บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Familiar Misery vs. Unfamiliar Freedom: 3 Predictions Shaping the Creative Economy

acquire their way to growth and we help talent do the same thing. In that, we have 20 consultants every month speaking to a thousand people from New York to Nairobi to LA to... Anywhere you can imagine around the world, wherever there is creative talent being utilized for growth, that is what we do. So that, in the nature of all those conversations, so many things come up. You hear about where companies are shrinking. You know, the recruitment company or growth consultancy is the first company to hear if a company is shrinking because the talent gives you a call and they say, I want to leave this place. At the same time, you hear who's growing. because if an agency or a brand is suddenly growing, they call the recruitment or the M&A company. So that that we have a front seat ticket to seeing ⁓ where growth is happening as soon as it's happening and why, most importantly, that growth is happening. I'm using the intel from these conversations and I'm using the conversations that I'm having with people at Unknown, but also from our group Good CEOs, which is now a group of 70 different CEOs around the world. I'm using that intel to tell you as a listener where there is growth, what we are seeing in the industry. So I'm going to start with my prediction. And my prediction is the rise of IP in professional services. What the hell does that mean? So we know that for a long time, the model of the creative industry has been broken time for money. ⁓ is no longer working with the rise of AI. seeing that things can get made in a heartbeat. Yes, not to the same quality as a bunch of human beings just yet, but we can clearly see that we can't charge for the time in creating these things anymore. have to create, we have to charge for the value that they are creating. So loads of different companies that we're speaking to are reconsidering how they charge their clients for the work that they're doing. I can see three really clear options now. And I think a lot of the models that we're seeing from ad agencies, design agencies, influencer agencies, to be honest, any kind of agency, I think they will start to move to this style of pricing. I think particularly for small to medium brands, this is harder to do with blue chip, Coca-Cola, massive procurement teams. But when you start to come down the ladder, maybe you're not a billion dollar brand, but you're a nine figure brand, we're seeing a lot of the agencies that are servicing those nine figure brands and we're seeing them change the way that they price their products and services for those brands. So the first one, I'm really, this is the most common and this, think you can see it sits on a different barometer of risk. So if one end of the barometer is, least risky thing you can do the other end of the barometer is the most risky thing that you can do so One end This is the nearest for to time for money But we're not talking about time for money, and I would call this like product ization of services so Agency says to the brand what kind of campaign are you doing okay great? ⁓ That us we were priced out of this much We're not going to talk to you about the amount of people or the amount of time that's gone into it. It's a fixed price It goes up if you need to get more done and it goes down if you need to get less done. We're not talking about time sheets, fixed price, productization. lot of the work that people like Caroline Johnson does is in this And I think that's going to become more and more popular because you can get a bigger margin ⁓ and have ⁓ almost a shop ⁓ of that you're selling. How risky is it? ⁓ Nowhere as risky as what we're going to come onto. They pay the products. They get the that you've created them. ⁓ There really any risk taken on. Okay, you might have taken some risk by putting some head count against that thing, but really ⁓ it a, we're buying it off you kind of transaction. In the middle of this barometer of risk, you have what's well known to be known as ⁓ outcome pricing. This where an agency is saying, okay, You are growing your brand in a new territory. You're launching in ⁓ this part of Africa or you're launching in this part of Europe. What is the value of this campaign, of this strategic consultancy, of this influencer campaign, whatever their chosen form of application? What is the value of that to your business? Okay, what we're going to do is we're going to reduce our fees. and we're going to take an upside in the outcome of the work that we produce for you. So we'll have a ratcheted system. If it produces this many sales or this many downloads or this many visits, then we'll charge this much. And if it goes all the way up here, we're going to charge this much. Now we're in the middle of that risk barometer because we're going, okay, this campaign or this thing could do really badly. We could think that we're to do this incredible thing, but we're at risk as an agency because... We're not in charge of your supply chain. We're not in charge of anything can happen. If you were launching into Dubai six months ago and the world war happens, that's neither of our fault, but we're taking the risk because we put headcount and we paid salaries to make this work happen. And we know now that our outcome is gonna be very low. So that is a huge risk to us as an agency and it's a huge risk to you as a brand, but we're in this together. And I think a lot of brands, again, I'm saying smaller. you know, maybe not these blue chip brands, potentially these blue chip brands would like that because you're kind of saying money where our mouth is. Now, procurement teams, again, harder to get through with this idea of pricing. They want to see a nice, simple time for money kind of stull time sheety thing. But we're starting to see these actually have a really good impact on both the agency and the brand because there is skin in the game, there is joint risk. And so therefore, when you win, we win. Interesting. At the very end of this

