The creative classes are under attack, but is it too late to do something?

I went through a phase of my career where I was addicted to pitching. The adrenaline of the chase. The late night pushes. Seeing teams come together to fight for a common goal. The performance in the room. The shmockeling in the background. It was glorious showing of our industry at its best.

Or so I thought.

These are spicy economic times. International newswires are furiously waving flags, warning us of another recession, and locally both agencies and clients are experiencing rapidly shrinking profits. There’s no avoiding it – what started out as a rough patch is proving to be storm like no others.

In psychology, there's a term known as post-traumatic growth. If you haven't already worked it out, it talks to the idea of rising from the ashes. Or, to use a phrase coined by Nassim Taleb, being 'antifragile'. What didn't kill us, made us stronger.

When I was 27, I was all guts and very little sense. I had so little I thought it was a brilliant idea to set up my own agency with my art director in London, after only having been there for two years. We had few contacts, a half-decent portfolio and the business sense of two guys who grew up in homes of entrepreneurs.

2019 is set to be another challenging year and, with trust already on shaky ground, we’re barreling into it without a firm footing. Trust. It’s a word that has been fundamentally eroded, from politics and agency relationships to reporting data and influencer authenticity; there’s a very good reason why “fake news” was Collins Word of the Year 2017.

It’s an interesting time of year. Ad schools across the country are filled with students rapidly pulling their portfolios together. They’re prepping for the ‘real’ world and all the stresses and adventures that come with it. What will life be like for all of these grads, not next year, but when they’re angling to be creative directors? How are they preparing for this future and lest we forget – what are the colleges doing to future proof them? (Hopefully not making them print out physical portfolios to start).