Pandemic resignation and reflections: 20,000 hours in advertising and moving on from #BuhayAhensya
It’s 11:50 PM, June 8, 2020, and a day after my birthday. I just sent my final email to the office mailing list and have completed my timesheet just before my Office365 email access gets revoked. Today’s empty office marked my last week in advertising before moving to an entirely new industry of corporate venture building. It’s been exactly three months since the pandemic quarantine started and I intentionally turned off real-time notifications of local cases at this point.
Honestly, this is not the last day I imagined and hoped for in an industry that I’ve learned to love in the last eight years. I had in mind the usual Friday night send-off drinks, officemates leaving their desk to greet the birthday celebrants of the month, bosses giving a short thank-you note and final cheers to those leaving, and then it will cut to a loud Friday Spotify party playlist stereo-blasting around our office “space” bar to drown out the quietness of goodbyes. What a bummer. But given the quiet lay-offs and salary deductions across the industry, that becomes the least of concerns and just an imagination.
My last day turned out as a quiet time in the office, morning drive-through, and a few emails to send to notify clients on transition. I had to order fast food good for two meals since the security policy in the building is too strict to go in and out. Last year, I actually wrote a retrospective about my 10-months-full-time-almost a-million-pesos-Dentsu-sponsored-Grad-School experience and if it was worth it. I’ll share more reflections and my experience of paying out my remaining PHP 100k+ bond in future posts. But as I sip through my last cup of office’s special-blend coffee, let me share my last day reflections in advertising and the 8 years that was.
1. 20,000 hours and still not an expert
In the book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” to acquire world-class expertise in any skill. In advertising, I’ve shipped 100+ digital branded assets, built a 4-ft lobby robot, contributed to a handful of award-winning campaigns, and recognized by Adobo’s annual creative rankings. Yet, I still don’t feel like an expert. I must be at 7,000 hours so far if 10,000 hours is the benchmark of mastery or expertise. So I tried to calculate the total hours and got surprised I’ve had already reached 20,000 hours with an average of 10 working hours per day since 2012. And while the “10,000 hours” myth has been debunked, an ever-evolving industry of creativity and technology further proves why you never feel like the expert in this industry. Everything keeps changing and rapidly evolving. Almost a decade after, a digital marketing certification and a Master’s degree, I feel that I’m just better informed, more curious, and more insightful. What’s more important? That we’re always learning.
Kapag nagbabago ang landscape, dapat nagbabago din ang mental models. Kung ang artificial intellgence technology may machine learning, dapat ikaw rin, maging learning machine.
2. It’s still an industry I don’t recommend my friends to go to.
Even before the pandemic layoffs and salary cuts, advertising has been an extremely competitive, cut-throat, and dragging industry. Except for a block mate I invited to be an agency tech project manager, I barely encourage anyone to jump into this industry. I guess it’s not for everyone. It might be because I’m originally trained in the IT industry, so not a lot of my peers go to advertising. People usually refer to Millennials in advertising as “BPO-like” because of the long work hours, stress, and overtime. Either you’re for it or not. And this seemed like a common theme during catch-up chat with my batch mates in advertising. While I’ve met some of the most talented, daring, and amazing people I know through this industry, it’s generally an industry I don’t recommend my friends to go to — unless they are cut for it, or this is the kind of pain they are willing to struggle for.
Us: Anong gagawin mo after resignation?