barometer, of risk and there might be even more things at the other end, but this is what we can start to see is IP and this is intellectual property. So if you imagine an agency, they could go into a joint venture with a brand. Let's say the brand wanted to launch a new skincare line and they wanted to use talent, a really famous person that reflects that that brand very well and they go into a joint venture. kind of compare this to like Air Jordan, Nike kind of thing. where Michael Jordan would have got 2 % of all Nike sales because they can put his thing on the Nike shoe. I think we're going to see millions of these. Millions of these being created by talent companies that share the upside with the talent. But interestingly, millions of companies that, or sorry, agencies that, yes, have access to the talent, but more importantly, have access to the strategic experience of how to position a brand that's being launched into a new territory, So that is risky. That is, you're putting up, this is a long, long term bet. You're saying we're basically building a company with talent in the center of it that is a product that we will then co-own with you. And it hasn't always got to be a physical product. It's not always got to be skincare or a Nike shoe. It could be a format. It could be that you are pitching a let's say an owned IP, Love Island, for example, you could have come up with a format like that and you put someone in the center of that format and the brand co-invests in that format with you and then you sell that to Netflix or you sell that to YouTube or whatever. A streaming company, Disney, da da da da. This is where we're starting to see the most amount of growth. It's long-term thinking and if you think about the rise of the independents, If you are an independent company, this is the best thing that you can have in your portfolio of clients because the value and the valuation of your business isn't suddenly going to, it's not going to be wet tethered to six to eight times multiple when you eventually do some kind of deal. IP companies have recurring income because they've built the product. And yes, there's marketing to happen, but generally once you crack your margins with a new product or a new format, it's a lot of passive income because the thing's already been built. And then people are buying the thing that you've built. So really exciting for independent agencies to start considering projects. Are the holding companies going to do this? I cannot imagine a world where a company that is as big as a WPP reporting quarterly on their one to 5 % growth, which is what they're expected to do for their shareholders, suddenly going, ⁓ we bought this thing. It's going to take about five or six years to vest. And so we're going to take loads of that capital expenditure and we're going to pump it into this thing that may or may not work out. I just can't imagine the holding company be able to say or the CEO of that company telling Wall Street

or telling the markets we're doubling down on IP. So a huge opportunity for independent agencies to get ahead of these larger companies, start to cut deals with brands, start to be exposed to some of the risk and saying, hey, look, we're also running our own company. We're going to double down on this thing with you. And if this has to work out, it's win-win. It's actually, unless we both win, we both lose here. There's so much at risk for both of us. So we're both driven to make this thing work. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. I think professional services in general, and this doesn't have to just be tethered to the creative economy, is going to move into more IP-focused projects. So that was my first point. IP, the rise of IP in professional services. Okay, my second prediction, and this is as much of a hope as it is a prediction. This is around junior talent and we don't speak much about junior talent. be honest, as a business, unknown, we don't do much in this world. We wish we did more, but when you have to choose who we're working with, we're much better known in our worlds of senior talent and that kind of thing. For the last two or three years, it's been very hard to get a job in this industry. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. Yes, number one is AI. the jobs that a junior person would do in a business, whether it would be transcribing notes, whether it would be fetching teas, research projects, a lot of the heavy lifting, preparing decks, the monotonous tasks that most people listening to this would have been doing when they first entered the industry. Those have gone and pretty much have been replaced by AI. That is a problem, and I think that is the key, key reason as to why there's been this... challenge of how to hire junior talent. The other thing is because of the investment in AI and because of the pressure on margins and everything else, companies have always viewed hiring a junior person as a long-term investment that doesn't yield generally within the first one or two or three years. I think there's been a wrongful narrative around junior talent in the junior talent doesn't create value in a business really quick enough to impact your P&L within the first two years. So when you're looking at that, you're going, where do we want to invest our money? Do we want to invest the money in junior talent or in AI? I think a lot of companies