Dear Diary: Navigating the creative grumps and adland’s feudal system

I once worked with a creative team that were such grumbling, grumpy old men everyone was afraid to talk to them (female ECD included). I once worked with a director who actually got banned from post-production companies for his rude, demanding and grumpy behavior. I have worked with account teams who are afraid to share client feedback with the eye-rolling, sighing, superior creatives. I have worked with creatives who need to be tiptoed around and treated like princes, despite not being that talented.

Heck, I have been that grumpy, egotistical, fragile creative from time to time, early in my career (hate to admit it, but this is a diary, after all; I have to be honest). And I regret every moment of that. I have grown, learned from it, and realized that ego is the enemy.

Taking feedback well is a muscle that needs to be built and rebuilt over time, shrinking your throbbing ego and opening your generosity valve with every review.

Being a pleasure to work with is everything in this industry. It is not just for the culture of where you work, but it is crucial for the work too, because ideas need rigor, they need to be stress-tested, they need debate, and flexing, and strengthening, and feedback. Collaboration and building, not breaking, does that.

The best ECDs and CCOs I have worked with rarely push back with clients, and they still create the most incredible, brave, cool, interesting work. 

Why?

 Because bullying a client into buying something does not build trust. It does not build a collaborative culture that enables clients to also feel they own the ideas, and the best work only comes from true collaboration and a sense of ownership.

I have two projects on right now that could not be more different. One is incredible in its collaboration. It is for a charity with a sensitive subject, and I cannot quite get over how clever, kind, compassionate and creative every single person is being. 

It is a total joy.

The other is a simpler thing and a battle. Nobody wants a battle. Nobody wants to work with people who want to battle. So, sorry grumpy creatives, but it is not OK to take feedback badly, be grumpy, obstinate and hard to work with. Time is up for that attitude in the industry. 

Thanks grumpos.

I wish we were selling apples and oranges. November 4, 2025

We have spent months doing two things. First, teaching my work partner (and life partner, yeah I know, gulp, new agency character unlocked) everything about advertising. He comes from tech sales and did not know his CPMs from his CPGs when he started. He is the right side to my left, or left side to my right, whichever, but he is analytical and thorough and autistic AF, in counterpoint to my creativity, impulsivity and ADHD AF.

But the other main thing we have been doing (ad nauseam, pun intended) is working out the problem we are trying to fix and the solution we are offering. Instinctively I know we are fixing the homogenization of social. The samey faces-to-camera, UGC-style, lo-fi, intern-with-an-iPhone, Canva-template, meme-sketch, so-called authentic or native thing that has taken a stranglehold on social for too long. And although, you know, fine, it seems like everyone cannot think of anything else to do.

But doing that without seeming too critical and arrogant is tough. Maybe the presentation entitled “Everyone's doing social wrong” did not entirely help, though the audience in question loved it. 

But getting people to embrace our solution, the massive, gaping, yelling opportunity of actual big ideas and craft on social, is proving harder. We get a million nod-alongs and everyone saying they totally agree and everyone saying it is what brands should be doing. But until we can actually make some big brands’ socials come to life with the principle of what we are offering, the proof of the pudding is still hot and in the oven.

An industry legend we spoke to last week said it is almost always friends and family (or ex-colleagues dear enough to become friends or family) who will be your first big paid client as a new agency. And we have spoken to amazing brands. We are pitching, hustling, spreading the net far and wide, and leveraging contacts everywhere. Yet we have not quite landed our big brand client. We are a few months in and have no idea if this is normal, if most agencies start with a client anyway, or if everyone is in the same boat. I assume most agencies just do not tell anyone.

But I guess when we are not selling the same as everyone else, that is maybe a tougher sell. It is fine that everyone is eating apples and oranges, but there are so many other fruits out there. There are mangoes and kiwis and plums and blueberries and pineapple and, I do not care how elongated my fruit analogy is getting, some that are way better for your brand health. So mix it up a bit people.