Them: MATUTULOG. (all caps para intense)
3. We need more practitioners inspiring the next generation
My program in Benilde only had one course in Marketing and another in aesthetic design. It’s funny every time I realize how drastic the jump from Information Systems Program designing enterprise systems towards digital marketing, advertising, and creativity as an industry. That’s why I’m always ecstatic and take more time to prepare whenever I get invited to a campus talk. I usually get random invitations about emerging technologies and innovation in marketing and technology, but in general, it’s an opportunity for practitioners to give back and share industry insights with the academe. I can’t imagine how you’d teach those in a curriculum yet, so sharing and inspiring might be the best way to do so for now. The next generation is anxious and pressured. Insights and tips to inspire and guide them could be a big help. Maybe we should write and share more often. Meanwhile, don’t forget to subscribe later on vlogs.techyjuan.ph :P
4. Creativity won’t be automated
Certain industries are more likely to be automated. The probabilities of automation are published on willrobotstakemyjob.com and advertising professionals run at 4% risk. Reflecting on automation, one of the more advanced automation projects I’ve been involved with — other than building our office four feet lobby robot Probbie — is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Planning and Implementation. The global client mandate was to use Salesforce to start and automate how the brand designs and sends 1:1 customer communications from email templates, programmatically creating content based on user interest inputs, scheduling social content, and optimally placing paid advertising spots for the best return on spend. At first, it felt like setting up another Mailchimp e-mail marketing platform or a website content management system with drag-and-drop customer journey asset flows you can edit without tagging a developer. But when you realize the whole suite and scale of Salesforce cloud solutions— from Marketing, CRM, Support, Sales, and Social - when maximized by multiple departments in one platform, it becomes powerful. The automation can easily replace repetitive processes that are suddenly doable in-house, much cheaper cost, and with better access to customer insights inside a client’s dashboard.
Will tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and AI tools replace agencies in a few years?
Maybe a portion of low to medium-value services. I’d rather be worried if agencies don’t offer higher-value services and value-based pricing leveraging these platforms and hinging from their unfair advantage of fresh and insightful ideas. Regardless, the last industry I’d fear to be automated the most is the Creative industry. The insightful imagination and brilliance in creativity won’t make sense— or will be the last— to be automated.
Oh, wait. Am I in media, advertising, digital, or creative agency? Most of the time, I don’t know.
What I do know is this might help make sense of things. Stan Shi, the founder of Acer Tech company and frequent guest lecturer at the Asian Institute of Management, is known for the SMILE CURVE. This oversimplifies and helps visualize how the perception of value can be reviewed and leveraged from concept, branding, design, and marketing. From the perception and change of value to our clients, how much of the work we do value-adding? And how much are you charging for it? It sounds simpler than it sounds but If I could get a redesign industry rate cards, i’ll make sure there’s a lot less on vague retainer scopes, bundled add-on-work-to-win-the-business services, and me mindful of how ever word and line item in a cost estimate impacts incremental manhours and overtime work for the team.
5. The acceleration and transformation with technology (digital) require a new set of business models.
Our college Information Systems program trained us to be ready to work for HP and Accenture, so my bias is towards the future accelerated with technology. I was wondering where there might be overlaps until I was mind-blown to see where the industry could go next when Accenture Interactive — the experience design unit of a global IT consulting and outsourcing powerhouse that you would never hear in a creative festival — acquired one of the most respected creative agencies globally, Droga5. Strange times.
Putting more light on the acquisition and the response of industry incumbents, there was an interesting chat between Accenture Interactive and WPP CEOs on why larger agencies take much longer to move. I enjoy these kinds of discussions since these answers my frustrations about why the industry takes time to catch up with technology infrastructure and workflows from leadership and management optics. One of the apparent answers is that most global agencies are publicly listed companies with critical stakeholders, and global revenues are tied up to traditional bonus/incentive models that existed before digital channels came in.
That’s why AdTech startups and only digital-native companies can move fast and agile enough to try new revenue models and seize growth opportunities. Publicly listed companies would rather acquire startup companies (or get acquired) as part of their growth strategy. Uneasy at it may sound, it might be faster and more practical from a management and CFO point of view to acqui-hire a new team than transform an existing efficient one. While there are promising attempts to challenge the status quo and case studies from future-friendly leaders, the behemoth reality is systemic changes like culture and mental models take years, radical leadership mindset change, and barely come from bottom up.
As a contrasting perspective, there was a great debate featuring WPP’s Sorell vs. Accenture Interactive’s Whipple on the future of creativity, communications, agency revenue models, and technology disruptions. I’ll link it below so you can bookmark and listen to it sometime.
Maybe it would work. Maybe it won’t? What’s certain is systemic changes take top to bottom leadership transformation and investments. It’s hard to be a prophet in your own land.
