My First Year in Advertising: Strategists’ Edition

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

Starting your career in advertising in the 2020s means befriending flickering social trends that change by the minute and operating among cultural conversations that feel more divided than ever. It’s a baptism by fire for the industry’s newest strategists. But this first-year cohort does also have an advantage. That is, real-time data at their fingertips and digital-native instincts that can help turn chaos into useable insights. 

To find out how they navigated such a whirlwind start, we spoke to four newcomers about their rookie year.

“What a year to join the advertising industry,” begins Aeron Latham, strategist at Highdive. “The beautiful part of entering the industry during this period of rapid change is the fact that everything is so malleable,” he tells me. “Younger target demographics have created a necessity for a young strategist’s point of view; new generations have their own socialisation habits, and who better to unpack the nuances of digital interaction than those of us who grew up on the internet?” Aeron believes that being a digital native is an asset that allows him to understand cultural intricacies first-hand. He’s found the industry is eager to leverage that: “Folks across the industry aren’t just open to fresh perspectives; they’re actively seeking them out,” he says, adding how gratifying it has been to see his “non-traditional learnings" drive real results on client work. 

Victor Peltier, junior strategist at BETC Paris, echoes that sense of diving headfirst into constant change. “Change is nothing new, but it has accelerated, driving rapid trend adoption and equally swift obsolescence,” he says. Victor feels the tension between information overload and the need for genuine connection, explaining that “on one hand, there’s a deep necessity for connection through shared cultural references…[but] on the other, an overflow of information pushes us to jump from one trend to the next.” Making sense of fast-moving fads without losing sight of meaningful human truths is something every strategist must become an expert in. 

For Naomi Low, junior strategist at MullenLowe Singapore, all of this was initially daunting. “Even swapping out my usual sneakers for a pair of sandals takes a lot of persuasion for me, so dividing into the ever-changing world of advertising came with lots of trepidation,” she says. But once immersed, connecting dots of culture became incredibly exciting. “As a budding strategist, my job is to make sense of the chaos and figure out how brands can grab a piece of the cultural spotlight,” she tells me. And with so much happening online, “it’s been genuinely fun!”

Adaptability became the name of the game this year for social media coordinator at Mythic, Gabriella Spina. “I’ve really leaned into being adaptable and learned to go with the flow, particularly because the social media landscape is always changing,” she explains. A headline-grabbing example was the potential TikTok ban – she found herself wondering what a post-TikTok world might look like for gen z trends. She even downloaded the new platform, Bluesky, out of curiosity. “I’ve just started scrolling on it to figure out what it looks like and what people are doing on there,” she says. 

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Being new to this industry today also means keeping a digital toolkit close at hand, and these strategists aren’t shy about using it. Victor tells me his approach to research goes far beyond the traditions of PowerPoints and focus groups. “This evolution demands the ability to analyse all available signals and look beyond traditional measurement tools,” he says about the wealth of insights in user-generated content. If you want to know what people think, “You can simply type ‘POV’ on TikTOk to uncover consumer insights, listen to podcasts to extract verbatim reactions, or explore Just Chatting on Twitch to spot emerging trends,” he explains. The voices are unfiltered, and it’s a scrappier, more real-time style of insight gathering that didn’t exist in the same way even a few years ago. 

Aeron feels that growing up in the era of Tumblr and Twitter gave him an instinctual grasp of internet culture. Those “passive moments” spent blogging and scrolling taught him, “intangible truths about human behaviour” that now inform how he thinks in his role. In so many ways, data and culture swim together for this generation of strategists. 

The day-to-day in Gabriella’s world involves continually sifting signals from noise. “We’re constantly analysing the data on how our posts are performing. This helps us understand what our audience is responding to and keeps us informed about how the content is being received,” she tells me. Her team zeroes in on the extremes – top-performing posts and underperformers – to learn what truly resonates.

Naomi adds that technology itself has become a collaborator in her workflow. “Throughout this journey, real-time data and AI have gone beyond being trendy buzzwords to become my partners in crime,” she says. Whether she's parsing through social listening data or using an AI tool to test ideas with for a creative brief, these resources “help me break down all the nuances, giving me the confidence to lean into my intuition.” 

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After a year on this rollercoaster, the strategists aren’t feeling cynical or burnt out, but optimistic and ready for what’s ahead. They’ve learned to be agile and curious, to trust data and their intuition, and to always anchor strategy in real human truths. “In the end, their is no ‘right or wrong' strategy. You just have to trust your gut, stay curious, and roll with it – and that’s where the magic happens,” says Naomi. 

We can all breathe easy as it seems advertising strategy is in good hands.