This Way Up: A Career Survival Guide for Creatives in their 20's.

If you’re just starting out as an advertising creative, congratulations! Over the next few years, you’ll work crazy hours battling stupid deadlines for shit pay. And it’ll be the most fun you ever had.

Because, for all the long hours, insane deadlines, crazy client expectations and heavy workload (for shit pay) you’ll remember it all fondly. Over sweat, tears, and occasionally blood (if you are producing physical mock ups), you’ll learn new skills, build lifelong friendships and have far more fun than you’d ever experience in a ‘normal job’.

And it’s important to remember that. No matter how bad it gets, (and you will have bad days) by and large working in advertising is far more fun than almost any other kind of job.

Here are a few ideas for how you can build a solid foundation that will serve you well in the years ahead.

1.?Work hard not ‘smart’.

No matter what your degree or diploma says, you’ve barely scratched the surface of what it takes to be a creative professional. You will not be handled big juicy briefs on a plate. You’ll have to earn them. And this will mean doing the ‘boring’, mundane stuff first (banners and social posts etc) or assisting more senior creatives doing the ‘interesting’ work. There are no shortcuts here.

And I’ve got more bad news. There will be people more talented than you. More outgoing and better at networking. Smoother talkers. And, let’s face it, have better connections than you.

There is only factor that you can control: How hard you work.

So work your butt off. Burn that midnight oil. Get your reps in. Put your hand up and volunteer – even if it means working over the weekend.

Still not getting the juicy briefs? No problem – grab a couple and work on them during whatever spare time you have. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow.

No matter how much ‘natural talent’ a musician might have, it takes years of concentrated effort and practice to acquire the skills it takes to make playing an instrument look effortless. And even then, when mastery is achieved, they’ll keep practicing, keep trying to get better. The same exact same principle applies to advertising creatives, whether you are a writer or an art director. Keep on improving your craft. There might be others who can ‘out-talent you’. But you don’t have to let anyone outwork you.

What about work-life balance? Again, I am the bearer of bad news. There is no such thing if you want to succeed. If it helps, instead of thinking work-life in terms of day-to-day or week-to-week, measure it across your career. As you acquire more experience, you will learn how to work faster and more effectively. And you’ll have people to do the more laborious grunt work while you focus on more strategic matters. So gradually you will have more control over the time you have and how you use it. And of course, by the time you are in your mid-forties you might find yourself with far more time on your hands than you really want.

I won’t go much into how you use generative AI (that deserves a whole post – or 10 – on its own), but please note that, although it may help you ‘generate ideas’ faster, or write copy faster, everybody else, including account service, planners and clients, can use ChatGPT too. So why do they need you?

Writing is thinking. The act of putting the words you think you have in your head onto paper is a refining process that ultimately improves the quality of your thinking. If you simply rely on whatever the AI of your choice spits out in response to your prompt, then your ability to think is not going to develop.

2. Be present – the world is larger than your phone’s screen

The algorithms that bind us to our devices are infernal, every part of them designed to keep us scrolling and clicking just a little bit longer. Just one more post. One more YouTube video. One more TikTok… But for all their seductive enticements, they can only reward our senses of sight and hearing. Humans are multisensory creatures. We have evolved over millions of years to use all our senses – touch, taste and smell as well as sight and hearing. So, if you spend your days staring into your phone’s screen, you’re missing out on an awful lot.

So, put your phone away just for a little while and look at the world around you. Look at what other people are doing (admittedly probably staring at their phones). Do some subtle eavesdropping. Watch the body language of people having a conversation – what does it tell you about their real relationship?

Visit art galleries and museums. The feeling of being present in front of something is so much more powerful than staring at its image on your phone.

Watch plays, performances, live music, even poetry readings.

Visit libraries and borrow physical books. Feel their weight and the texture of their pages. The experience is entirely different to reading on your phone or tablet. (And there’s plenty of evidence that reading physical books results in greater retention of information than reading their digital versions.)