are choosing option B in AI. The good news is now we're seeing what AI can do and what it can't do. To be quite frank, there's a huge Gartner report that's just gone out to say that think 82 % of companies that using AI have recorded that they cannot see any top line generation impact, which means that it's purely focused on efficiencies. that is the case and that is true, the thing to happen now is the narrative change what it means to be a junior person within a business ⁓ and how view junior talent coming into your company. ⁓ I think, I am hoping, that companies are now looking at junior talent to say, what is our joining to creating value path and how can we make sure that a junior person isn't doing all the stuff that we did when we first joined a business to get their experience. They're contributing to value super fast. And what kind of environment are we building in our business to make sure that we can speed that up so junior talent feels like they're contributing really quickly. I think the good news is now We know what the capabilities are of AI. People see junior people as people that know AI better than ⁓ the senior people, which isn't true. We have kind of presumption, it's like, ⁓ you're young, can you help us build an AI strategy on a thing that you've never had any idea about before in a company that you've never belonged to? It's a really unfair level of expectation to have against a junior person coming into the industry. I also really want to land the... The narrative of having to do your 10,000 hours in monotonous tasks, I think that's dead. I don't think that, you know, taking the things to the printer and transcribing notes and, back in my day when I was trying to become a writer, I did all these things, or back in my day I was doing all these things. Fair enough, I agree. You need to do your 10,000 hours in something. But let's not force people to do 10,000 hours in things that now can be done by a computer or AI. So... a rethink of what does a young person now need to double down on? I can call this now, IRL experiences are on the way up. People are spending less time on their phones. This first generation coming through, apparently a generation to spend less time on their phones than the previous one before. What does that mean? That means people will need to be better at dealing with people in person. You need to be better at presenting ideas, better at convincing people to work with your ideas. So persuasion. personal skills, going out and meeting people. These are the 10,000 hours. if you had a junior person to join your business and you said, if you are going to be indispensable to this business in five or 10 years time, it isn't gonna be in getting really good at that monotonous task thing that you're doing there. It's in meeting people. It's in understanding what makes a person tick, how to get someone to trust you, how to get someone to believe in what your ⁓ beliefs are. ⁓ I think as we go into this new era of junior talent joining our businesses, the first question we need to ask ourselves is what is the value to this business? Could we send them on exploration journeys where they go out and they find similar companies to our business and maybe we can start to broker some interesting partnership deals? ⁓ they use AI to do a market map of our competitors ⁓ ⁓ out what they're doing differently to win more business or they're doing differently to make better work? ⁓ we get them out and going to meet other from our competitors to go and meet potential people we can hire like ⁓

turning junior people into being the representatives of your business and the researchers but going out into the world to figure out and hear and see and touch and feel what is going on. I think that is what the value is going to be when it comes to looking at junior talent coming into your business ⁓ versus we lock you in a room and you get really good at doing all the AI stuff that we don't want to learn ourselves. I don't think that's the solution. Perhaps there's a mid-ground between those two things. But I think the key thing that we do now as junior talent comes into our business is we figure out how can we get them out into the world? How can we get them in front of as many people as possible? And how can we get them making mistakes, learning in real life versus being hit behind the screen or doing some sort of AI task? So it's a hope. It's not really a prediction. It's a hope. I think if you're a smart company that wants to evolve and have brilliant junior people look at your business be thankful that they started and worked for it This is the right path to take Okay, this one I didn't want to do, but I like I need to do this because I've had a couple trolls, I've had a couple people tell me that they don't agree with me ⁓ and I've felt so strongly about being right in a situation. ⁓ I think sometimes ⁓ we to be right ⁓ versus effective. And I think a lot of us emotional ⁓ people Let our emotions guide what is actually right versus what is actually effective. Before I go into this, super important to say this is not the world that I want to see. It's just the world that I see. And that is the open to work green sash on the profile. Somebody wrote a post recently and said, I'm a hirer ⁓ I am telling you now, ⁓ I'm hiring for a permanent position and I see that you have an open to work green sash on your profile, I will deem you as less desirable as someone to hire. That's really sad because whoever the person is that's put that on their profile has done that to maximize the chance of getting hired. And in some fucked up strange world, it is literally doing the opposite. That's not what we want to see. And that's not what think LinkedIn have made that feature for. However, that is what is happening in the world of recruitment and in the world of desirability. And I want to explain why I think that is and explain where I think having those badges could be helpful and where they're really not very helpful. Okay. When someone is hiring an important person permanently for a business, they... are hiring that person to grow their company and build their business. They aren't just doing it for them. They have to convince their colleagues, they have to convince their investors that whoever they've hired is the best person in the industry for that position. So they usually come to a company like mine, they'll come to an unknown and they'll say, we want the best of the best. Please only send us the best of the best. And so a company like mine will go

