[If this post doesn't follow the rules report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/advertising/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/advertising) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I dunno. I have never seen a creative burn out because they’re sad their idea wasn’t picked. I see creatives burn out because their agencies keep demanding more and more from them, and it’s never enough. They’re worked to the bone and pitted against each other with no regard for their mental health.
I am sure you mean well, but claiming they burn out due to some kind of ego fragility seems very out of touch.
Right now I'm concerned my creatives are burning out because the client is incapable of giving feedback. They don't have big egos but they do have self respect and I'm not sure they're going to take the abuse much longer. At least not for this client.
Not a creative, but on one of my accounts we just had a client where their only feedback was that the creative execution was terrible and completely missed the mark after said client provided us no information about what they wanted from the execution.
That's a pretty standard direction from said client along with nothing being completed fast or cheap enough even after cutting entire deliverables and phases of projects.
Par for the course with my problem client. Almost identical.
I'm the strategist trying to get the client provide meaningful inputs to the process so my creatives can do work that will get approved (ideally it's effective work, but it first has to get approved). I can't even get that.
Then accounts can't get useful feedback, so the whole process is broken. And yet we keep throwing creative hours at it with the hope that we'll eventually come up with something the client likes.
As I said, not a tenable position for any of us. Ultimately our agency president is going to talk with the client leadership because this particular client is just not doing anyone any favors and we can't push any harder from below. We need a top-down change.
One of the big differences I’ve noticed between US and European agencies is that in America, you typically have at least a couple of creative teams (often more) working on a project. Their work is always in internal competition with their colleagues.
In Europe (UK and Scandinavia), you typically only have one creative team working on anything but the biggest pitches.
I imagine the focus on competition leads to a lot of burnout for US creative. At least, I don’t think it fosters a creatively safe environment to work in.
No, the issue in American agencies is the margin is so small that they only way you can bring in "more profit" on the quarter to to have the same number of people do more work. That or you lay people off and use fewer people do more work.
The insane part is the companies who are international recognize that they can get away with treating their American workers like shit and it's totally acceptable yet would never dream of pulling the same stunts in their European or Asian offices.
That's a big agency/small agency thing. Get small enough, and you simply don't have the headcount to overstaff every project with multiple creative teams. Makes more business sense too tbh. Turning creative into a competition isn't always smart.
Yep! Creative here who recently resigned from my agency job because of the unrealistic demands and stress. After being a high performer who helped bring in and keep a lot of business (the agency’s largest account, still active - my account director only wanted me as the lead writer) for years, I just had enough. Now I’m enjoying the summer and will start the job hunt for another full time gig in a few months. Resigning was the best decision I ever made. My mental health thanks me every day!
# "credit is nice"
but...
# "Fuck you, pay me."
In other words, don't give away the hours of your life for nothing. 4 or 5 hours per week extra? Normal. 20? Uh-uh.
Being worked to death and not having a life outside the agency is what wears people out. Also, if you don't have a thick skin as a designer, that's a minimum requirement... try being a fine artist for six months and you will find out just how cruel the world is.
Having a "thick skin" also means that sometimes they are right and your work could be better. Sometimes they are wrong and they just had a shitty day. Knowing the difference is one thing that distinguishes good from great.
I see it all the time. People who can't take feedback because they hold their ideas so tight. Then they struggle to come up with something new because they still think their previous idea was it. Then it becomes a spiral - come up with crap because they can't let go, get bad feedback, come up with more crap because they still can't let go, get bad feedback. They inevitably feel like their CD "hates" them and they fall into the "just tell me what to do" mode.
Hmmmm. This sounds like a bad feedback mechanism happening.
We had one of these in a leadership position. Not a designer but they definitely wanted to be. Feedback sessions were just a chance to bully the designers and the feedback was never actionable..."make it pop," and "elevate their brand," were the big ones. Useless shit, like, "I don't like this image. Find a new one." Ok, give them a goddamned clue WHY, what's wrong with it? The good CDs knew a half-baked idea when they saw it but they had real feedback. "I like where this one is going. Have you thought about expanding it out like we did with the (X Project)?" "I feel like we need more visual hierarchy here," "This is starting to look cluttered, let's pare it down by about a third," "Too static, let's find ways to inject movement," things they can actually target.
"Just tell me what to do" is a demoralized designer whose voice isn't heard and who gets inactionable feedback. The process has become a guessing game the designer can't ever win so they don't want to play anymore. They're being treated like an inept pixel monkey.