6. A hard-hit and bad year
After sending my thirty-day notice, I’ve reconnected with former office mates and agency batchmates. The sad and comforting theme in the industry is that “almost all agencies are quietly laying off and having a bad time” with this Black Swann situation. Agencies are trimming off teams based on revenue to operating cost productivity ratio. It’s hard to imagine that not too long after our company trip to Bangkok, Thailand, last year, we were just hoping if our 2020 free trip would be to Bali, Tokyo, or Taiwan.
This time, not only are company trips canceled, client advertising placements are on indefinite hold, and projected creative fees from media placements are uncertain. As if we shouldn’t be more anxious, the questionable shutdown of ABS-CBN gave a direct blow and trickle-down effect on the morale, creatives-media-production supply chain, and agencies' revenue. Two former officemates currently work in ABS-CBN; I can easily name ten friends who grew their careers in the media company and several more colleagues who rely heavily on the network's operations. The only label I can use is a Black Swann of an event, a metaphor which here means a catastrophic event that surprised everyone who has never thought such disasters would happen in our lifetime, all at the same time. Sometimes, when things don’t make sense, the only thing we can do is put a label on it so we can define them.
7. An ever-evolving industry, but some foundations don’t change.
The landscape keeps on evolving, but some fundamentals never change. The photo above was shared by one of my industry mentors, Loyd Trongco, in the Independent Creative & Advertising Professionals FB group. To my generation, it seems like a 90s photo before Photoshop or Figma existed. The rudimentary tasks of doing poster layers manually with scissors also show the craft and time of doing artwork by hand. What they treated as craft, we treat as vintage and way too slow today.
It’s one of the examples I could think of to show how advertising, creativity, or digital is one of the industries where you can’t find the latest handbook on doing things at any given time. By the time a book gets published, something new has already evolved. Accelerate it by faster design machines, real-time collaborative cloud-based tools, and fresh graduates becoming very comfortable with designing visuals on Google Slides or Keynote. It makes this industry exciting but also challenging.
Back in 2012, in my first agency Havas Media Contacts, our boss called us rebels. We were the digital resistance towards the traditional tri-media (TV-Radio-Print) agencies and traditional creativity agencies siloed from the media industry. We place ads for our clients on digital and can also create them. What made us different? We aggressively used early-for-its-time platforms such as Blogging, Facebook, Youtube Pre-rolls, Website Mastheads, and Yahoo Takeover banner ads to extend the brand's reach on digital.
Today, those are simply called marketing channels. Probably even “traditional channels” in a few years. Those things seem normal for teens and marketing students these days, but inside the conference room presentations of multi-nationals, it was a challenge getting brands to sign cost estimates and proposals that operationalized those platforms back then. When we started, the creative use of new content platforms and brilliant use of a rich media mobile banner ad were winning award shows. Mobile was a different vertical since Responsive-web-design, and Mobile-Web Bootstrap platforms were not yet local standards and mandatories by 2012–2013.
Fast-forward to 2020; I’m still trying to understand new tools, Tiktok, Kumu, and Live selling, and the underlying change in market psychographics and consumption. This just shows how fast this industry evolves. There will be new industry associations and platforms in a few years. What we call tools today, from Adobe Creative Cloud to Salesforce Automation Journeys, might also be considered as classics or vintage.
So, what then shouldn’t change? Advertising is about story telling. Advertising is about selling a brand’s promise by telling human stories that are worth your consumer’s time, attention, and share of wallet. Embrace changes but keep the right foundations in place.
*There’s a beautiful manifesto video about keeping advertising human by David Droga. I’ll embed it below if you’re interested. Worth the watch!
8. It’s a relationship-based business.
An agency batchmate randomly shared how an up-and-coming agency was so loud launching last year and then shut down dead in the water even before the pandemic. I initially wondered why.
On top of the management challenges of a startup taught in graduate school, my former Havas Boss Jos Ortega shared this in a client servicing workshop :
In advertising, we are in the business of relationships.
Relationship with our clients and our client’s customers.
