Over the last 6 months or so we’ve often been told the industry is changing. 

But what does this mean? The decline of print ads into some niche advertising medium, reserved only for products nobody has ever heard of or can afford? It reminds me of newspapers, I love them. I’m simultaneously annoyed and aware of why people stopped reading them. Ease. Everything is always getting easier. But wasn’t there some feeling of you ‘earn’ whatever you were about to read / watch, even it was turning a real paper page, or looking up from your phone? 

What happens now? The shrinking of posters into an Instagram post? If the movement is from paper to digital billboards why would people even look up from their phones, surely we just put the content on their phone. 

The medium is changing, from the real world to phones and into broader digital spaces, a mass digital migration. 

But if this is the case shouldn’t the employment structure / hiring practices change?

Does the structure of art director/copywriter still have as much use today? Is everything just a mishmash of hybrid ? Probably the latter imo. 

After all, advertising on social media is content; an eyeball game. Advertisers on social media should pay more attention to the quality of content creators used, as annoying as it is – an advert on social media is inherently a dopamine hit ad, not a ‘ahh I get it’ ad. The constant want of a viral craze by ad firms for their client is understandable, but the original creator was doing nothing else than pure creativity when they created that content; and sure later on it was monetised etc, but the basic premise – like ocean spray skating man was to make something funny.  

My point about all this rambling is that the type of “creativity” is shifting. It’s not a case of people don’t care anymore, but what works on these platforms – but if the industry is going to lean into it. Why not fully lean into it? I think there can and has to be strategically focused ads on socials, but these are not necessarily the same things as viral hit phenomena. 

Everyone over the age of 25 ( let’s be honest ) is not really in touch with trends as much as we’d like to be, or even upcoming platforms until they’re already big. I’m surprised that anyone hasn’t created a social first agency where the creative age is like 18-23 or something, this I bet would be funny for the creatives. 

This whole thing came from a conversation I had with a guy in Berlin a few days ago. I went for a few days over Easter and was talking to a woman in a cafe, she turned out to be a freelance art director. She was going on about the lack of agencies in Berlin. Obviously, the exception is Mother. The city was brimming with creativity in every sense, and I couldn’t think why nobody was there. The only thing I could think is it was the wrong type of creativity, the old kind. 

@sugarmiwk