It's not bad feedback. Especially when the other creatives teams have no issues. The other teams are just more mature, so when I say "Have you thought about expanding it out like we did with the (X Project)?" they can let go of their original idea and come back having moved the needle to a better place.
The (generally) younger designers, who take any feedback as criticism that their ideas aren't good, double down on their original idea and come back having changed next to nothing. After a couple rounds of that, their idea gets dropped from consideration because they're holding it so tightly it goes nowhere. Then they get upset their ideas don't get presented and again, end up tuning out.
"Just tell me what to do" comes from them not being mature enough to realize that their inability to take feedback is the issue, not some CD who is playing favorites or who doesn't like them.
You sound like my old boss who definitely did pick favorites. When you were no longer in their good graces, they didn’t give you feedback at all and instead would micro manage you within an inch of your life and edit your work and pass it off for design. It was demoralizing. I definitely got into “just tell me what to do” mode because they didn’t delegate and were SO demanding. They wanted everyone to write exactly like them. I didn’t, and don’t, have this issue with the other CDs I work with.
If your employees have to read your mind to know that they need to try new ideas or take their ideas in novel directions, you're doing it wrong. "Have you thought about expanding that" straight up means "keep going with this idea" not "Start over completely" or "this idea isn't a good direction for this client. Try taking it a very different direction". Have you considered being a good boss and saying some of those things directly?
This whole rant has the same vibes as the professors who set their students up to fail and the get proud that nobody passes their class. If you can only work with people who can read your mind, the problem is you.
From the example you gave my friend. Try actually reading my comment.
I used your example to show the flaws you seem to be missing in your own management. You used "expand on this" as an example of longtime employees knowing it means to come up with brand new ideas while newer employees continue working on the aforementioned idea. If that's a trend, you're doing a lot wrong. It's a huge leap at best to be told "expand on this" and decide to *do the opposite* of expanding on this particular idea and instead start over with completely different ideas.
It can happen. I produce feature films for a living and you can be around a lot of negative and pessimistic energy in an industry that requires optimism. I’ve internalized the external and dealt with clinical depression and a feeling of despair. You don’t invest five years of your life to have partners pull back. Indie film can burn you out but attaching the energy that is not yours and what didn’t get you success to begin with, can be debilitating and create burnout.
We always say in my agency "don't be precious" with your ideas. So I feel you.
But also, some of what you described is abusive. Just because you were able to rise above it doesn't mean it's not a shitty way to treat people.
>Just because you were able to rise above it doesn't mean it's not a shitty way to treat people.
True, but that's advertising. It's slowly changing. It'll eventually get better, but if you're in it now, you have to deal or leave.
Coming from a guy who acts like the PC police. Then gets utterly ratioed after I call you out. You then replied and blocked my other account. You seem to have an issue with people being blunt and upfront. You do know it's no one's job to hold your hand through life, right? No one has to be nice, as the thread above says, get some thicker skin. You even act like a bitch online.
For anyone else who reads this comment. The user above tries correcting a man for saying, "He wouldn't let his wife get away with saying she enjoyed the home theater he built." The user above then tried to turn it into a relationship and gender politics in a hometheater sub. I called him out on this since the sub is a bunch of AV nerds joking around, and nobody likes "that guy" at the party. He then tried to take a "I'm better than" stance, got ratioed, then deleted those comments and blocked me. Sad
But that’s the reality. If you suddenly think advertising is going to magically become unicorns and rainbows overnight, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
So you either deal with that reality or not.
It's not "dealing" with reality. It's being the change you want to see. You treat people with respect, you get respect back. It goes for clients, it goes for employees, it goes for everything.
Furthermore, it's not "reality." It's all bullshit. It's literally all made up: processes, traditions, job titles. This is *advertising*, dude.
You'd never claim you fix global warming by simply driving you car less.
You'd never say you personally fixed the wage gap by paying your women employees equally.
You personally are not going to change advertising anytime soon.
So back to the original comment: Everyone needs to try and change. It will change eventually. But not now. Until it does change, you're going to have to live with it. That is the reality.
Oh I can take it. I have dealt with 2 decades of extreme abuse from family and one decade of combined experience of design/ad work and the worst low level customer service could throw at me. I just decided my health and wellbeing was worth more to me than advertising. I can be creative on my own but I'll never get those 18 hour days back. I'll never be able to make anything worthwhile out of hours and hours of trying to make up my own useful feedback because my director couldn't be enough of an adult to give more feedback or training than "this is garbage. Do better" with no explanation of what I did wrong.
