The Misery Of Agency Life

Episode #438 of Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

There’s an infamous line from the 1976 film, Network, in which longtime fictional television news anchor, Howard Beale, screams, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” We’ve (probably) all done this at one point in our professional lives (granted, not the extent of Beale!). Some of us actually meant it, quit our jobs and went off to do other things. For others, we mutter these words beneath our breath or spout them off to family and friends on the weekend, but never really do anything to change our own, professional, situation. In June of this year, longtime marketing agency professional, Uwe Hook, did something about his unhappiness with agency life. After close to twenty years in the business, he quit his job and explained it all rather publicly in a Medium post titled, Why I quit my agency job. Several months later, DigiDay published a piece titled, Why Agency People Are So Unhappy, that  quoted Hook’s piece along with other unhappy agency professionals. After reading both pieces, and others on the topic, I invited Uwe to share his thoughts. Ultimately, I don’t fully understand these positions. I can empathize with the feelings, but I’m not sure I get why we would tag the industry as such, and to what benefit this serves? We should always strive ti be better and do better work, but I would much prefer the route of doing this in a positive and productive way. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation – The Twist Image Podcast #438.