Great and daring work help you win awards. But network and trust from brands and clients keep the business going. Yes, we are in the business of storytelling, story selling, and story scaling. Nonetheless, it’s still a business. A business that needs great work sealed by trust and handshake (prior to the pandemic) to help provide the finance purchase order number and guarantee cash flow to sign paycheques. While there are Chief Creative Officers and Executive Creative Directors, a General Manager and Group Directors help balance the client servicing and business part of creativity.
“It’s a world of hopes. And a world of fears. There’s so much that we share... It’s a small world after all. It’s a small, small world.” — Your kindergarten song after Do-Re-Mi
9. Awards validate our great work but shouldn’t be our be-all and end-all.
Back in my first employer Havas which was a startup agency, the concept of being the agency of the year or getting gold from XYZ award show was just an aspiration. Any shortlist or metal won by the agency becomes the red button to ring a physical bell from Jos’ room and kick off a big celebration, unli-steak, Andoks, drinks, and BBQ at the beautiful La Ledge veranda overlooking the skylines of Makati Avenue. After four years in Havas, I had to opportunity to work under Carlo Ople - I’ve attended and enjoyed his talks on blogging and personal branding — who was then building the digital team of one of the loudest and most recognized agencies in the Philippines Dm9 Jayme Syfu. From account management digital media, and digital marketing, I found myself walking in the museum-like hallway of awards inside a creative agency. Awards come in different forms, colors, names, and sizes.
“Is this what space looks like for being paid to be creative?,” I wondered.
In my first few months at the Dm9 Jayme Syfu group, I came just in time for an internal competition. The winning team of the challenge gets a chance to represent the agency in an all-expense-paid trip to the regional festival of creativity in Singapore — Spikes Asia. I’ve only heard about Cannes Lions (which Dm9 has a few in the lobby), but Spikes Asia sounded like the next big thing in Asia on our side. Asia’s Oscars Awards for Advertising rock stars.
Moving to a globally recognized Philippine agency DM9 Jayme Syfu which Dentsu eventually acquired, you realize how the industry orchestrates and revolves around awards festivals. From which awards festivals are due on certain months of the year, to how clients are excited to work with you because of the award-show-case-study they’ve seen or read, to the candidates who fight for a chance to be your officemates, to the ROI of awards fees, to understanding different entry categories, to how creating case study videos is a craft on its own.
One perspective is like money, awards in themselves are not intrinsically evil. Admittedly, If I weren’t leaving, I would have worked my way to the goal of helping win the country’s first Cannes Innovation Lions or Creative use of data Grand Prix metal. Or worked hard to qualify for the annual Change for Good Alexa competition and vlog the festival experience in Palais des Festivals, France. Awards also put a feature to great work that should be recognized, a spotlight on the Philippine flag and introverted but world-class Filipino thinkers like Biboy Royong, and provides equal opportunities to deserving up-and-coming agencies. It’s just one of the systemic parts of the culture that powers this industry. Another perspective is an open secret that awards help feed the ego-centric nature of the industry, and it’s one way to validate and put a stamp of excellence on our work. At Dentsu, after celebrating a win, the metal gets displayed, and everyone moves back to their deadlines and inspires the group to find ways to bring out the next great work.
I guess the point is it’s just an embedded and embraced part of the industry. And while awards, the work it requires, and their present value are a constant debate that needs a drink, the perspective I agree with the most now is the eConsultancy article that rationalizes that awards now seem to be more for clients and employer-branding more than anything else.
Once Millennials and Gen Zs become 90% of the workforce and industry leaders, I wonder what the industry culture — from Friday parties, work hours, slide templates, annual conferences, UGL parties, and awards festivals — will be like?