into the market, will head on people that aren't looking for a job. Generally, I've... I give a rough guess to say that 60, 70 % of the people that get the roles are usually in a role. It's much easier to look for a job when you have a job. I think most people know this. It's a shame, but unfortunately that's true. The issue we have is that there is an under supply of jobs and there is an oversupply of talent. So it's fair to say there is not a constraint of availability in this market, particularly for permanent talent, particularly for senior permanent talent. There is not a constraint for availability. When that pipeline of talent is being built and the recruiter or the head of recruitment internally shares the profiles of the talent, you want that person that you're sharing to feel desirable and the best of what they do. And whether we like it or not, if somebody has that they are available to work on their profile and the hirer sees that they are available to work, there is something that happens before their judgment can even catch up, which is... This person isn't as desirable as the other people because they aren't looking for a job. And I'm really sorry to say that that is true because I have empathy for the people that are just trying to get hired. However, this is working against you. If you have a green available to work on your profile and there are two of you sent forward for a role, I would hazard, I would make a bet to say the person that hasn't got that on their profile is more likely to be deemed desirable to hire and therefore. more likely to get the job. I will caveat this and say green thing saying available to work is super helpful if the constraint is availability. If there is an under supply of talent to a market and an oversupply of roles on, it's an incredibly helpful tool. If you're in hospitality where it's getting chefs, if you're in staffing and you're trying to stuff up for an event, yes, you want to let people know that you're available to work. ⁓ and again, this is unpopular to say this, in the creative economy, even in the freelance world, people want to book the people that are hard to book. They'll say, like, we want them, but they're so hard to get. They're always booked up. Because if someone's always booked up in the freelance capacity, you could guess they're probably very good at what they do. And they're not working at your business, they're probably working at your competitor. So you want to give them, those people, ⁓ role because clearly everybody wants to hire them. But I thinking in solutions. So ⁓ what is the right to do? Okay, so let's say you've made redundant. Let's say that you have unexpectedly suddenly become available ⁓ and you're tempted to let the world know in one click of button that you are now available to work. Pause. And I want you to do something might be the first time that you've done ⁓ kind of thing ever, or maybe the first time in a while. Number one, before we even tell anyone that we're available to work, what are you available for? Because you've got the experience, the skills, and everything that you've built over the last few years, not just to be available to anyone's work. No, you're a professional, you know what you're good at, and you know that... ⁓ There are things that you definitely wouldn't do for work and you know that there are very, very specific things that you would love to do for work. So the first thing I'm going to say is this is a personal exercise. Write a list down of all the things that have drained you and energised you over the last three years. Be really, really clear on the stuff that you've really enjoyed doing and the stuff that you have not enjoyed doing. Get excited again. Get passionate about the things that you've loved. And I get it, sometimes we're in a rush, we need to make sure that there's income to pay the mortgage and the bills. if you can 10 minutes, 15 minutes to remind yourself who you are, the value that you create, and how brilliant you at the thing that you do, this exercise is ⁓ majorly important because when move on to the next part of the exercise, you will feel clear ⁓ and certain. of what you are available for and what you're not available for. So that's the first thing is understanding what it is that you want to do next with your career. The next thing is ⁓ that down and actually saying, ⁓ I'm here. So let's tell the story. We go, ⁓ network. ⁓ the last few years, I've been boom, boom, boom. And you list the things that you've loved doing and the things that you've contributed value to. For the last few years, I've been boom, boom, boom. Now, ⁓ I am available and I'm really interested in these types of projects like the ones I've done, boom, boom, boom, because I know I add value to those things. So if you are a boom and you're looking for a boom, that is what I do and I would love to have a conversation with you. So we have gone super specific. You've proven, you've socially proven