r/advertising

Anyone else in this field absolutely miserable? Been at this 2 decades and have never felt so burnt out.

In a world where scripts, schedules, treatments and pitch decks are no longer enough, is it foolish to just go ahead and shoot the dang thing?

Is shooting before pitching a bad thing if you have an idea?

Happy to hear your thoughts depending on small to massive budget ranges as well.

To this day if someone says 'Auto glass repair' I reply 'autoglass replace' as if I've been awakened like some sort of soviet sleeper agent. Greeeeat from frosties is another one that comes to mind. (english references for you yanks on here)

It got me thinking - what are some ads that have become so baked into culture that people pull them out of some deep dark corner of their mind to this day. Would love to know what the people in this community would say are the most culturally influential.

Side note - this got me thinking on the economics of advertising - how do you measure the ROI/ impact of owning this cultural capital. Does anyone have any thoughts

hey folks, looking for some advice from people actually working in US creative agencies rn

so basically I just finished my marketing degree in Spain (UC3M) and I wanna make the jump to work in the US. My university was super business and theory heavy, so after looking at a ton of job postings and reading on here I realized i have like zero portfolio work to show, only some social media management experience for small biz here

I work way better with structure, so doing a structured program feels like the best path for me vs just build a book from scratch. Since my dream is to work in the US I feel like I should go there directly, and sort out the student visa thing and start meeting people there from day one.

Im stuck trying to choose between miami and new york though.

with miami, im fully bilingual with spanish and english, so I was thinking maybe that gives me a real advantage with the multicultural agencies over there? But at the same time rent in miami is basically the same as new york now which is crazy so its not really cheaper anymore. At least I get the beach lol

then for NYC, its obviously the big ad city with way more agencies. I saw MAS moved the campus to central manhattan which puts me in the middle of things - but also the competition there is kinda crazy there no?

for anyone working in either city or who went thru any ad/creative school from abroad, is the spanish advantage in miami actually worth picking it over all the agency opportunities in NYC? and how much does being in the city actually help with getting your foot in the door while you study?

any advice or reality checks super appreciated! thank youu

Professionals that have a desire to continue working in full time roles but find that they can't find new opportunities despite having a good track record and in demand skills leading to them moving into a new occupation/industry.

1. Age without being a senior leader

2. Race - Professionals of color ; black especially.

3. Social class - Those from non-prestigious backgrounds.

Recently let go from a big 4 and nervous about the job market. I’ve been applying since June to get ahead of it but only got a handful of interview requests.

What is the overall feel in Chicago at WPP/Dentsu/OMD? I’m open to in house positions too but also need something ASAP

Need some perspective for people who are 40+, millennial, and genz, what's something in the advertising industry which you have noticed is way different from the other generations, and is it for the good or bad?

And why?

Ive noticed most brand/social/comms strategy departments are heavily skewed female these days here in the united states. I couldnt tell you the last time I interviewed with a male hiring manager and thats not a bad thing at all either I just notice sometimes theres no connection during the interviews. This isnt a post about equality or to start that discourse. It truly just an observation Ive noticed and a hiring trend.

“Papa i watched your ad and i didn’t skip it” could be one of the sweetest things that my daughter has said to me.

As a freelancer in college, I am trying to run UGC ads using AI tools for a couple of small brands. I have tried a few and are noting down their pros and cons.

So for talking-head / avatar UGC (person to camera reading a script), HeyGen, Hedra or Sync.so are more purpose-built - Hedra especially for expressive character/lip-sync.

Morphic has a UGC Ads workflow plus Virtual Try-on and product-video workflows, and the multi-model canvas means you can mix a Seedance shot with a Kling shot in one place, then cut variants on the timeline.

Runway/Pika will give you nice individual clips but you're assembling elsewhere and re-rolling for consistency

In my experience, any AI UGC needs a human pass so it doesn't read as obviously synthetic so for a scrappy brand doing lots of ad variants , I would prefer a studio tool that does product + a timeline all in one place.

do you guys have any suggestions? also what is your guy's workflow like?

Hi all, genuine question - Im a strategist in media and my strong suit isnt copywriting a great name for an idea. I can only land on a really great idea from insights but not put a name to it. Ideally I'd love to post it out to anyone who can help. Where can I do this

Asking for a friend- what are everyone’s thoughts/experiences at VML? Specifically the PM and Account departments?

I was recently laid off, and it’s made me question something I’ve been feeling for a while.

I have 20+ years of experience in creative strategy, mostly across digital, branding, and content. I’ve worked with large brands and small companies, B2C and B2B, corporate communications, campaigns, sales-driven work, and pretty much every variation in between.

And right now, it feels like the market value of that kind of experience has changed dramatically.

Not necessarily because the work itself stopped mattering. Brands still need positioning, ideas, narratives, content, differentiation, and people who can connect business problems to creative solutions. But it feels like the perceived value of being someone with broad, senior strategic experience has fallen.

Sometimes it seems like companies would rather hire a much more specialized person, a cheaper executional profile, or distribute what used to be one senior strategic role across several functions. AI obviously adds another dimension to this, but I don’t think AI alone explains it.

I’m curious whether other people in advertising are feeling the same thing.

If you’ve been in the industry for 10, 15, 20+ years: do you feel your experience has become more valuable, less valuable, or simply valuable in a different way?

And more importantly, where do you think people with this kind of background go next?

Do we specialize? Move closer to business strategy? Become independent consultants? Move client-side? Build smaller operations around ourselves? Or is this just a particularly bad moment in the cycle?

I’m genuinely interested in how other people are reading the next 5–10 years of this industry.

I've got a job offer for a really nice bump in salary and title but I'm on the fence about a big firm. Anyone here have advice on culture and work life balance of this firm?

Thoughts? Opinions? Experience?

I’ve landed an interview there any wondered if anyone has any intel on what’s it like to work there?

Hi all, curious everyone’s opinion on the big 5 agencies.

Which one has the best culture/WLB? Which one feels the most “innovative”?

Are there some that are more technologically advanced than others?

(I’m not in advertising but in an adjacent role that works with all the major agencies, so interested in hearing your thoughts & opinions)

I’m doing quite a bit of work on the advertising agency/holdco space at the moment and would really appreciate some views from people actually working in the industry.

My background is more finance/consulting than advertising, so please assume fairly limited prior knowledge!

The main thing I’m trying to understand is: how important are proprietary data assets in practice when clients are choosing agencies, and are the holdcos’ data capabilities as differentiated as they would have investors believe?

From the outside, it feels like Publicis/Epsilon is significantly ahead, while WPP is at more of a disadvantage given its lack of a comparable proprietary data asset (albeit it is trying to aggregate and activate data through its Open Intelligence platform). Does Liveramp change this at all?

But how much does that actually matter in what is still, fundamentally, a people business?

interested in any views, including if I’m thinking about the whole thing completely wrong. Commentary from agency, advertiser or adtech people all welcome!

Mid-career I’ve been wondering a lot about this lately.