10. When you make it, break the toxic and systemic cycles
The first time I cried because of work was when we had to rush a telco campaign website for four days (usually two to three weeks ,including testing) in my first agency. As a young professionals with energy and gusto, we volunteered to camp in the office with developers. After delivering the deadline just in time for the Friday midnight deadline, I went home exhausted by Saturday 11 Am, faded taxi receipt in my pocket that I barely had time to reimburse, and crash-landed in bed, not wanting to be disturbed. By four in the afternoon, I woke up from several missed calls from our client servicing director that a client was asking for an SMS OTP verification feature ASAP, and it was crucial. To the point that “heads have to roll” if it was not implemented and was a committed feature that we didn’t hear about until that call. We didn’t even hear a “Thank you” and get the proper recovery. Meanwhile, my youngest sister called me a “talk shit” because we were supposed to go somewhere over the weekend, but I had to finish a work project for our agency’s biggest digital and recently won client that ‘we needed to please.’ Tired and powerless, I burst into tears.
Since then, I volunteered to be involved early in proper timings and costings of projects to ensure that never happens again. More than managing workload after the fact, I paid more attention to detail of the scope and cost proposals with clear timing implications and limitations before a project officially gets signed. Eventually, the DigitX team became our business unit sending our cost estimates and value-based pricing direct to clients. Our team and billings grew consistently. I realized that by becoming a profit center unit instead of a cost center, that’s the only way we could have control of our scope, deadline, and the consultants we hire to augment the work we do when needed. And more importantly, say no to some projects or redirect lower-value tasks to a more efficient route. I made sure that was the last time I had to stay overnight in the office and work until the point of exhaustion and that no one in my team would have to experience those frustrations. To break the toxic cycles.
I made sure that was the last time I had to stay overnight in the office and work until the point of exhaustion and that no one in my team would have to experience those frustrations. To break the toxic cycles.
I don’t take it against my agencies and bosses now, but I realized it’s a systemic cycle in the industry. Despite those nightmares, Advertising-digital-creative is an industry I’ve learned to love. It’s not for everyone, but it teaches you a lot. The friends to keep, the work that matters, the bosses who fight for you, the kind of work you don’t want, the kind of boss you don’t want to be, how to sell an idea, and the culture of a company should be.
It’s an industry that leaves you either getting well-paid, well-rounded, well-recognized, or burnt-out. But when you end up staying or going back in advertising with a management or leadership role, it’s our collective responsibility to break the toxic cycles. Some voices and systemic changes require a signature and seat on the table to be operationalized. Maybe you have that opportunity. To start breaking the toxic cycle of work-till-you’re-exhausted, deliver-at-all-cost-or-we-lose-business, awards-at-all-cost, hustle-hard-at-the-expense-of-your-health, and timesheet-as-measure-of-productivity.
I know there are a lot of things I’ve yet to learn on management and leadership that graduate school frameworks and limited years in the industry can’t explain. But there are also things I want to be sure to be fundamentally different onwards. Things I can improve today. At my new role overseeing a 13-member customer experience design team at a corporate venture builder, this book authored by the founder of project management tool Basecamp has been one of my jump-off points and guiding manifestoes:
“The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.” -Jason Fried
Bonus: # 11: Make people care again.
One of the superpowers in advertising is the effortless craft of telling a compelling story and moving people to connect, like, share, and respond. May we use that skill to make people care again, especially during times like these.
Wohooo. Finally!
Those are some top-line reflections as I pack up my boxes and go.
I have more thoughts about the amazing work we’ve built at DigitX team, the role of Ad people in the creative economy, and some reflections on business design as an industry.
Today, I’m deeply grateful to my bosses and bosses — Merlee, Alex, Bonat, Jr, Carlo, and Donald — and the DigitX team at Dentsu for taking the risk, supporting my curiosity for learning through graduate school, and providing a beautiful space to play and grow.
Timesheet finally done and logging off,
Dom De Leon, 8 years in advertising. An alumnus of Havas, DDB DM9, and Dentsu. Master of Science in Innovation and Business.
Moving to a new industry and always learning.
Hey! I would deeply appreciate it if you made up to this point. Let me know if you learned something new or have pandemic reflections you want to share. Please keep safe during this pandemic, and see you around!
P.S. Here’s Making Advertising Human reminder from David Droga on the beauty of this industry as a takeaway note:
Or Accenture Interactive-WPP debate on the present future of advertising. Worth the listen if you’re in advertising:
Keep safe!