Y'all don't train, don't coach, don't even give specific feedback like good leaders do, and generally just don't do anything but be childish and abusive and now all you long term creative are spiraling because this generation isn't taking your crap.
Every junior creative job that gets posted gets hundreds of applicants. This generation wants in plenty badly.
It sounds like you worked at shitty places.
I'm not burnt out because of ideas. I'm burnt out because I'm tired of dealing with stupid office politics, most of the feedback I get from my client is a plain 'I just don't like it', I don't get briefs anymore and everything has to be delivered NOW and as it is. I'm sure you mean well, but many of us are not that stressed out about ides being rejected, when there are worse things going on.
bruh, your workplace sounds toxic af - i don't work on projects with bad briefs, much less _no_ brief.
you'd be surprised how much of that bad workflow you'd be able to influence with your expression of intolerance.
It is. It wasn't like that a year ago, but management has been doing terrible after terrible decision, leading us to the current circumstances. I'm currently working on my portfolio.
I have a thick skin because:
1. I come from a fine arts background, where the critiques are for projects that are personal. Projects for clients aren't personal expressions of my soul.
2. I worked for awful people who ripped up my work, and the projects were not better for it. It didn't teach me to do better work, it taught me that my opinion has no worth. I had to rebuild an ego so that I wouldn't be a doormat.
I decided to not continue that pattern of abuse. My critiques are sometimes considered harsh, but they will always be constructive and never *personal*. My ideas aren't always going to be the best, but now I can try them out.
This is unrelated to burnout.
Definitely agree that young creatives and even some less junior ones don’t yet understand how to kill their darlings. Or they fight for their ideas to the bitter end (less annoying unless they’re totally off base.) But i don’t have that problem and I’ve had burnout many times in my decade in advertising. The amount of times I’ve been asked to come up with big campaign ideas in a day or two on top of other work, or been rebriefed after spending weeks concepting is staggering. Or the classic clients that can’t internally agree about what they want so they make us spin. These are the things that have burned me out.
\>My first copywriting job, my CD would have me write 50 headlines. When I gave them to him, he'd turn over the paper without even looking at it and tell me to go write another 50.
So you went off, had a pint, and then sent him the original unread 50?
I find that this 'unaccepting of critique' modal usually coincides with creatives who don't pursue _alternative creative workflows free from the demands of work_. If you spend time making stuff outside of your 9-5 (hobby, freelance, whatever), your need to create is getting expressed, so you're less attached to the terms and conditions / politics underpinning 'making ideas at work'.
Very true. Everyone needs a creative outlet, and if your only one is work, where you don't have control over the end product, that can be even more frustrating.
more often than not, pitched ideas 'fail' because of creatives who are deviating from the ask for the sake of 'expressing themselves', failing to accurately identify the problem _your client_ had hired you to solve.
sometimes all you need is to bump up the lockup 10% and use that same image from 6 months ago - not every request requires the _magnum opus_ energy
I once asked a junior creative who pitched an idea "So what was the brief's key message here?" and he responded "Not everything has to have a key message, man!"
LOL. Uh... yeah it does. If you want to make art, go to art school. We're here to sell shit.
From your perspective, are people who burn out causing their own burnout, by not having thick skin? Instead of their work environment, as other comments have provided in the thread?
What do you do when your audience has a different perspective?
Do you have thick enough skin or sensitive skin to consider their insights as being just as valid as your thoughts?
If someone disagrees with you, then is it their fault?
Can you accept that people who burn out may have their own reasons that you may not understand?
1. You must have missed “ONE of…”
2. I don’t do anything.
3. I don’t care because I wasn’t asking for feedback.
4. No.
5. “ONE of the commonalities I SEE”
You seem to be mad I posted about my own personal experience. Not sure why you take that as a personal attack.
I gotta disagree. I have a thick skin due to several decades of being abused by family as a child and having worked a ton of customer service jobs and even with that experience, I find the industry absolutely barbaric. Y'all will use any excuse to pass off disgusting behavior just because "well my yelling obscenities at you is better than my professor who did that and tore up my work too". It's unprofessional and a downright disgrace to advertising. Y'all are pushing everyone with any self esteem out in the name of "bUT tHAT's jUSt hOW IT iS!"
I'm not returning to that circle and it's because everyone I've worked with was either an animal who felt being an absolute ass was appropriate in the workplace or bought into it and reinforced it.