I was going to quit... November 10, 2025

Nearly ten years ago I was bitten by another nasty insect (this time they think mosquito, not tick) and it kindly spewed a bunch of bacteria into me that caused my brain to swell, my body to become paralyzed and kicked off a personal and professional transformation in both good and bad ways.

Up until that point, I did not know I was already carrying two previous Lyme disease infections from earlier tick bites. Having multiple underlying genetic issues meant I could not fight them off like most people do, plus the UK tests for Lyme barely work at all so it is not recognized easily anyway. I knew I was increasingly ill, struggling to get through days with severe fatigue, blacking out 20 times a day in the office, and permanently feeling terrible. But I was also professionally ambitious. I was determined and driven and focused on succeeding in the advertising, tech and social industry by hook or crook, until I became very crook indeed.

I had a few months off work, sought treatment in Washington DC (there are no UK Lyme doctors), and spent thousands on antibiotics, ozone therapy, IV meds, anything I could to get better. Three years later I finally reached remission. It was a ride, but the biggest thing it taught me was priorities, and I realized that without health nothing else matters. So I switched my professional ambition settings to “maybe later” and headed for the easiest-to-manage work instead. That was coupled with rounds of IVF to become a solo mum by choice (donor sperm, injections, hormones, scans and finally a wee baby). So being a thrusting career woman was not on the agenda then either.

It has been five years since the baby pause, nearly ten since the health pause, and stepping way back from the industry for all that time (or at least being in second gear) has done a huge amount of damage to my professional life, connections, profile and psyche. Both experiences were incredible learning curves and I would not change any of it. Genuinely, including becoming disabled. I still have brain damage and damage to my nerves and nervous system so I have deeply unreliable legs and often need wheelchairs or walking sticks, but none of that is inherently bad.

So back in 2016, I tried to find my way out of the industry, realizing I might not be able to rely on my health enough to achieve my ambitions at all. Then, by 2020, when I was having a baby on my own, mid-lockdown, being a professional go-getter was the last thing on my mind. Now, by 2025, that feeling of wanting to quit has been replaced by wanting instead to try my hardest to make what I had been secretly dreaming about for years: transforming brands through incredible creative ideas and craft while being my own boss.

In 2016, just before the last Lyme infection that caused so much mayhem, I nearly sold my London house and bought a 111-acre hippy commune farm in rural Scotland to turn it into a business. I chickened out, then got super sick, and never actually quit the industry altogether. But if we are talking about “shit or bust,” this venture is certainly that. I will give it a couple of years and if it is not taking off, maybe I will go hippy commune hunting again. Either way, I promise I will document it all for the lols.

Feudal serfdom ain’t dead. November 13, 2025

The ad industry still runs on a kinda feudal system. The land (access to brand budgets and briefs) is owned by a handful of very spendy intermediaries. Agencies are the serfs, paying rent (membership fees) just for the right to till the soil. And as a bootstrapping startup worrying about each month’s mortgage and astronomical energy bill, we simply cannot afford to doff caps to the rich landowners by way of their big membership fees.

So how else can we get on to pitches? The industry favor exchange is one. People tipping us off that there is a pitch on if they happen to have heard about it, and us cold-calling clients.

I have mentioned before that I have long loved the favor exchange that happens between good eggs in the industry, and I think it comes from working-class culture, where money was never the means of exchange, but help was. You look after my kid while I go to the mill, I will do your laundry on wash day.

But I am not sure what other ways there might be to get into the scene. It does feel somehow reminiscent of needing to be presented to society at court like we are Austen debutantes.

We are not eligible for any government or local funding schemes (despite being a disabled female founder), unless I just cannot find the funds. But maybe the intermediaries themselves have pots reserved for cash-strapped start-ups like us. Not sure. If you hear of any specific startup intermediary membership funds, bursaries, awards or similar, give us a shout. In the meantime, I am hustling, leaning on friends for favor exchange, and doing the equivalent of scrumping apples and poaching rabbits.

Get in touch with Julie on LinkedIn.

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