Be as valuable your fifth year as your first year

In some important ways, advertising rookies are the most valuable ad guys in the agency. Not yet jaded by experience, full of new ideas and skills, hungry to try just about anything, they challenge agency cultures in small, but powerful ways.

To keep what's good about being a rookie, protect what's unique to just starting out:

• Be curious. Check out what other agencies are doing. Collect inspiring artifacts. Covet great processes and ideas. Deeply understand outside successes. Keep talking about tools and brands and ideas long after you have 'more important things to do.'


• Love what you do. The easiest bad habit to 'catch' at an agency is complaining. The place sucks. The people suck. The clients suck. Just what exactly are you doing with your life?
  
  The worst part of picking up this particular bug is what it does to you - the feelings of anger and powerlessness and self doubt. The second worst part is what it does to your culture - in a place with no advocates, no champions of the agency & the work,  it's harder to sell yourselves, deliver break-through work, hire commanding talent, etc.


• Build relationships. To get work done as a newbie, you need a network. People who will listen to your ideas, direct your work, give you the inside scoop. As rookies, we're great at building those relationships. We're scrappy and grateful and totally willing to ask for help.
  
  But, part of the business is the turnover. If you haunt the halls for five years, chances are half the people you once knew will be long gone. Continuing to build those relationships long after you have to is a powerful way to share resources and ideas, to have a sounding board, to be part of where the agency is going instead of just where it has been.
  


• Know your clients as people. If I have one piece of critical advice to share, it's this: get to know your clients. Really. Not just their marketing plans and their P&L, but who they are and where they've been. What they're afraid of professionally and where their alliances are. What ridiculous co-ed sports team (kickball?) they play on and what guilty-pleasure concert they're planning to go to this summer (Neil Diamond?)
  
  Having a human relationship with the people we spend most of our lives working with and for builds up a bank of goodwill. AT THE AGENCY. All the little aggravations of the client-agency relationships, the socializing of negative feedback, the need to act on a truly absurd deadline... it's all easier to overcome if you respect the person as much as the brand. For clients, we deliver great work. For friends, we do it no matter what.
  
  
• Find “hows” not “why nots." Once you've tried out the same Idea three or four times, only to find a big ugly mess at the end, it's just human nature to kill that Idea out on hand of the fifth go round. But a scrappy little rookie might look at it another way. Sure it didn't work the other times; so, what can we do differently to make it successful this time?
  
  'No' is the easiest word to say. Finding a way to say 'yes' can be the first step to great work.


• Make coffee and hang up coats. When you were new, you did the grunt work. You schlepped in coffee mugs and found outlets for weary laptops and cell phones. You were, in a word, humble.
  
  These little elements of service. Of humility. Are even more impactful the more senior you become. It's one thing for an intern to hang up a client's coat. It's another entirely for the creative director do it.
  
  In the end, being a good host shows care and generosity. And, it's all too easy to lose.


• Ask questions (ones that you don’t know the answer to). We all get into a groove. The creative brief works like this. Client Z will always want this. For retail, we always do this.
  
  The new kid in the room carries none of that history. And asks - preferably in a brief way - why? Or how? Or what about this? Or do we have research on that?
  
  Keep asking those questions. Looking for holes. There's always more to learn.
  

Just getting started? Check out:

Four rules for career success

Advice for starting out in an ad agency

Meet your new boss

And Three pillars of success in (nearly) any agency

Comments

[GL HOFFMAN]

Hi...I find your advice to be spot on for almost any department or company, not just advertising agencies. Well done,
best,

GLH

[El Gaffney]

Really glad I stumbled across this. I was just planning on starting a weekly take a newbie to lunch thing. They may carry the coats, but they don't carry the baggage of the elders. (I'm 6 yrs in the biz). Hoping to learn some fresh perspectives, ideas and approaches.

[Someone]

"Be curious" I was told to constrain my curiosity. Really! I was.

"Love what you do" How do you avoid catching the Bug? Seriously! Tell me... I need to know.

And when you got it, how do you loose it?