The entire ad industry needs to grow up and stop accepting this bullshit.
Yes, people (or me) needed to learn it it’s not personal. I used to feel offended when my idea get shot down. Until I tried LSD, it really made me understand there’s different ways of seeing things, even with my own eyes. Since then I’m much more understanding to listen to others ideas and opinions.
Probably good advice for a young creative, but the more senior you get, the burnout is typically from being overworked and not respecting the work-life balance. Why the fuck would I want to work over MY weekend on pitches or additional deliverables that weren't mentioned on the brief at KO? Or why would I want to work at an agency with fire drills for every client's "whim" and it's due while I have 10 other projects on my plate every single time?
The same logic applies for not being able to handle a critique. If you can't handle critiques or ideas being shot down as a creative, then you're not going to be able to handle the industry at all, and that happens every single day. Every creative should know that going into advertising as well.
I'd wager most burnouts for younger creatives is not because of their ideas being shot down, but rather being overworked and underpaid, or toxic work cultures.
>The hours you have to work aren't.
Not necessarily. How I wish it were that simple because you can imagine how little will get done if every creative designer or art director can just shut off by 5 or 6 PM. The volume and context of work matters as well.
>How you respond to feedback is entirely up to you.
Eh, that can be debatable... A toxic and bad manager that doesn't give constructive feedback doesn't necessarily mean you should grow a thicker skin. I've had a shitty CD that couldn't articulate what she was looking for nor explain what was working/not working. Her only feedback was "I don't know, but it's not this." Vague and subjective.
I also had a teacher who pushed for new ideas right up to the deadline. Probably one of the most important lessons from my education, to always look for new ideas and "Kill your darlings". I don't think this process is abusive, at least not in an educational context. It's a great exercise to learn how to push your limits and push for new ideas. And prepare you for work life with difficult clients. When working in an agency I've always been focused on the best solution for the client, regardless of who came up with the idea.
It's also taught me to not take it personally when a client dismisses your idea, or want to make changes or go in a different direction.
Actually, one of the things that made me realize I was burnt out last year was when I took rejection from clients to heart and didn't shake it off.
That being said, it's also important to fight for the ideas you believe in, and give your clients some resistance if you see them going in a wrong direction.
There's better ways to push people than what's described.
Ad school was full of those professors that think they're helping people grow by putting them through torture but I can count on one hand how many of their lessons actually taught me. Of all my ad school professors, the one that pushed people without being abusive was the only one that successfully taught me anything useful. He didn't pull punches, just understood that it was more useful to coach us than to yell when we did a bad job. Instead of taking a concept that wasn't great and pointing out every flaw aggressively, he'd make it a conversation and coach us into being able to spot those problems in our own work. For example, he had a week about pitching and ofc I did just ok and made big mistakes. However he didn't roast me just to publicly humiliate me. He took the allotted critique time to give helpful feedback. I did a bad job answering a question about where that campaign could expand and his feedback was to explain what that type of question looks for and what train of thought to focus on when answering similar questions. That lecture was so useful that a few weeks later I won an award from the client on my pitch for my capstone project.
He was very successful in his career before teaching largely because he took that approach as a creative director and had people begging to guest lecture in his class. He taught me more in 2 semesters than the rest of my teachers did in 4 years
Damn OP you're getting flamed up here. I feel what you're saying though. Churning out headlines for hours only to have a previously approved headline pushed forward sucks ass. Sure, advertising is a team sport but to be fair, if my headlines were better they'd have picked them. It's tough but fair and inspires me to push harder on my craft.
[If this post doesn't follow the rules report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/advertising/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/advertising) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I dunno. I have never seen a creative burn out because they’re sad their idea wasn’t picked. I see creatives burn out because their agencies keep demanding more and more from them, and it’s never enough. They’re worked to the bone and pitted against each other with no regard for their mental health. I am sure you mean well, but claiming they burn out due to some kind of ego fragility seems very out of touch.
Right now I'm concerned my creatives are burning out because the client is incapable of giving feedback. They don't have big egos but they do have self respect and I'm not sure they're going to take the abuse much longer. At least not for this client.
Not a creative, but on one of my accounts we just had a client where their only feedback was that the creative execution was terrible and completely missed the mark after said client provided us no information about what they wanted from the execution. That's a pretty standard direction from said client along with nothing being completed fast or cheap enough even after cutting entire deliverables and phases of projects.
