So says Nick Galanadies, founder and creative director at TAXI FOR NICK, in a LinkedIn thread in which he shares his candid assessment of the marketing jobs market as artificial intelligence (AI) and other factors continue to force layoffs.
The discussion kicked off with this post:
SHOULD I GO FREELANCE AT THE MOMENT?
Probably not.
It’s absolutely brutal out there.
But with so many agencies laying off talent, many have no choice. And for freelancers suffering their ‘worst ever year’, the competition for work, any work, just gets ever stiffer.
Even so, I read recently that over half of those who work in the creative industries are now freelance. The in-house agency model doesn’t really work anymore as people want to be in charge of their own working conditions/environment. Understandably.
More worrying, the top-notch freelance creatives struggle to break through the competitive noise. Word of mouth gets you so far, but AI gets you there quicker and cheaper.
This isn’t just a blip or the down before the up. The famine before the feast. I genuinely believe there is a seismic shift happening and none of us have a clue how to deal with it.
You can work on your folio, your website, your networking, but you can’t conjure work out of nowhere.
Pivoting or having another income stream seems the only answer.
Should I go freelance at the moment?
Probably not.
As doomy as this post sounds, I agree completely. In fact, I’ve been banging this drum since May 2023 when a prospective client first asked me why he should hire me, an experienced flesh-and-blood freelance copywriter, over using AI.
That’s the moment I knew things had changed and would continue to change in ways I could not imagine.
Nearly 18 months later, the bottom seems to be dropping out of the marketing (especially creative) jobs market. Full-time employees are being laid off in droves as freelancers scratch, scrabble, and fight each other for their next project.
This is not working. Full-time or freelance, there is no longer anywhere for unemployed creative professionals to go.
Time to climb a different ladder
Given the uncertain future of so many marketing careers, it is imperative for everyone — whether blissfully employed or not — to start thinking about alternative paths. To explore new opportunities and learn new skills in areas that are fairly insulated from AI.
This might mean leveraging your existing skills to pivot into a related job, or switching to an entirely different career — even if only as a “temporary” lifeline to help you through to your next “real” job.
Related reading: The great creative layoff: why finding your next job feels impossible
On that note, I have seen plenty of handwringing from marketers and creative professionals on LinkedIn about AI and how the newly unemployed “can’t afford” to take temporary low-paying jobs to help fill the gap.
I argue that many can’t afford not to.
Think about it. How many current-day creatives will still be working in their fields next year? How about in 3, 5, or 10 years from now?
I say good luck with that.
With the top minds in the AI industry forecasting artificial intelligence to replace up to 80 percent of jobs in the next few years, the smartest move might be to change career ladders now. You will start at the bottom, yes, but hopefully, you will at least be on a ladder that is still going somewhere.
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Pretty scary thought. The world is moving too fast….
To paraphrase Hemingway: “It happened slowly, then all of a sudden.” I believe we’re reaching the “all of a sudden” part right now.
I am seeing this same trend in the industry in which I’ve spent my adult life (drilling fluids in the oil field). I hear that various companies involved in it are looking at AI, too. But “running mud”, as we call it, is much like your profession, or medicine, or many other professions. They are arts every bit as much as a science. With experience, you get a feel for “keeping things healthy” and you know what to do, have a feel for what should keep it healthy. And when it goes bad, you have a feel for what it will take to get it healthy again, tricks that your predecessors learned from their predecessors and have passed on to you. You as well will probably pass your experience along. Can machines do this? I know there’s always advances in computer technology and memory capacity, but will developers being able to code in emotions, passions, and true human experience? I bet we’ll see some very ineffective writing, even worse that the direction we’re seeing these days.
Robert! So good to see your name pop up in a comments section again.
You’ve hit on something important. Yes, there is indeed an “art” to many disciplines that mere data-driven decision making can’t match. At least, not yet. Can human intuition help keep flesh-and-blood writers and oil-rig workers ahead of AI? That is the $64,000 question. I don’t know the answer, but at least in marketing and advertising — given how inefficient so many of these “professionals” are, and the excremental work they’ve pushed out in recent years — I can see AI sending a whole lot of people to the unemployment line.
Perhap the real question is, can AI-driven ads really be worse than the garbage we are seeing today?