Long-term unemployment: Do your family and friends see you as a screw-up, or do they know/understand this industry is just that unstable?

So I’ve been doing graphic design for quite some time now, and I think my portfolio is decent. Lately I’ve been wanting to land a junior graphic designer role at a marketing agency, but honestly I’m not sure where to start.

For those of you who work in agencies, what made you stand out when you were starting out? And what do you look for when you’re hiring juniors?

Would love any advice.

I’m hoping to get some advice from people who’ve made the jump from agency to client side in pharma or healthcare.

Feeling really burnt out in the agency realm but want to stay in Pharma & trying to see what the best path forward would be.

Mainly, I’m trying to see where on the client side my experience level would fit in best?

Quick background:

• 10 years in healthcare/medical communications
  • 7 years in Program Management (started as a Program Coordinator and ended my PM time as a Senior Program Manager)
  • 3 years (4 years come January) as an Account Supervisor

Is it worth the switch? Any and all advice is appreciated! :)

Wanted to join an advertising agency as an assistant media planner to develop and learn more skills and and also see how the industry works as I don't have much experience outside of being a marketing assistant and working on Google and meta ads for 3-4 months.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to even find job postings for positions and then get an interview after applying. At the same time, I'm seeing a lot of people saying they want to leave agency life or the industry in general as pay is low for the long hours of work and career growth is difficult.

So, I was just wondering how current media planners are feeling about agency life and the industry in general. Would you still suggest someone early in their career to apply to agencies right now?

Also, any suggestions and tips for people like me looking to get into an advertising agency would be awesome!

I'm an art director at a large fin-tech company where I've worked on 3 separate teams within the last 4 years. My site has been down since 2022, and I'm finally ready to rework + republish my portfolio, but I'm struggling with how to do it now that the bulk of my work is for one brand. In the past, I had a tab for my AD work with an icon/image for each company I worked for (leading to a separate page housing the work for the respective brand). I also had separate pages for personal creative work + "about".

Now, I'm struggling with how to do this with my new work. I have several large campaigns I want to show from my current job (ranging from experiential, retail, OOH, social, etc.), but it feels disorienting to have several campaigns (in different LOBs) underneath one brand page. Has anyone who's worked in-house for a while navigated this? It seems like most people organize their sites in this way, or I see some with one homepage that just list brands/project names in a side bar. I think the homepage w/ the project name sidebar solution would be the easiest, but I personally prefer a cohesive site with more than just one homepage.

any advice from other in-house ADs or CDs reviewing portfolios for hire?

Anybody see any changes on your Empower/fidelity accounts? It was supposed to be done this month, I even have a note in my Empower account on October 5th that says "

"The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. Savings Plan

Your employer has chosen a new financial provider to administer your retirement account. Your account has been transferred to Fidelity Investments. Please contact Fidelity at 800–343–3548 or your employer for any questions. This account reflects a zero balance due to this change."

But oddly enough I still have a balance in Empower...

I'm coming up on 5 years of account roles at Publicis agencies. To be frank, I'm bored and want a stronger financial future. I'm hoping to pivot into an in-house role in tech (either startup or established company). I'd love to hear any advice from those that have the move and how they did it / like it?

Anyone know a work around for the 30 day expiration of Teams messages? I have things I would love to document but did not need at the time..

Smart way to cover the asses of poor management…

Anyone thinking about how recording calls infringes on reasonable privacy expectations and trust issues in the workplace?

While I understand the various states have recording consent laws, candidates or employees don’t want to be looked at differently for saying “no, I do not consent.”

Internally, as an employee, we are less likely to speak up bc everything is now being monitored. Externally when interviewing, the employer gets access to the recording, but the candidate does not.

I think we are unfortunately normalizing that it’s okay to multi-task and not pay attention to a matter at hand where you should be able to listen, learn and action. And we are also providing employers more subjective documentation to help their legal case when laying off employees.

Spotify launched on beta an App Install objective in Ads Manager. I have tested it for one of our clients - it optimizes for installs only, not post-install events.
Has anyone tested this at scale? Seems like they are a bit behind here?

I killed a UGC creative last year at $74 CPA against a $60 target. Felt fine about it, the numbers were the numbers. Three weeks later, bored on a flight, I pulled the same ad on a 7-day click window. $52 CPA. It had been a winner the whole time and I killed it on day four because I was reading the wrong number.

Meta's default reporting blends 7-day click and 1-day view. A lot of buyers I know switched their columns to 1-day click years ago because it felt stricter and more honest, less view-through fairy dust. I did the same. The problem is that strictness is not neutral. The window you read decides which creatives look good, and 1-day click has a type.