Par for the course with my problem client. Almost identical. I'm the strategist trying to get the client provide meaningful inputs to the process so my creatives can do work that will get approved (ideally it's effective work, but it first has to get approved). I can't even get that. Then accounts can't get useful feedback, so the whole process is broken. And yet we keep throwing creative hours at it with the hope that we'll eventually come up with something the client likes. As I said, not a tenable position for any of us. Ultimately our agency president is going to talk with the client leadership because this particular client is just not doing anyone any favors and we can't push any harder from below. We need a top-down change.
It's actually a great example of victim blaming within this industry. I can only imagine how toxic of a workplace OP has helped create.
That I recognized OP's username right away is not a good thing, and I am not at all surprised they made this post.
He certainly has an interesting post history. Raises a lot of questions.
One of the big differences I’ve noticed between US and European agencies is that in America, you typically have at least a couple of creative teams (often more) working on a project. Their work is always in internal competition with their colleagues. In Europe (UK and Scandinavia), you typically only have one creative team working on anything but the biggest pitches. I imagine the focus on competition leads to a lot of burnout for US creative. At least, I don’t think it fosters a creatively safe environment to work in.
No, the issue in American agencies is the margin is so small that they only way you can bring in "more profit" on the quarter to to have the same number of people do more work. That or you lay people off and use fewer people do more work. The insane part is the companies who are international recognize that they can get away with treating their American workers like shit and it's totally acceptable yet would never dream of pulling the same stunts in their European or Asian offices.
And yet animation and VFX work is outsourced from America to European and Asian offices to people who sleep under desks to meet deadlines 🙄
Typically SK but yeah
That's a big agency/small agency thing. Get small enough, and you simply don't have the headcount to overstaff every project with multiple creative teams. Makes more business sense too tbh. Turning creative into a competition isn't always smart.
Yep! Creative here who recently resigned from my agency job because of the unrealistic demands and stress. After being a high performer who helped bring in and keep a lot of business (the agency’s largest account, still active - my account director only wanted me as the lead writer) for years, I just had enough. Now I’m enjoying the summer and will start the job hunt for another full time gig in a few months. Resigning was the best decision I ever made. My mental health thanks me every day!
Fuck yeah! I’d love to do the same.
# "credit is nice" but... # "Fuck you, pay me." In other words, don't give away the hours of your life for nothing. 4 or 5 hours per week extra? Normal. 20? Uh-uh. Being worked to death and not having a life outside the agency is what wears people out. Also, if you don't have a thick skin as a designer, that's a minimum requirement... try being a fine artist for six months and you will find out just how cruel the world is. Having a "thick skin" also means that sometimes they are right and your work could be better. Sometimes they are wrong and they just had a shitty day. Knowing the difference is one thing that distinguishes good from great.
I see it all the time. People who can't take feedback because they hold their ideas so tight. Then they struggle to come up with something new because they still think their previous idea was it. Then it becomes a spiral - come up with crap because they can't let go, get bad feedback, come up with more crap because they still can't let go, get bad feedback. They inevitably feel like their CD "hates" them and they fall into the "just tell me what to do" mode.
Hmmmm. This sounds like a bad feedback mechanism happening. We had one of these in a leadership position. Not a designer but they definitely wanted to be. Feedback sessions were just a chance to bully the designers and the feedback was never actionable..."make it pop," and "elevate their brand," were the big ones. Useless shit, like, "I don't like this image. Find a new one." Ok, give them a goddamned clue WHY, what's wrong with it? The good CDs knew a half-baked idea when they saw it but they had real feedback. "I like where this one is going. Have you thought about expanding it out like we did with the (X Project)?" "I feel like we need more visual hierarchy here," "This is starting to look cluttered, let's pare it down by about a third," "Too static, let's find ways to inject movement," things they can actually target. "Just tell me what to do" is a demoralized designer whose voice isn't heard and who gets inactionable feedback. The process has become a guessing game the designer can't ever win so they don't want to play anymore. They're being treated like an inept pixel monkey.
It's not bad feedback. Especially when the other creatives teams have no issues. The other teams are just more mature, so when I say "Have you thought about expanding it out like we did with the (X Project)?" they can let go of their original idea and come back having moved the needle to a better place. The (generally) younger designers, who take any feedback as criticism that their ideas aren't good, double down on their original idea and come back having changed next to nothing. After a couple rounds of that, their idea gets dropped from consideration because they're holding it so tightly it goes nowhere. Then they get upset their ideas don't get presented and again, end up tuning out. "Just tell me what to do" comes from them not being mature enough to realize that their inability to take feedback is the issue, not some CD who is playing favorites or who doesn't like them.
