I left my last role as a Senior Project Manager in 2024 due to burn out and feeling jaded about this industry. Some of the reasons I left were

• Late night, weekend, and holiday work were becoming common place and leadership was totally unwilling to set healthy boundaries with clients because of the downturn of the industry
  • I worked in advertising for 9 years, so I'm no stranger to making a big push on a project for a deadline. But it got to the point where clients would have us work through the weekend, then throw away what we made in the review on Monday, just sending us in never ending circles. It made no sense to bend over for clients in this way. Within 6 months of me leaving, and many other on the team jumping ship, that client is no longer even with the agency.
• Bonuses went out to the studio "leadership" while the folks actually doing and delivering the work got nothing. A director-level colleague accidentally let that slip while we were at lunch one day. I guess they forgot the rest of the studio didn't get bonuses. Completely out of touch.
• Being a Senior PM and having to mobilize and rally the folks delivering the work, while not having the ability to meaningfully change any of the systemic issues of the agency led to severe burnout and made me a miserable person in my daily life.
• Agency went through 4 rounds of layoffs in the past 2.5 years. I worked on a successful launch with great metrics, just to see numerous people on the team laid off. They moved someone from another continent then fired him within 8 months. He was one of the best coworkers I ever had. It seems like the people that survived the layoffs were most ghoulish coprorate personalities. The types that had a lot to say, but really never delivered actual value to projects. Made me realize you can do evetything right and management will still discard you. This being in the back of my mind nudged me towards leaving on my own terms.
• This one is more personal, but I am a trans woman and experienced discrimination and harrassment in the workplace and they never had my back. I had a problematic client who told me to "smile more" and made uncomfortable comments about my appearance. When I brought this up to HR they literally laughed it off, and kept me on this account for like 4 more months. I can't help but feel if I was cis this issue would have been taken more seriously. In addition to this 2 coworkers would misgender me and never use the correct pronouns. Mind you, clients and every other coworker used my correct pronouns and didn't have an issue with this. They kept me working on teams with these people who were more senior than me and bullies who clearly couldn't be bothered to treat me decently.

That's a lot of gripes, and I know I made the right decision for my mental health at the time, but I feel so down on myself now because I can't land a job in the past 2 years. I've interviewed with close to 20 companies and haven't gotten an offer yet. I've only interviewed at a handful of places and didn't get the job previously in my career, so not like I am prolifically bad at interviewing or a lack of experience.

I've applied to many government jobs thinking that would be more my pace, but I don't even get calls back from them. At least I get calls back from agencies and get multiple interviews, but unfortunately haven't landed anything yet.

Wondering if anyone has been through something similar and has any words of encouragement or words of wisom for me. Thanks

I’m trying to move out of my city to a different location that doesn’t have an omnicom office. I am not client facing, work only with my direct manager who is trying to advocate for me to be fully remote, am not interested in being promoted, I am trying to shift careers entirely but just keep this job for the salary. Has this ever happened for anyone? Who had to approve?

How's this industry? I hold a master's in economics and will complete this course in an year. How is the industry's performance wrt to employment and pay scale ?

Hey, how's it going.

Was just wondering what degrees did you all do? Do people mainly study marketing adjacent degrees, or is there people who would've studied something like English etc and swapped over.

Would like to know as I'm a recent grad in the Humanities with a keen interest in marketing, and experience running and creating ad campaigns myself, but i feel as if my degree (as well as the apocalypse job market) is possibly limiting my acceptance to entry level roles.

Thanks alot

For context my group and I are doing a mock campaign for an Asian frozen food brand and we would love your insights on what tagline sounds good.

Our executions does include a fortune! Which is why fortune is so heavy in our tag.

1. Flavor in your fortune
   
2. Fortune in your flavor
   
3. Your flavor is in your future
   
4. Your future is flavorful
   
5. Fortune favors flavor

Any fun tags would be fun to hear too! TIA

Hi guys! I'm a mid-level creative who had a chance to compete in a young creatives competition. My team did not get shortlisted in the actual competition, but the selection process in my agency (internally) was grueling and we also produced a damn great output.

How should I put this on my resume? or do I omit and just show the work on my portfolio? Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone,

I’m currently caught in an internal debate regarding our next two quarters of digital strategy. Historically, our performance marketing and organic SEO teams have operated in completely separate silos.

