normal and universal behaviour, especially in a professional setting.

But the best piece of advice I ever received was to stop trying to fit in with the lunatics I worked with by adopting their five syllable vernacular and instead direct my energy on understanding what made advertising great, and most importantly, effective.

When it comes to unpacking the science, Eaon recommends finding context to apply it to that interests you, for him, it was music. 

 

"I used to sit there and read about double jeopardy effects and look at big Excel sheets of toothpaste brands etc, and I was like, I kind of know what this means, but it just wasn’t really interesting. And then I saw some data from the UK album charts from the 1960s. In the entire 1960s, nine out of those 10 years, there was only three artists that had #1 albums. That was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. That’s the double jeopardy effect right there. Bigger brands or bigger bands have more buyers overall, who tend to buy them more often."

He urges those new to the profession to look for the patterns.

"Go and see what's going on. Whatever you're into—cinema, sneakers, music—look at buying behavior in those categories. Because whatever's going on there, the principles will be the same in washing powder, baked beans, or luxury cars. It's all humans buying stuff."

With the decline of creative effectiveness that has only recently just started to make a recovery, Eaon emphasises the importance of staying engaged and curious.

"What I would hope is that the current generation, people a few years into their career, with all the access to information they have now, would have an appetite to improve what we do. And use the fact that there's so much more available now.”

This isn’t a 9-to-5 job; it invades your space and chews up your mental real estate.

But if you’re a sucker for punishment with an appetite for problem solving, this industry might be a mountain worth climbing. Finding a mantra to ground you in the chaos helps too, In my case, it’s a stolen line from beloved Kiwi poet Sam Hunt “Tell the story, tell it true, charm it crazy”.