Adweek Creativity Outlook 2024: Talent Is Seeking Renewed Purpose Amid Upheaval
The 2024 Adweek Outlook article begins ominously:
Creatives are facing a perfect storm going into 2024, including economic uncertainty, political turmoil, international conflicts and shifting workplace models.
With burnout on the rise, creative leaders need to prioritize nurturing talent to remain competitive
The past year was disheartening for many who work in creative businesses, whether it was rounds of layoffs across industries or renewed fears over AI taking over jobs.
A survey found that ad agency workers face burnout and want to leave at significantly higher levels than for other industries.
“There’s a sense in the wider industry that we’re people without a mission,” said Oriel Davis-Lyons, chief creative officer of Mother New York. “We’ve not been able as an industry to reassert the greater purpose that we’re here to achieve and get people excited about that.”
But it was noteworthy that the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023 report ranked creative thinking as the second most in-demand skill for workers, above attributes like technical literacy.
May we suggest two things?
- Renew advertising's mission: selling. Selling is not a bad word. Branding sells --it is the only thing that shields your brand from commodity pricing. Direct sells. Actually, everything in advertising, from targeting, to segmentation, to creative to media needs to have a single purpose: selling
- Creative thinking is not limited to "creatives". When ad agencies finally move away from these ivory-tower-silos they will discover true creative thinking and avoid the syndrome of ads being "creatives talking to creatives"
When advertising was "invented" it had one single purpose: selling the client's products, services or ideas.
The way to regain the mission is to go back to the mission: sell.
As Harold Geneen said "only performance is real"