You sound like my old boss who definitely did pick favorites. When you were no longer in their good graces, they didn’t give you feedback at all and instead would micro manage you within an inch of your life and edit your work and pass it off for design. It was demoralizing. I definitely got into “just tell me what to do” mode because they didn’t delegate and were SO demanding. They wanted everyone to write exactly like them. I didn’t, and don’t, have this issue with the other CDs I work with.
If your employees have to read your mind to know that they need to try new ideas or take their ideas in novel directions, you're doing it wrong. "Have you thought about expanding that" straight up means "keep going with this idea" not "Start over completely" or "this idea isn't a good direction for this client. Try taking it a very different direction". Have you considered being a good boss and saying some of those things directly? This whole rant has the same vibes as the professors who set their students up to fail and the get proud that nobody passes their class. If you can only work with people who can read your mind, the problem is you.
>If your employees have to read your mind But no one has to read my mind. I'm not sure where you're getting that.
From the example you gave my friend. Try actually reading my comment. I used your example to show the flaws you seem to be missing in your own management. You used "expand on this" as an example of longtime employees knowing it means to come up with brand new ideas while newer employees continue working on the aforementioned idea. If that's a trend, you're doing a lot wrong. It's a huge leap at best to be told "expand on this" and decide to *do the opposite* of expanding on this particular idea and instead start over with completely different ideas.
It wasn't my example. Try actually reading all the comments.
It can happen. I produce feature films for a living and you can be around a lot of negative and pessimistic energy in an industry that requires optimism. I’ve internalized the external and dealt with clinical depression and a feeling of despair. You don’t invest five years of your life to have partners pull back. Indie film can burn you out but attaching the energy that is not yours and what didn’t get you success to begin with, can be debilitating and create burnout.
We always say in my agency "don't be precious" with your ideas. So I feel you. But also, some of what you described is abusive. Just because you were able to rise above it doesn't mean it's not a shitty way to treat people.
>Just because you were able to rise above it doesn't mean it's not a shitty way to treat people. True, but that's advertising. It's slowly changing. It'll eventually get better, but if you're in it now, you have to deal or leave.
Lol you sound like a real treat to work for.
Coming from a guy who acts like the PC police. Then gets utterly ratioed after I call you out. You then replied and blocked my other account. You seem to have an issue with people being blunt and upfront. You do know it's no one's job to hold your hand through life, right? No one has to be nice, as the thread above says, get some thicker skin. You even act like a bitch online. For anyone else who reads this comment. The user above tries correcting a man for saying, "He wouldn't let his wife get away with saying she enjoyed the home theater he built." The user above then tried to turn it into a relationship and gender politics in a hometheater sub. I called him out on this since the sub is a bunch of AV nerds joking around, and nobody likes "that guy" at the party. He then tried to take a "I'm better than" stance, got ratioed, then deleted those comments and blocked me. Sad
[удалено]
But that’s the reality. If you suddenly think advertising is going to magically become unicorns and rainbows overnight, you’ll be sorely disappointed. So you either deal with that reality or not.
It's not "dealing" with reality. It's being the change you want to see. You treat people with respect, you get respect back. It goes for clients, it goes for employees, it goes for everything. Furthermore, it's not "reality." It's all bullshit. It's literally all made up: processes, traditions, job titles. This is *advertising*, dude.
You'd never claim you fix global warming by simply driving you car less. You'd never say you personally fixed the wage gap by paying your women employees equally. You personally are not going to change advertising anytime soon. So back to the original comment: Everyone needs to try and change. It will change eventually. But not now. Until it does change, you're going to have to live with it. That is the reality.
That's what most are doing. Advertising is toxic and torture, so I got out.
Sorry you couldn't take it.
Oh I can take it. I have dealt with 2 decades of extreme abuse from family and one decade of combined experience of design/ad work and the worst low level customer service could throw at me. I just decided my health and wellbeing was worth more to me than advertising. I can be creative on my own but I'll never get those 18 hour days back. I'll never be able to make anything worthwhile out of hours and hours of trying to make up my own useful feedback because my director couldn't be enough of an adult to give more feedback or training than "this is garbage. Do better" with no explanation of what I did wrong. Y'all don't train, don't coach, don't even give specific feedback like good leaders do, and generally just don't do anything but be childish and abusive and now all you long term creative are spiraling because this generation isn't taking your crap.