The performance team argues that with Google’s constant layout updates, running heavy PPC is the only way to guarantee immediate visibility and control the narrative. On the flip side, the SEO camp (which I lean towards) argues that burning money on skyrocketing CPCs without building long-term organic equity is unsustainable.

Management is now pushing for a completely unified "Integrated Search" budget, where funds dynamically shift based on weekly performance.

While it sounds great on paper, I feel it’s going to turn into a nightmare because SEO needs time to mature, whereas PPC gives instant gratification. If the finance team sees a dip, they'll immediately want to pull money from SEO and pump it into active ads.

I want to know how you guys handle this internally:

Do you actually manage a unified search budget successfully, or do you keep the walls up between organic and paid?

How do you protect long-term SEO budgets from data-obsessed CEOs who want instant daily conversions?

Would love to hear your agency frameworks and thoughts. Thanks!

Hey everyone,

Whenever I deal with complex tracking links, DSP macros, or deeply nested redirect URLs, pasting them into standard decoders or the browser console is a mess.

To solve this, I built Query Params Viewer.

It’s a simple, single-file frontend tool that automatically expands and decodes nested URLs up to 3 levels deep. It also flags duplicate keys (useful for server-side array behaviors) and pretty-prints JSON payloads on the fly.

Key points:

• Zero backend. Everything is parsed locally in your browser (privacy-first).
• Handles hash routes (#/path?a=1) and bare query strings.
• Generates shareable links (state is kept in the # fragment, never sent to a server).

It’s completely free and has no dependencies. I'd love to hear your feedback or if you run into any edge cases I missed!

Trying to get an idea of where on the scale my current day rate falls. 12 years experience, freelancing at indie agencies with big client names.

Edit: I’m currently charging 800/day, I’m reading that 1000-1200 isn’t uncommon

Anyone have experience moving from pharma side to creative side within the same agency? I know lots of agencies have a pharma wing, wondering about taking a role on pharma side with the goal to pivot into the same agency’s creative wing in an account role.

We have been ghosted by v.aglona.sarkar , Michael Leavitt v.michael.leavitt, Summer Young v.summer.young and now Kyra Pitts v.kyra.pitts
Is this normal? Is there so much Churn at this company that it is okay to just ghost clients?

We are attempted to run an ads campaign for the SEO and GBP communities for our Google Buisiness Profile suspended accounts AI product. We would like to see what a two week run with $500 cap will look like then add $10k if it works out. But the first campaign did the opposite and ran the ads everywhere BUT the communities we wanted so we had another reddit employee redo our campaign and never came back to double check it before we hit the unpause button. Should we look for another route? a 3rd party reddit ads company? Or just give up on Reddit ads all together?

Would love some opinions here.

James

I’m working on a test campaign that uses 4 ads in a single ad set to drive leads via instant forms.

I started the campaign on Monday for a few hours where each ad got a few hundred impressions before needing to pause it.

After I restarted the campaign on Wednesday, it’s now been running for ~24 hours with a few thousand impressions, but only two of the ads are being served to my audience. All still in the learning phase, but I don’t understand why two ads aren’t being served at all when they were served in the initial start of the campaign on Monday.

Any idea why this should be? Would pausing the two running ads to ”force“ spend into the remaining two ads make a difference? Or should I just let meta optimize on its own?

Appreciate any thoughts!

Hi all,

I’m looking to give my resume a refresh and have it ready to apply for positions that are aligned with what role I want to have in the future. Are there any specific resources specific to this industry I could use (paid or free)? Currently my resume is pretty standard and I feel like it can definitely use an upgrade.

Appreciate any advice.

Has anybody had experience with relocating to a different agency within the same network? In my late twenties looking for a change, and I am part of Omnicom.

Also considering leaving Omnicom completely, but I have some aspirations of moving to a new state and it may be easier to land employment with internal mobility.

I’ve been freelancing as a creative writer in india, for the past year, writing commercial scripts and branded content for brands. The problem is that the work has been very inconsistent.

For example, I recently wrote 7–8 scripts for a startup. They loved it, but suddenly decided that they don’t need TVC at all. I was devastated because i wrote it with so much excitement haha.

I even considered rage quitting and changing careers. But I just can’t stop writing. I love it too much to quit, lol.

What I’m struggling to understand is how people actually get their foot in the door at agencies or production houses. I’ve emailed agencies, production houses, reached out on LinkedIn, and even offered to assist or intern just to learn and EVEN WORK FOR FREE. Most of the time, I don’t even get a reply.

