In my 50-year career in this industry, I’ve witnessed several big downturns, including the GFC and COVID. Now we have a collision of factors having a huge impact on business growth and resulting in relentless cost cutting across the board. Economic uncertainty, global tariffs, war, AI innovation, consolidation and mergers are threatening to gut the heart and soul of what makes our industry great … its people.
As companies restructure it’s often the senior strategists, MDs, and cultural leaders who are deemed expendable and who are now the first to go. These roles were once seen as vital to ensure long-term growth, but now in an environment where efficiency is the mantra the headcount is reduced with ruthless simplicity.
The issue is, what’s being lost is so much more than a few lines on an Excel balance sheet. At the Experience Advocacy Taskforce (EAT) Cairns Crocodiles session, The Price Isn’t Right -The Silent Exit, we highlighted a stat of 51.5% exit between the ages of 45-54 years, and that was last year. I’m sure that figure is now much higher!
Put simply, we are watching decades of institutional knowledge walk out the door. The thinkers who have weathered cycles of change; who know how to navigate complexity; who have built brands, driven innovation, and reshaped categories are leaving, being pushed out, or are burned out. And yet, the industry pipeline is thinning, too. Fewer young people are entering advertising and media, deterred by precarious job security and a lack of inspiring leadership.
In my five-decade long career, I have never witnessed so many incredibly talented senior people out of work. These aren’t people who didn’t deliver on their KPI’s or delivered for clients day in day out; these are experienced, talented, good humans who have given their blood, sweat and tears to our industry.
What we’re left with is a growing vacuum.
Who will mentor the next generation and pass on that wisdom and experience?
Who will guide agencies, clients and media businesses through their next transformation?
We risk an industry led solely by cost reduction, where the craft of strategy, the power of creativity, and the value of cultural intelligence and experience are lost to the bottom line. At EAT we are deeply concerned about what’s next … it is blatantly obvious when we discard experienced smart talent in the name of efficiency, we are not just losing great people, we are gambling with our future!
As an industry, it is time to collectively take a stand and make ageism a non-issue for the next generation.