Lastly, and you probably won’t like this, go into the office as often as you can. Yes, you may only be required to come in a couple of days a week but being present in an office with your colleagues is a far more enriching experience than staring at postage stamp-sized images of them on a Zoom call. Physical interaction is ALWAYS more energising than its digital equivalent. Everything moves quicker and you’ll form closer bonds and friendships.

3.?Keep learning, keep growing

I must confess it really bothers me that so many of today’s practitioners are completely unaware of their creative predecessors and the amazing work they produced. I honestly have no idea why this is the case. You won’t find an architect who didn’t learn about the great architects of the past. But ask the average young advertising creative about Helmut Krone, David Abbot or Tom McElligott and you’ll be rewarded with a blank look.

You need to learn about the advertising greats of the past (and its not even all that distant of a past) and the great campaigns and ads they produced. Of course, these works were produced without tech that we take for granted today and were often printed at a very resolution for newsprint.

Let’s correct that now.

Bookmark https://davedye.com/ and check out Dave Dye ’s interviews with an incredible array of advertising greats. The podcasts are accompanied by lots of images of the guests’ work. You can also follow Dave Dye right here.

Dave Trott’s blog should be mandatory reading along side Dave Dye’s. https://davetrott.co.uk/ Mr Trott is a genuine advertising legend who trained the people who became the CDs who inspired your CDs.

Brian Burch regularly posts superbly crafted ads from the past on his profile here. Give him a follow.

Add Simon Derungs to your follow list too for more examples of great ads from the past and present.

Next, learn about the business you are in. Step out of your cosy creative cocoon and find out how the other parts of the agency work. Don’t shy away from learning about the money side of things. This kind of knowledge will be critical in the coming years.

4. Take risks

You are at the perfect age to try new things. You probably don’t have commitments or a mortgage hanging over your head. So, don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. You have very little to lose and a whole lot to gain.

If an opportunity comes up to work overseas, grab it!

Join that start up.

Start a business of your own.

If any of these things don’t work out the way you expected, so what? You’ve learnt something about yourself as well as something about life. Failure is an excellent teacher.

5.?Review your portfolio every year

Now I don’t expect you to have a physical portfolio, but you should have a digital equivalent. Once you’ve done something you think is good, stick it in there. At the end of each year, go through and ask yourself has there been any progress. (Be honest about it.)

If your work is getting better, excellent. You’re doing something right. If it seems stagnant, ask a trusted colleague for their opinion. (Sometimes we can not only be blind to our failings but to our good points too.)

If things are not headed in the right direction, you need to figure out why. Is it the work you’ve asked to do? Are you being forced to stick to your bosses’ ideas? Could it be that the clients simply don’t want the kind of work you like to do? Or is it you? Have you been pushing yourself hard enough?

You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Because you will have to make some decisions as to your next steps. But at least you’ll have some kind of data to work off.

?6.?Save your money

Your parents are right. Saving is a good habit to have. Put aside whatever ever you can afford every month, however little it is. It really does add up over time. You are working in an industry that is notoriously volatile.

One minute your agency is fending eager clients off and wondering where they are going to fit all those awards. The next, a single phone call from a major client, or an email from some bean counter at global headquarters, and everything changes for the worse. Cutbacks need to be made and, since the only thing agencies really have are people, it’s the people who get chopped.

And you receive that dreaded email from your ECD with innocent sounding ‘catch up?’ in the subject title. (It’s almost always in lower case.) And that ‘catch up’ happens in a small meeting room with somebody from HR present.

That’s when you’ll be very glad you put some money aside.

7. Have fun!

Ok. Let’s not leave on such a downer. Congratulations once again! You are in an industry that will challenge and excite you in ways you simply won’t find in most other careers. Yes, the hours are long, and the starting pay is pretty shit.

?But you get to play with ideas and concepts, shoot videos, work with crazy, challenging, exciting, fun people. (And maybe one or two assholes along the way – but they exist in every profession.)

?Make the most of it!