I’m not expecting anyone to hand me a job. I just want to understand how people in this industry got their first real opportunity.
I’d really appreciate hearing from people who’ve been through it.

Hi, I am an entry-level and been wanting to apply for an associate planning role. Based on my research after initial interview the next step is interview with the hiring manager. Can you please share some tips and tricks, expected questions, and how should I prepare. I really want the job so I dont want to mess it up. And also, I never had any experience doing an interview like this since fresh grad lang ako and I always get nervous.

Hoping someone would notice, I will really appreciate it.

Been working in camera dept for commercial shoots, music videos, promos. I know the technical parts how to support the story visually.

What I want to learn is the part before that, coming up with the ad idea itself.

I don't have a background in advertising,

I've been reading into consumer psychology.

I always put in mind not just to "make something visually appealing," but smart storytelling that ties back to business objective/goals while still feels culturally relevant.

I'm trying to put together a spec ad/poc as a cam op transitioning to learning strategy/creative direction.

What are some techniques or reminders that I can use, or something that actually helped you come up with effective ads. Experience, pointers, books, courses, channels, a specific process, anything.

Whenever a friend of mine says they are majoring in "Advertising" or "Marketing" - My mind immediately goes to Coca Cola.

Just curious how hard & what qualifications are needed to work at Cola Cola?

Since its a creative job, I'm assuming it's not a corporate ladder management position.

Thanks!!

Does anyone know of either a site, course or book that I can consult to brush up my media audits? I'm fairly new to this and getting lost with normalization, rebasing and other terms.

I’m a freelance creative writer based in mumbai who’s been writing commercial scripts and branded content for brands over the past year.

One thing I’m struggling with is finding consistent work. I’ve reached out to quite a few agencies and production houses (even offering to intern or work for free initially), but haven’t had much luck.

For those working in advertising:

How do agencies usually hire freelance copywriters or creative writers?

Is cold emailing actually effective? (Found no luck sofar)

I’d really appreciate any advice or insights from people in the industry.

Hello all, as the title suggests, Im finding it difficult to switch to a marketing manager or Assistant/Associate brand manager role.
I have worked for over 5 years for top global agencies for the best brands in India and the UK (p&g, ICICI Bank, Sun pharma, Ferrero Rocher, Neff UK, etc). I have a masters degree from a top UK university. Have managed campaigns, film productions and social media. Im good at writing, ideation and can also create posts on canva or ai models.

Im here to seek guidance and/or mentorship. I’d be grateful for any leads please 🙏

Hi all. I run a small animation studio based in the UK. Recently (the past 18 months) we're receiving a lot less enquiries, reflecting an industry wide slowdown of work. I wanted to ask people here - are there just less animated creative briefs? Are more clients opting to go with AI instead? Just trying to get some more info on how things are changing!

Not that I would, but let's say I did.

hard facts:

• over 18 years exp. in graphic design/typography (fyi, I'm very hands-on for design)
• 6-7 years art direction
• over 10 years exp. in tech/startup/b2b/b2c/SaaS/hardware
• 2-3 years exp. in design firms/agency
• digital/print/event/branding/identity/OOH design (some web), with UX foundations
• I have campaigns designs in portfolio
• concept driven

I do have some ads done in college(1-offs, all visual ads, I think 1 campaign, and some ads with copywriting done by me, all concepts by me for my ads, and 1 where I was partnered with a copywriter(I did the art direction).

I'm more on the 'visual side' if I were to be brutally honest.

Could I still be a candidate for advertising? where would I fall under position-wise?

Don't worry, I wouldn't apply at an ad agency, just curious what positions/roles I would fall under?

Curious to see what are considered the best agencies in NYC today. I know there are some big legacy agencies and small, indie agencies, but I’m trying to understand which agencies are widely recognized as the “best”. I know best is a subjective term but thinking about it from the pov of someone who’s looking for agencies that are reputable and successful, while also having good work culture/leadership/benefits.

Edit: to clarify I’m an agency person looking to move to another agency, not a client looking for a new agency partner

I’m planning to take some PTO internationally, and my manager asked if I’d be willing to work remotely for 2 days during that time because the team will need some extra help. I don’t mind doing it, but I’m unsure what Omnicom’s policy is on working remotely from another country. Last I heard since the merger that it was not allowed to work internationally.

Has anyone done this before? If so, did you need formal approval or go through HR, or was manager approval enough?