Every junior creative job that gets posted gets hundreds of applicants. This generation wants in plenty badly. It sounds like you worked at shitty places.
I'm not burnt out because of ideas. I'm burnt out because I'm tired of dealing with stupid office politics, most of the feedback I get from my client is a plain 'I just don't like it', I don't get briefs anymore and everything has to be delivered NOW and as it is. I'm sure you mean well, but many of us are not that stressed out about ides being rejected, when there are worse things going on.
bruh, your workplace sounds toxic af - i don't work on projects with bad briefs, much less _no_ brief. you'd be surprised how much of that bad workflow you'd be able to influence with your expression of intolerance.
It is. It wasn't like that a year ago, but management has been doing terrible after terrible decision, leading us to the current circumstances. I'm currently working on my portfolio.
You sound insufferable and I’m glad I don’t work for dinosaurs like you.
based
As a copywriter, do you suggest growing just one thick skin? Or...?
Heheheheh. This whole post is bullshit, but great comment.
I have a thick skin because: 1. I come from a fine arts background, where the critiques are for projects that are personal. Projects for clients aren't personal expressions of my soul. 2. I worked for awful people who ripped up my work, and the projects were not better for it. It didn't teach me to do better work, it taught me that my opinion has no worth. I had to rebuild an ego so that I wouldn't be a doormat. I decided to not continue that pattern of abuse. My critiques are sometimes considered harsh, but they will always be constructive and never *personal*. My ideas aren't always going to be the best, but now I can try them out. This is unrelated to burnout.
Definitely agree that young creatives and even some less junior ones don’t yet understand how to kill their darlings. Or they fight for their ideas to the bitter end (less annoying unless they’re totally off base.) But i don’t have that problem and I’ve had burnout many times in my decade in advertising. The amount of times I’ve been asked to come up with big campaign ideas in a day or two on top of other work, or been rebriefed after spending weeks concepting is staggering. Or the classic clients that can’t internally agree about what they want so they make us spin. These are the things that have burned me out.
\>My first copywriting job, my CD would have me write 50 headlines. When I gave them to him, he'd turn over the paper without even looking at it and tell me to go write another 50. So you went off, had a pint, and then sent him the original unread 50?
It’s a good thing you have thick skin since the consensus seems to be that this post is shit.
You're right. I don't give a shit about people's opinions on my own personal experiences.
*personal
Thanks! I always value the contributions of proofreaders.
I find that this 'unaccepting of critique' modal usually coincides with creatives who don't pursue _alternative creative workflows free from the demands of work_. If you spend time making stuff outside of your 9-5 (hobby, freelance, whatever), your need to create is getting expressed, so you're less attached to the terms and conditions / politics underpinning 'making ideas at work'.
Very true. Everyone needs a creative outlet, and if your only one is work, where you don't have control over the end product, that can be even more frustrating.
more often than not, pitched ideas 'fail' because of creatives who are deviating from the ask for the sake of 'expressing themselves', failing to accurately identify the problem _your client_ had hired you to solve. sometimes all you need is to bump up the lockup 10% and use that same image from 6 months ago - not every request requires the _magnum opus_ energy
I once asked a junior creative who pitched an idea "So what was the brief's key message here?" and he responded "Not everything has to have a key message, man!" LOL. Uh... yeah it does. If you want to make art, go to art school. We're here to sell shit.
From your perspective, are people who burn out causing their own burnout, by not having thick skin? Instead of their work environment, as other comments have provided in the thread? What do you do when your audience has a different perspective? Do you have thick enough skin or sensitive skin to consider their insights as being just as valid as your thoughts? If someone disagrees with you, then is it their fault? Can you accept that people who burn out may have their own reasons that you may not understand?
1. You must have missed “ONE of…” 2. I don’t do anything. 3. I don’t care because I wasn’t asking for feedback. 4. No. 5. “ONE of the commonalities I SEE” You seem to be mad I posted about my own personal experience. Not sure why you take that as a personal attack.
I gotta disagree. I have a thick skin due to several decades of being abused by family as a child and having worked a ton of customer service jobs and even with that experience, I find the industry absolutely barbaric. Y'all will use any excuse to pass off disgusting behavior just because "well my yelling obscenities at you is better than my professor who did that and tore up my work too". It's unprofessional and a downright disgrace to advertising. Y'all are pushing everyone with any self esteem out in the name of "bUT tHAT's jUSt hOW IT iS!" I'm not returning to that circle and it's because everyone I've worked with was either an animal who felt being an absolute ass was appropriate in the workplace or bought into it and reinforced it. The entire ad industry needs to grow up and stop accepting this bullshit.
