The Industry has Long Covid

Next March will mark five years since our industry jumped on a roller coaster that hasn’t stopped. 

I mean, our industry is constantly in some kind of state of flux. Freaking itself out about whatever the latest trend is, whoever the hottest shop is, whatever the next pitch is. But actually, we’re not an industry that has evolved a great deal in a very long time. 

Until March 2020. 

Of course, the onset of Covid changed everyone and everything, but I only see the world through the lens of the advertising industry, so I am only really concerned with how it impacted us. 

To talk about our current circumstances, it feels helpful to do a quick recap on the chaos (as most of us that were home schooling have quite frankly put it out of our memories). 

March 2020: Go home and lay off a massive chunk of your staff. Probably the older folks. They’re expensive. Panic. 

June 2020: Stay home, but hire a shit ton of people to do the work. It didn’t go anywhere! We’re really busy. We’re just doing it over Zoom now. So, hire young people, they’re good at the Internet apparently. 

Insert somewhere in here the Great Resignation. Quiet Quitting. Zoom Fatigue. A lot of feelings. 

September 2020 to September 2022: Oh man, we don’t have enough young people for all of these jobs and our borders are all closed. We better pay these mid weights whatever they are asking for and let them set all the rules so that we win, because Kids. The Internet. Chaos. Panic. 

October 2022: We hired too many people! 

Massive tech layoffs globally start to shift that power balance back to the employers. Layoffs ensue across the industry for the next two years. But no one say the R(ecession) word. Let’s all make sure we feel alone in this madness. 

September 2023: Stuff feels hard. The Seniors really feel more like Mids. The Directors are having to really come down into the work. The Exec are spending a huge amount of their time in everyone’s feelings. 

The clients are demanding more ‘grown ups’ in the room. 

Oh shit. AI!!!!!

August 2024: Oh hi, welcome to the Industry’s Long Covid. 

By Long Covid, I mean, we kind of have the same symptoms as when you have not fully recovered from being unwell. 

We’re a bit tired. We’re not firing on all cylinders. Something is still aching, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. Our immune systems are just a bit fragile. A little cough could make us all really sick again.

But we haven’t had time to properly rest, reset, recharge. 

We’ve just powered through. It’s what we do! 

So, let’s look at some of those pain points. 

Our Seniors that are Mids. 

If we overpaid and overpromoted that mid-level a few years ago, we now probably have an agency full of ‘seniors’ that are not quite where we expect them to be. 

We not only pushed them up faster than we should have, but they also have spent, on average, 2/5ths of the time ‘in the room’ that all the generations before had. 

So they are genuinely behind on their hard and soft skills. We can’t put that genie back in the bottle, but we do need to catch them up. Training has never been our industries strong suit, but this generation needs it more than any generation before them. Identify the deficits. Invest in them. Give them the chance to catch up to where you expect them to be. 

But also give them the memo that they rode a wave that has crashed, and they need to do the work too. 

Directors are tired. 

Every level in the industry feels like they have gone down a seat on the Bench. 

ECDs feel more like CDs. CDs feel more like seniors. seniors like mids etc etc. 

Across every discipline. 

We eliminated a lot of grown-ups from the room in 2020 and that has had a major impact on pushing the work downstream. Everyone needs to be pushed back up to their paygrade. 

Being conscious of the way the director level is being utilised is key and while the level below needs training, this level needs empathy. They are not only carrying workload, but also work ethic. 

So many feelings. We let the feelings into the building during all of this chaos. We had to. It was a lot. 

But now, the amount of time being spent in this part of the business feels disproportionate to the amount of time spent ‘working’. 

Invest in people management. Someone or someone’s that take this load off the rest of the team. Not to ignore the feelings, but to compartmentalise them. To set boundaries. An unfair amount of this burden falls to female leadership organically and I cannot tell you how close so many of them are to leaving the industry because of it. Do this one for the future of female leadership!

I don’t share any of this to make anyone feel bad about the inevitable choices everyone made or the state of the industry in general. I love this industry and for as self-loathing and fatalist as we can all be, we’re a hardworking, resilient bunch and we generally see our way through to the other side of any good challenge. 

I share this because I spend my days talking to individuals that all appear to feel very alone in these challenges. 

Whether they are a senior wondering why they are not being praised.

Or a director that is fighting feeling fatigue. 

Or an exec trying to figure out how to re-structure a department or a whole agency that isn’t firing. 

Or a grown up out of work. 

Or an entry level wondering why the industry isn’t hiring. 

I share this so we all feel like we’re on the same team. Just trying to push our industry through what has been an unprecedented time of upheaval. 

You’re all excellent. And tired. Keep making great stuff. And get some rest.