Confronting the F-Bomb
How professionals are bouncing back from being 'fired' in the era of downsizing.
You can blame interest rates, overhiring, AI, or just plain corporate greed, but the fact is that 2023 was a bloodbath when it came to layoffs. Nearly a quarter million tech workers got the axe last year, all but negating the 264,500 tech industry jobs that were added to the market in 2022. This includes workers at DSPs like Amazon Music, Tidal and Spotify. The much smaller media industry shed another 20,000 jobs due to the same shakey ad market that kneecapped the tech giants, while marketing professionals, including once high-flying agencies like Ideo, felt the same downward pressure.
Whatever the reasons, there are quite a few Cadence readers heading into 2024 who need to start anew without falling into the FOMO traps that can quickly discourage even the most ambitious #OpenToWorker. That’s why for our first newsletter of the New Year, we spoke with Christian Stein, a former Executive Director at advertising powerhouse TBWA/Chiat/Day who found himself on the wrong side of corporate cost-cutting.
“I GOT FIRED…AND THERE’S NO SHAME IN THAT,” Christian posted this fall, a public admission that did Linkinfluencer numbers on a site typically used by professionals to champion their victories, not defeats.
“Lots of people are getting fired right now. They're losing their jobs left, right and center, for good reasons, bad reasons, no reason whatsoever,” he tells The Cadence. “It happened to me about a year and a half ago. I kind of walked around hiding the fact and using euphemisms and spinning the language — all these ways of avoiding using the dreaded F word.”
We here at The Cadence are no strangers to the F-word either. The fact is that most people, regardless of their industry, will at some point feel FUCKED. But creative services seem to be particularly prone to uncertainty and technological disruption over the past few decades.
The result has been some of the most creative people we know having to recreate themselves, which can be harder than a hundred brand refreshes.
“You do walk around with that sort of shame glaze all over you,” Christian commiserates. “You like, I did something wrong. I'm not good enough. And you start to go in that downward spiral.”
The solution, he insists, is the same with most things in life — reaching out to others for help. The result will likely be an opportunity you wouldn’t have imagined.
“It's helped me get deeper inside myself to realize what I was doing wasn't really what I loved. And this was a moment in time where I could actually change that,” Christian reflects.
To that end, after years of working to create award-winning ads, he launched his own brand strategy consultancy, Stone Owl, to take a more wide-ranging look at companies needing to define themselves.
“There was another aspect of the business that I actually felt more drawn to, and that was the brand strategy side of things — setting the brand up for long-term success.”
Christian also continues to speak out on his own experience of making a professional pivot, appearing on various podcasts and speaking engagements. But his day-to-day is “working with smaller brands that I firmly believe deserve to be able to play like big brands.”
To this end, he sees some benefits to the AI specter that is spooking so many creatives right now.
“Six months ago, we didn't even have these tools. Now smaller brands could possibly compete against the big players using technology. In that sense, it can be empowering.”
So, if you've been let go (or are tired of waiting for that shoe to drop), maybe it’s time to let go of the past and set your sights on something more fulfilling. You’d be amazed what support will be out there when you take the leap.
TAKEAWAYS
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. The Real Reasons Apple Will Pay Artists More for Dolby Atmos Mixes
Apple’s AR/VR push will need lots of spatial music to soundtrack the metaverse.
Takeaway: Take notice that the new iPhone 15 is capable of shooting spatial video. There’s no word on how the audio is recorded along with it, but if it’s only stereo it might be a drag on the visual experience.
2. Latin America Has Grown to Make Up 21% of Spotify’s Global Subscribers
The explosion of Spanish language music isn’t just being driven by American tastes.
Takeaway: [Latin-American customers] consume much more. It’s a cultural trait that cannot be easily exported, because it is within the general Latin American culture. We clearly see that, for example in Mexico, the user consumes 30% more than a global user, and all Latin American countries are at the forefront of hourly consumption on a monthly basis.
