Many young creatives are like ‘untrained children’ without any pride in their work

Creatives no longer have pride because they are never allowed to do great work.

They aren’t allowed to do great work because lots of clients have started treating agencies like suppliers.

Agencies are treated like suppliers because clients have stopped listening to advertising “professionals”.

Clients have stopped listening to advertising professionals because most ad professionals are shit at their job.

Most ad professionals are shit at their job because they have nothing to be proud about.

So it’s like the chicken and egg case. Who came first?

That’s no excuse for not having pride. Pride should form the bedrock of everything you do.

nothing disgusts me more than the whining of some jaded a-hole who thinks they’ve seen it all and are 100% right in their opinion.

when a client rejects what you do, you don’t sit back defeated and say
ok let’s give them what they want.

you go back with something better…the idea is always to give the client something you BOTH can be proud of. It isn’t possible all the time but the day you stop trying is the day you are useless to this profession.

Do us all a favour and get the hell out of this trade before you bring any more disrepute to it.

Really? Have you worked with government clients? Do work BOTH of you are proud of? Try doing that and you will be branded “difficult” or better yet- replaced. Clients these days all think they’re closer creative directors with no taste. They would like to think they’re hiring an ad agency but in reality they’re just hiring a bunch of Yes-men, which is exactly what they want.

The lack of professional pride you speak of isn’t just found among the juniors.
Many in management are skills-short yet cocky about their short comings.
Why take pride in the job when everyone else is gonna take credit for a job done well?
When it all goes arse up, blame the client, the budget, the brief, the timeline, the research…… anything but yourself.

the same phenomena exists in the click bait metrics driven buzzfeedy journalism world, especially since the main broadsheets started to gut the sub-editor department. sad!

But Buzzfeed has some proper brilliant writers: read the From Russia With Blood article, really well done bit of investigative journalism.

Agencies and brands are hiring young people and demanding hybrid skills – copy and art / social media marketing, photography and copy, etc. If you’re not going to allow people to specialise AND/OR invest in training them, how do you expect pride when they know they are just grunts doing the jobs of 2 people?

Quarterly financial targets and networks that reward spread sheet efficiency have bred
yes-men that only care about money.

Which is a great party until everyone realizes that everything every agency offers is the same, except theres a different network logo above the door.

I have yet to meet an agency leader in Asia, that will get into a heated debate about the work and confidently lead a meeting into a tense but possibly rewarding place. No agency is practicing what it preaches, and young people can see through it.

Many shops are glorified present-three-route call centers, with no original strategic or creative thought leadership.

So generic agencies with see-through pinball machines, get the staff and clients they deserve in every department and category.

all these digital creatives of today know f’all about persuasion.

what they do know (and not that well) is face books posting grid, no. of characters, word count limits and of course the various formats Facebook offers. No idea about how to have an idea.

and even if they do, there is no creativity required when doing a social post….the copy goes in the same place as does the headline, visual and CTA. Not like in the days of gordon smith.

Any of the great creatives listed wouldn’t be today by having Trott’s definition of pride.

Those creatives had pride as a team but it’s interesting how Trott can’t remember them enough to write an article about them.

have to say, I have never understood why the ad industry elevates copy and creatives to such a high status. Especially when I consider the ‘creative’ output. Most the copywriters I have interacted with can barely write beyond a few ‘lines’.

I tend to think that rather than looking at this from a negative viewpoint as this article does, we can be positive and say that copywriters and art directors have now found their natural position in the wider context (that is, outside of the agency bubble).

The advertising industry is made by good creatives. Art directors, copywriters and creative directors created magic, which account men sold with pride. Those days seem to have faded away. Social media strategy exec cum copywriter, writer cum designer etc have come in with no respect for craft. That said, without the creative there is no advertising industry. It will relegate to the standard of some obscure PR firm or activations agency that is seldom celebrated for good work.

David Trott’s frustration probably isn’t doing his generation much good in the eyes of the younger generation but he has some valid points. There is an efficiency an experienced talent can bring, and to know what will be effective. At the same time the creative roles are changing and the skills needed different depending on the work needed. There is a place for both. In this example the agency is stuck on the creative duo model but clearly that’s an extravagance at the expense of double-dipping time sheets. Two ineffective and uncertain creatives who rely on additional departments to rack up time sheet charges is exactly my point about the agency model being broken at the expense of brands. That agency will dish up the timesheets to clients to validate the way they work and the charges to the client but it is just inefficiencies. Having coached creative businesses in the past it is clear that no one is really that close to this process with an understanding or desire to change it -with an attitude ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ and assuming that’s the only way. The speed of workflow means it is a train too hard to change course too. Time for an alternative.

I don’t see how two minds are better than one. In any team situation it’s only one person who cracks the idea….the question is who. In my experience, it has always been the art guy.

What I like to do is operate alone and crack the broad idea even if the words are rough….that’s what we have young cheap copywriters for….to massage and craft and rework till mutual satisfaction is reached. All I need to do is go online and find a nice execution and basically leave it to the copy guy to make it work. That way there are no double hits on the timesheet.

We work in an industry where clients, write, art direct, design shoot, retouch and edit their own content/creative work. After compromising advertising agencies to such a state where account people now think they are creative directors they now can deliver the same low quality work they used to buy at 15X the price inhouse. They did this while the agency creative department was making scam ads and buying trophies with revenue that should have went for staff bonus cheaques or training. The Singapore clients eventually took it all home with them. Now we have a bunch of children as ECDs and overpaid account management sorts making creative decisions. No, we don’t need very much from out new hires in this business.

While I understand the point of your article, I wonder if you wrote this just to get people riled up. If your new hires lack direction and pride, mentor them. It is irresponsible to diagnose new hires in this way and then just walk off. You might as well say “These whippersnappers don’t know what they are doing! Bring back the good old days.” One of the great things about these “youngsters” is that most are open and looking for help, even if they don’t show it at a first meeting. Your post seems small minded and selfish. If you see something you could do to help make a situation better, and you walk away, you are the problem.