The Gig Economy Only Benefits Companies

Cheap labor made right here in the old U S of A.

I hate gig/freelance/piece work and the way it treats the people who do the work. Always have. Always will.

A new report reminds me why.

Average income from 9 of the largest gig companies is $299/month. That's $3,600 annually.

You'd have to make the average at 6 gig companies to meet the poverty line of ~$22,000.

And these companies are valued at how many billions?

Utter bollocks.

Timesheets Killed Advertising Creativity

The moment you sell your services based on the amount of time it takes, is the moment you lose all ability to control your value.

By reducing ideas and deliverables to a finite number of hours, there was an immediate timetable place on how much longer there would be outstanding creativity and career longevity in the advertising industry.

The pace of that slide was increased by the consolidation of the advertising industry into a few holding companies.

Holding companies beholden to shareholders. Shareholders who like more hours worked at lower wages.

The easiest way to reduce agency overhead—because agencies only really have human capital—is to reduce salaries. That means less experience. And that means less creativity.

Yes, I know. All that youth has been specifically trained in tasks. They know how to run the machines and the widgets and the gizmos.

They don't have the first clue about how to use any of that technical expertise to actually solve a business problem.

They've not been shown what that looks like.

And there are no elder stateswomen/men to serve as mentors.

So the work becomes more technical and less creative.

And we all suffer.

Even Picasso knew that experience was the ultimate master of craft. He stated it simply as, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

Every Company Needs A Copy Chief

Writing, and more specifically copywriting, is more important than most people imagine. To put it bluntly, it is the foundation of every company's growth.

It's the foundation because it's how a company presents itself to customers, constituents and consumers in the world at large.

Yet most people treat it as a fungible item and assume that a basic grasp of speaking the language is enough to qualify someone to weigh in on copy. I've lost count of the number of times I've received feedback that starts with a variation of, "I was showing this to the receptionist/call center/woman who is currently married to me ..."

Oddly though, those same people never have a chance to comment on the creative brief, analyze the data or meet about the marketing strategy. Nope. But a pulse is all that's required to comment on the outcome of all of that input. 

With so many commenting on a company's voice, that voice becomes fragmented. 

Call centers don't have a unified script.

CEOs slip from talking points into narcissistic, company-killing diatribes.

Print ads don't work with TV spots don't work with online video don't work with corporate websites. And that leaves out the wonderful world of social media where there are constant public failures because of the wrong message/tone/moment.

To help ensure that a company's copy (aka The Brand Voice) remains clear and consistent, there should be one person at the top of the food chain who is concerned about every syllable, every comma (regardless of whether it's serial or not) and every call to action.

That's the only way to ensure that a company's most valuable and most undervalued asset can be appropriately handled.

Forget asking the call center/receptionist/spouse-du-jour about the latest email marketing efforts.

Ask the copy chief.

Then pay close attention to the answer.