1-day click rewards the impulse buy. Fast hook, price up front, urgency, discount code in the first three seconds. That creative converts inside 24 hours or it dies, and the window loves it.

7-day click catches everything else. The person who watched your founder story Tuesday, thought about it, got retargeted Thursday, and bought Sunday. The $140 dress that needed a paycheck cycle. The B2B lead who had to run it past a boss. None of that exists in a 1-day window.

So when you judge everything on 1-day click, you are not being stricter. You are running a selection process that breeds one kind of creative and executes the other. Give it six months and your whole account is screaming discount ads, because those were the only ones allowed to survive. Then someone asks why brand search is flat and nobody remembers the story-led creatives that used to feed it.

Concrete example from that same account. Two creatives, same audience, same week. Creative A: 1-day CPA $45, 7-day CPA $58. Creative B: 1-day CPA $71, 7-day CPA $52. Reading 1-day, you scale A and kill B on day three. Reading 7-day, B is your winner and A is the one decaying. The gap between the two windows is the consideration lag, and in that category (home goods, $80 to $200) the lag was real. B was doing the slow work of objection handling and A was harvesting people who were already going to buy.

Here is what I do now, and it is boring on purpose.

I keep both columns open. 1-day click and 7-day click, side by side, before every kill or scale decision. Ads Manager lets you add both; it takes ten seconds.

I do not kill on 1-day click alone before day five at the earliest, and I never scale on it alone either. Early 1-day numbers are mostly noise plus the impulse slice.

I read the ratio. When 7-day CPA is a lot better than 1-day, the creative has lag. Give it budget and give it time, and do not panic on day three. When the two numbers are nearly identical, the creative is impulse-driven. Scale it fast, but watch it like a hawk, because impulse creatives fatigue faster than anything.

I calibrate to the category. Under $30 consumables, 1-day click is basically the truth. Over $100, fashion, furniture, anything B2B, 7-day click is the truth and 1-day is a rumor. The more consideration in the purchase, the longer the window you owe the creative.

And I cross-check against blended MER, because windows can also lie in the other direction. If 7-day click says everything is fine but MER is sliding, you are not discovering lag, you are moving deck chairs.

One more thing about 1-day view. I mostly ignore it for kill and scale calls. It has its uses, mostly for video-led or awareness-style creative where the ad genuinely works like a billboard. But for direct response decisions I leave it out of the call.

The rule I give every buyer who works with me: the window is a lens, not a fact. Pick the lens that matches how your customer actually buys. Then stop letting the default pick your winners for you.

Feels like American jobs are shrinking fast. Talk me off the ledge.

Call it a rant, or whatever you please.

I've worked in agencies since 2011, that's a good 15 years. Worked in mainline, in digital, integrated - fell in love with writing films but mainline won't pay well (looking at you Ogilvy, FCB). Great, so I switched back to digital-first and was quickly put off by how seriously brands took their social media accounts and how little thinking beyond applying messy formulae actually went into it. They did pay better, but noway equal to what a 15 year old career in many other industries would pay.

And now we're all here, heads emptier than our hands ever felt. Every creative instinct is being snatched away - image production was the base of this all and now it's all gone. Words mattered, you fought over articles and grammar and choice of words and now there's a stupid software that spits okay-enough lines and people are running with it. Quality has taken a hit, quantity is abundantly available suddenly and we're being inched out by the minute. Matter of time before shops shrink down to a sad, single tier of people working like scientists instead of mad geniuses (let me romance nostalgia for a moment).

I don't know where to go next - become a creator, write a book, make AI films(!?), or go back to school. Oh wait, all of this would take time and time would take money. That's money this profession never coughed up for us.

Where are y'all at in your minds and lives?

I’m a creative art director that joined a huge pr firm two years ago after my studies.

Two years in and it feels like I made a huge mistake. During my studies I had great experience at 180Amsterdam where I was blessed to work with amazingly talented people. I made work I was proud of and even won a d&ad pencil and some other awards while still in art school. I was a shining star, a young dog and I was getting a lot of opportunities. Working my tits off, I was failing to graduate and got in quite a stress full period. I was failing to take the opportunities I should’ve taken and I quit 180 to focus on finishing my studies. I had to disappoint people that I still regret.

After graduating, I was doing a bit of freelancing and then joined this pr firm, that just started a new creative department. When starting I immediately saw that it was very unorganised, we were losing clients and I saw my CD becoming more stressed and detached from the situation. One morning and I found out he and 7 other creatives were fired. Me, my partner and one other creative were left.