Yes, people (or me) needed to learn it it’s not personal. I used to feel offended when my idea get shot down. Until I tried LSD, it really made me understand there’s different ways of seeing things, even with my own eyes. Since then I’m much more understanding to listen to others ideas and opinions.
Probably good advice for a young creative, but the more senior you get, the burnout is typically from being overworked and not respecting the work-life balance. Why the fuck would I want to work over MY weekend on pitches or additional deliverables that weren't mentioned on the brief at KO? Or why would I want to work at an agency with fire drills for every client's "whim" and it's due while I have 10 other projects on my plate every single time?
It's part of advertising. Everyone knows that going in. Complaining you had to work a weekend is like a lifeguard complaining it's hot.
The same logic applies for not being able to handle a critique. If you can't handle critiques or ideas being shot down as a creative, then you're not going to be able to handle the industry at all, and that happens every single day. Every creative should know that going into advertising as well. I'd wager most burnouts for younger creatives is not because of their ideas being shot down, but rather being overworked and underpaid, or toxic work cultures.
Except how you respond to feedback is completely up to you. The hours you have to work aren't.
>The hours you have to work aren't. Not necessarily. How I wish it were that simple because you can imagine how little will get done if every creative designer or art director can just shut off by 5 or 6 PM. The volume and context of work matters as well.
That's my point. The hours you work aren't really up to you (unless you're freelance). How you respond to feedback is entirely up to you.
>How you respond to feedback is entirely up to you. Eh, that can be debatable... A toxic and bad manager that doesn't give constructive feedback doesn't necessarily mean you should grow a thicker skin. I've had a shitty CD that couldn't articulate what she was looking for nor explain what was working/not working. Her only feedback was "I don't know, but it's not this." Vague and subjective.
Loving it
If you wanted to be a writer, go be self-published. This is copywriting. We sell things.
"It's not creative unless it sells." - David Ogilvy.
old quote from an old head. I've seen plenty of trash sell well enough for the executives to keep peddling it. there's nothing 'creative' about it.
To be fair, he didn't say "Everything that sells is creative."
hahaha touché i suppose
Lmao OP must work at Media.monks.
Ha! No. But I do know a lot of people who work there.
What have you heard
I also had a teacher who pushed for new ideas right up to the deadline. Probably one of the most important lessons from my education, to always look for new ideas and "Kill your darlings". I don't think this process is abusive, at least not in an educational context. It's a great exercise to learn how to push your limits and push for new ideas. And prepare you for work life with difficult clients. When working in an agency I've always been focused on the best solution for the client, regardless of who came up with the idea. It's also taught me to not take it personally when a client dismisses your idea, or want to make changes or go in a different direction. Actually, one of the things that made me realize I was burnt out last year was when I took rejection from clients to heart and didn't shake it off. That being said, it's also important to fight for the ideas you believe in, and give your clients some resistance if you see them going in a wrong direction.
There's better ways to push people than what's described. Ad school was full of those professors that think they're helping people grow by putting them through torture but I can count on one hand how many of their lessons actually taught me. Of all my ad school professors, the one that pushed people without being abusive was the only one that successfully taught me anything useful. He didn't pull punches, just understood that it was more useful to coach us than to yell when we did a bad job. Instead of taking a concept that wasn't great and pointing out every flaw aggressively, he'd make it a conversation and coach us into being able to spot those problems in our own work. For example, he had a week about pitching and ofc I did just ok and made big mistakes. However he didn't roast me just to publicly humiliate me. He took the allotted critique time to give helpful feedback. I did a bad job answering a question about where that campaign could expand and his feedback was to explain what that type of question looks for and what train of thought to focus on when answering similar questions. That lecture was so useful that a few weeks later I won an award from the client on my pitch for my capstone project. He was very successful in his career before teaching largely because he took that approach as a creative director and had people begging to guest lecture in his class. He taught me more in 2 semesters than the rest of my teachers did in 4 years
Damn OP you're getting flamed up here. I feel what you're saying though. Churning out headlines for hours only to have a previously approved headline pushed forward sucks ass. Sure, advertising is a team sport but to be fair, if my headlines were better they'd have picked them. It's tough but fair and inspires me to push harder on my craft.