Perhaps the writing been on the wall for a while…
At the moment, the entire global economy is in a state of flux with the waves of financial hardship flattening even the Marketing and Advertising Goliaths of old. Years of unchecked, overspending has finally caught up with both the corporate marketing and advertising world as well as “John Q. Public”. The last few months have seen tens of thousands of layoffs across North American and the world. The US automotive and banking industries have been forced to through themselves on the steps of the US capitol building in the hopes of a bailout.
What does all this mean to business?
I can really only speak from the perspective that I’m most familiar with, and that’s the design, marketing and advertising industry. I have now worked on the advertising agency side for well over a decade and have dealt with small business clients/consumers as well as large, multi-national, multi-million dollar corporations. With the financial landscaping changing as it is, small and large companies alike have been forced, like never before, to really analyze their internal processes and in this case, we’re talking marketing, advertising and communications.
In the past companies were happy, if not expected, to sign on for 3 – 5 year contracts with large advertising/marketing agencies. With the large overhead, and quite often, flawed process and work-flow business would pay and over inflated premium for their creative, branding and strategic products.
Naturally, as times get tighter, these same business have really begun to analyze the bottom line vs. the value added. In turn as the taps have started by clients, larger agencies have begun laying off talented staff which has now flooded the freelance market with more affordable and practical freelance professionals. What has resulted is a paradigm shift in how businesses approach their creative, marketing and communications needs. Businesses are now choosing to end AOR (agency of record) agreements in favour of using a list of “preferred suppliers”. To quote a friend and colleague, “get your goat, without the bloat”.
So why the hell am I writing about this? Like I stated earlier, I too worked for years on the agency side only to have been laid off over the last few weeks for the exact reasons I’ve outlined above.
We can’t stop things from changing, the key is to see them coming, adapt, and move forward with renewed passion and sense of optimism.
Jason Dauphinee
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