Adland pros always check in on each other. Leagas Delaney’s Gareth Davies believes that’s because we are always adjusting for change.
“So... how are things with you?”
It’s a question familiar to anyone working in our industry. A sense-check from one adlander to another.
Why?
Because in our industry, we have always looked over our shoulders at each other.
Fortunes can change on a dime, of course. So, it often makes sense to check in and ask if you’re winning (or losing). Life moves pretty fast in our industry, and to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, it pays to look around.
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Introspection, though, doesn’t always come with the healthiest of reputations. But in the creative industries, our innate curiosity about one another is a creative multiplier. We learn from each other (or steal with pride), look on enviously when one of us does well, and pledge to power up and do better next time when we don’t. We’re better for being connected it seems and, more often than not, so is our output.
But the view over our collective shoulders today is a little different. It’s more than a shiny new campaign, an unexpected new hire or pitch gossip. It’s structural change. Super-charged by AI, certainly, but pumped up by a range of other stubborn bedfellows (budget pressures, the stated missions of Big Tech, the rise of in-housing, and so on).
It can sometimes feel as if change is everywhere and inescapable, but change of course is far from new. In my first gig, at Saatchi & Saatchi, my CEO told me that every two years, half of your agency leaves.
I remember thinking, really?
But it’s a statistic that has remained, more or less, true over the years. Churn (what a horrible word) data from the 2024 Campaign School Reports showed an average of 18% of agency staff left their agencies in 2024, with 20% and 22% leaving in 2023 and 2022 respectively. These figures may seem high, but they are, in fact, broadly comparable with other industries. The CIPD (using ONS data) reported an average churn rate for UK workers of 34% in 2024.
Change, it seems, is in our nature. People look over their shoulders, check out the shade of the grass, wanting to do better, to be better. Or in other cases, we have change thrust upon us – unsolicited and unwanted change. Either way, it’s an inescapable, ever-present factor for all agencies and their people. Like it or loathe it, you can’t escape it.
Maybe then, it’s not the presence of change that we need to get used to but instead its velocity. Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) recently remarked that AI had been under-hyped, not over-hyped. Consider that for a moment. We’ve underestimated it dramatically. Ramp up those Cannes talks to the power of ten. Scale up the investment dollars further.
Are we ready for all of that? It sounds like we better be.
What’s the good news in all of this?
Let’s go back to the beginning, in every sense. Our industry is full of curious humans. It’s the secret sauce of our industry. We’re natural lookers-over-the-shoulders. Commercial chameleons who have evolved our capabilities in order to match the changing behaviors of their audiences. And in turn to build the reputations of our businesses, and those of our clients. We’ve done this by leaning in and checking in.
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By looking around and finding innovative ways to solve problems. We just need to get faster at it. Because change isn’t slowing down any time soon.