When we're all right, and no one's winning.
Advertising has a passion problem. There's too much of it.
It's an industry that seems to draw in curious, driven, fun, optimistic people who thrive on doing interesting work. From what I've seen, agencies in particular have an uncommon density of people who simply appreciate the craft of their work - whether that be art direction, design, strategy development, insight finding, or production - moreso than other fields, there is an intrinsic motivation to be great within this industry.
That should be a fantastic thing - something worthy of gratitude celebration.
The dark side is when that gets exploited.
It's both self-sabotage, and systemic.
Self-sabotaging as people within the industry follow their craft down rabbit holes, and through sheer passing ignite debates and competitions at the frontier - with the merits of the point being comprehended only by the few practitioners at an extreme level of mastery, leaving others behind. Because people are curious and optimistic about their work, they are in danger of become myopic that others are similarly inclined (and also see the same intrinsic value in pursuing the purest form of the craft) - that's a recipe for perpetual frustration, "why don't they see how much better this is...?!"
It's also systemic in that agencies are by definition agents of their clients, caught in-between the institution they support and the wider industry we operate within. That often means agencies bear the brunt of both (often) unreasonable expectations, lack of sufficient resources (time, budget, etc), and shared language on the client side as well as predatory practices from opaque, monopolistic media platforms on the other side who treat agencies as unpaid resellers of their (again, opaque and often problematic) products. When missed expectations or challenges arise on either side of that divide, the agency suffers the largest consequences. Any agency that pushes back against either of those power dynamics gets caught in the crossfire - expose the lack of transparency and you become the proverbial messenger, push back against unrealistic expectations and there will be another (curious, passionate, optimistic) agency that will ignore the challenges in pursuit of the interesting opportunity hiding alongside it.
But our passion often blinds us to this reality, makes us susceptible to the unsustainable misalignment and predatory practices of those who are driven by more worldly incentives.
Right now, the easiest way to grow as an agency is to commit malpractice - lean into fast, fluid, and disposable. The easiest boardroom discussion today is selling digital, social, and influener work - I would have been absolutely mindblown to hear that a decade ago. Now I've learned that these things can work, but only in small doses, and only when orchestrated with an immense amount of precision & supplemental support from other tactics. The easy win hurts the client in the long run, and reinforces a lack of trust and accountability over time. That is a doomspiral the industry wont escape from.
This needs to change.
We need intellectual curiosity across the board. Mastery and fetishizing craft is not needed, just curiosity and openness to unlearning; intuition is powerful, it needs evidence to take it further.
Passion needs to be kindled, supported, and allowed to thrive. Systemic change will be needed to unlock that. Perhaps agencies need to step away from being the middle man in certain situations to stop shielding clients/platforms from the pain their conflict-of-interests command.
Unless we stop having the fun intellectual fights at the frontier of the industry, we'll miss the game being played back at the ranch. That's where the industry's doomspiral becomes inescapable.