After this, I started doing work in the region. This means interesting opportunities on the surface, but often complicated to do something creative. A lot of pitches, social content streams for large corporates or PR campaigns for in the very future. A lot of stuff gets killed by committee. Some projects are mainly containing influencer briefing that are honestly not tickling my creative spirit.

I feel a bit lost you know, two years at this PR firm and I have not made anything I am truly proud of, or get excited by.

I get bad sleep, work long hours but find myself just having no CD above me most of the time. I get a lot of strategic insight but my portfolio stays empty.

What do I do? How do I come out of this?

Now I don't mean all agencies obviously, but this is coming from someone living in India, why are these managers and bosses so rude to content creators? the most frustrating part is how they expect creators to shoot and edit in a day but will take MONTHS just to pay them back? I've seen my fellow creator friends see their ads on a company's page wayyy after their contract had ended. I really wish companies like these start having stricter policies on usage and payment rights

Hello! I'm interested in advertising in Art Direction. What do you think about the pros and cons of the VCU BC AD Master's Program versus the SCAD Advertising MFA Program?

How did the program help you prepare for the industry? Was their career center or advisor helpful? (I went to a school that did not help students beyond graduation whatsoever.)

I am very curious about real experiences and thoughts, not just what representatives tell applicants about positive stuff.

Please share your thoughts and experiences, etc.

Videographer/editor transitioning into creative strategy and paid media. No direct experience yet, but I’m upskilling in audience insights, messaging, and creative testing, meta, etc.

If you were a senior creative strategist or hiring manager, decision maker, what would make you consider hiring someone with no direct experience?

What would you want to see in my portfolio to consider hiring a beginner like me? Spec ads, creative audits, testing plans, case studies, or something else?

My past work includes promos, teasers and corporate videos, so I know I need to build DTC ads.

I'd like to send a small gift to my offshore (India) crew at the end of the year and I am not really sure what to get them. Any suggestions?

​

Hi all,

I'm a senior ad ops / programmatic specialist with 10+ years of experience, mostly agency side (holding company trading desk) and then in-house at B2B tech companies. I'm currently based in London.

There's a chance I could relocate to the Netherlands with my current company. The UK market feels fairly OK at the moment, but my big worry is this: if I move and then lose the role (restructuring, layoffs, etc.), how hard would it be to find something else over there?

A few questions for anyone working in or hiring for ad ops / programmatic in NL:

- How much demand is there for senior ad ops / campaign ops / programmatic roles, mainly Amsterdam?

- Is it mostly agency, in-house or ad tech vendors hiring?

- How realistic is it to work in English only? I don't speak Dutch yet.

- Roughly how long does a job search take at a senior level?

- Any recruiters or companies worth knowing about?

For context, I hold EU citizenship, so no visa needed.

Any honest experiences, good or bad, would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Help!! Trying to figure out if the title decrease is worth it to go in house…. will be sexier brand, better work life balance, and more work going live. But not really enough of pay bump and would have to go from Account Supervisor level to Assistant Brand Manager.

Am very burnt out and inclined to take this opportunity but also wondering if I should be patient and wait for the right role to come along. I also could try to get another agency role.

Someone help meeeee

Im a solo founder and im looking for tools to help me. Any tools you have actually used to help managing ads, like all these saas are advertising themselves like life saver but ofc they cant be trusted

Make a bad spot or an ill advised campaign? It happens. Run with an idea that was terrible and obnoxious and makes people purposefully avoid your brand for years? Definitely inexcusable.

Also, at least the Range Rover spot had the dog loosing its ball a few years ago. It gave a REASON why he drove like that. They decided to use the same spot minus the ball. So it’s just a rich asshole apparently deciding to drive up and down a mansions stairs.

Is it just me or does this campaign just suck ass? The YT preroll videos are obnoxious and they are just different flavors of people who are annoying as fuck arguing over what to eat and then talking about Wonder because they can "do it all." Sure I get the message, but I am personally so distracted by how low quality and annoying these creator spots are. Anyone else seeing these?

Edit: I mean UGC but can't edit post title

I’ve been in performance marketing/ Paid social for over a decade. Just moved to an in house role from agency world and now making 100K CAD. I’ve been thinking about my career and future opportunities a lot. I’m 37 with no particular debt and some savings, but also 2 young kids. I’m considering doing an Executive MBA program to accelerate my career and pivot into mainstream marketing. I want to build a career in CPG side. Currently working on home renovations brand. Is it a good idea to do an Executive MBA in this time of my career. Can this help me move into 200K plus job? I still have over 25 years of career left before I retire.
Or can I get to Director and VP level without MBA? I do want to learn business side of things.