I promise this isn’t another “look how COVID changes things and sped up progress” articles.

It’s me starting 2022 by reflecting on my first decade in the ad business and calling out some big shifts across audiences, agencies, and brand communications.

But in doing that, I may have to concede that COVID did speed up a fair amount of the progress. Soz.

So, here’s five things I reckon have monumentally changed within this industry over the past decade that maybe you’ll find vaguely interesting.

1. Advertising became a dirty word.

Remember when Facebook was cool? I do. It was 2011, when I began. They were snapping up the best talent and genuinely believed they were making the world a better place.

Yet here we are in 2022, and even Facebook has disassociated itself with Facebook.

Well, ad agencies have gone through a similar reckoning and identity crisis. Because it turns out people hate ads. Not entertaining ads, but the other 99.5%. You know, the ones that have nothing interesting to say but merely inhabit monetised spaces on your screen(s).

Ad blocking apps are consistently near the top of download lists, the rise of Netflix has given a scaled view of entertainment platforms without ads that turn out people feel is worth paying for, and 80% of traditional agency jobs that existed when I started 10 years ago are expected to be replaced by Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning technologies by 2030.

So almost every successful Advertising Agency that existed 2011 has rebranded (most landing on ‘creative agency’) and diversified their offering to allow them to no longer be grouped together but now be referred to more specifically - such as a branding agency, brand & strategy agency, brand design & consulting agency, strategic consultancy agency, content agency, CX agency… the list goes on with variations on the themes.

2. Audiences have evolved from flocks to tribes.

Do you remember the ice bucket challenge?

Your answer is either: “yes, it was for a good cause but then people started dying right?!”, or “yes, I was working in an agency at the time and every client called me that week saying we need an ice bucket challenge equivalent for our brand”.

Why it worked in 2014 was because everyone was on Facebook, and it was a platform rife for sending things viral. It was around the time of a slew of viral videos and global challenges (Planking, Gangnam Style, Haarlem Shake, anyone?) that could take over the Internet.

Well, this has been changing lately. Not because people are becoming any less creative or the Internet is becoming any less weird, but because belonging in niche communities is becoming more important than fitting into the mainstream.

Platforms like Discord, Fortnite, Reddit, communities being built on TikTok, and even the growth of WhatsApp and closed groups chats taking over from broadcasting publicly are the places where audiences are now spending their time. It’s mainly driven by the feeling of belonging. It is within these intimate groups that people can be themselves - and not the perfect-life-Instagram-versions of themselves that has become widely accepted as toxic over the last couple years.

And with that comes a complete shift in how brands and agencies are thinking about how to become relevant to these communities.

3. Power shift from CMOs to CXOs.

In those mystical spaces that Clients inhabit, there has been a battle brewing in the past 10 years of power from those people who promote their company through paid ads - to those responsible for the Experience people have with the brand.

Whilst the marketing & advertising efforts of a company are an imperative function mostly used to drive awareness to attract or remind potential customers about them, it turns out that the Experience someone has with the brand at any given touchpoint is significantly more valuable in 2022.

Whether it’s tweaking a website or app, optimising a check out, revising your package design, or extending the offering from physical product to a digital service on top, the return brands get on these changes have become easier to measure and optimise in real time, and simpler to scale than marketing initiatives - which has in turn made the Chief Experience Officer’s the new rock stars.

4. Brands have been made Accountable.

So, 2020 happened, and it turns out being authentic and transparent is not only super important and demanded from brands now, but also easy to call out if they’re not living up to their claims.

Never has information been more accessible about a CEOs political donation, or a company’s breakdown of employee gender, ethnicity and sexuality - and if what they say doesn’t match their own practices it becomes very public very quickly.

This transfer of power in how a brand controls their own narrative has forced every brand to look within their own organisation, and re-think how they speak about themselves.

As an agency person, it means you have the duty to interrogate a client brief that says they want to appear they support BLM. It means that we have had to change the way we think of the relationship with clients to have that internal reckoning of whether their beliefs and values stack up because if they don’t - it’s never been easier to get called out. And same goes for the agencies we work in.

This has not always been the way. Maybe it was because I was a fresh starter in 2011, but the dynamic of client / agency relationships has evolved with this shift.

5. We love a good doomsday prediction.

“TV is dead, digital has taken over” - 2012, Everyone.

“The Agency Model is dead, consultancies have taken over” - 2015, Everyone.

“Retail is dead, COVID has taken over” - 2020, Everyone.

In this industry, if there is one thing we love more than generalisations, it’s a bit of drama.

And despite the haste to jump to dramatic conclusions such as the above, they are strong opinions rather than facts.

The reality is that like almost every industry, the world changes and in turn the industry changes and we must adapt to the change.

So, to round things back to the statistic of 80% of 2011 advertising agency jobs being redundant by 2030, I leave you with a certified made-up statistic.

It’s that approximately 100% of people in this game who understand there is a requirement to be adaptive to a constantly evolving industry and continue to train up their skills as the requirements of this job change - will most likely be fine.

Dave Matthews