who you are. You've backed it up with some experience that you've had in the last few years. It's relevant. You've shown the impact that you've made. this person seems like someone that I wanna have a conversation with. Whoa, that's how good it is. We've got fireworks in the stage. So once you've done that, once you have written this thing, I know we hate doing this stuff. I know it's cringe, but if we can just climb over Cringe Mountain, this is gonna serve you. Post it, put it up, see what happens. You might get crickets. You might get a ton of people reaching out to you being like, I can't believe you're available. You're incredible. People might comment on it and say like, wow, this person's excellent. Anybody who ever has her in her team, in their team, is a lucky person. Get out into the world. You never know what is gonna come from one of those posts. Be specific about what you want. Now once you've done that, make a list of all of the people that you've enjoyed working with in the

past five years and then make a list of all the people that you would love to work with who would probably like to know that you're now available for work. Make a list of those people. And then let's say that list is 10 of each, 10 people that you've loved working with and 10 people that you would love to work with. Send it to those 20 people. Send that post saying, hey, ex person, great news. I'm available. I love what you do. Or I love working with you. I just wanted you to know that I'm around. People are good. People are kind. People are helpful. They will either go, that's amazing. We have loads of things. We would love to talk to you. Or they'll say, thanks so much, we haven't got anything at the moment, but it's great to know. Or they might even say, have you thought about reaching out to these people because they will definitely need some help? I am not reinventing the wheel here. I am very aware that I am telling you things that you definitely already know. But I wanted to offer what I would do and the things that we tell our talent to do when they do become available unexpectedly or expectedly. It really is. a better way of doing this than putting available to work on that green stash on your profile. And I am again, I am sorry to say that. I really wish that wasn't the case. I'm very tempted to campaign to LinkedIn and say, can we have some nuance? Can we have some different stashes? Because I feel like these are causing the reverse effect that you want to have with this platform. So that's my open to work alternative. I genuinely hope you find that helpful. Sometimes just hearing the obvious thing can be really helpful. So yeah, I hope that helps. Okay, so those are my three things. up, I want to talk about what we have coming up because you'll know that Cannes Lions is next week. when you're listening to this, Cannes Lions would have been last week. So I'm really excited about this year. I pray that this is the year we are not hearing about AI in every single panel. I pray that we're speaking about the effectiveness of work. There's an incredible new line called the creative brand line, which is talking about brands and effectiveness that are happening within brands, which is really cool. I just, think, I think we have got to AI fatigue ⁓ we've been thinking at unknown. There's been so much ⁓ ⁓ about the creative economy and yet we see so much growth and yet we know it's growing by double in the next five years. So there is growth happening. But more importantly, in this world where we're all speaking about, is AI going to take your job? Why aren't we speaking about the people in this industry are value to this industry? Why aren't we celebrating why they're in this industry, why they got into this industry and why they've stayed in this industry? So ⁓ we thinking with our friends at 10 days, shock horror, we're back. And we've made a little fun thing together. I don't want to say too much about what it is, but imagine a card game. Imagine a rude, weird card game. This is an experiment because we have two events. We have one at Canva, which is going to be gathering, I think we've got 250 different creative people from around the world on the Canva Cabana. Because that's going to be such a rich room of incredible people. and we're hosting it with JKR and we're hosting it with D &AD, we wanna have fun with those people and we wanna see what's their reaction to this weird little game that we've created. It's just about being in real life and having real life conversations and not drenching conversations in the boredom of AI and all the things this robot can do. So we've made this game. We want it to be a reminder of the weird stuff that goes on in this industry that no one's speaking about. I think we've missed the... overheardness of our industry. Like, we've forgotten that this is majorly a human business based on human intuition, making shit that humans want to engage with. So it's a human game. Human? We're doing that on the Monday and then on the Wednesday, the complete flip, we've got bad CEOs. And bad CEOs is going to be a combination of 50 or so founders from around the world, but also investors and lawyers and people that help these companies grow. and we're gonna make them play the card game too. So that's gonna be a different kind of cut. We're gonna have really creative people playing these games. Still very creative people, but very senior and established people. And then some people that probably are used to wearing suits ⁓ playing this fucked up game. So we're really excited. I can't wait to see what is the outcome of this game. Can for us is... mental, we need to be everywhere the whole time. We want to speak to all the people that we love and we work with and it's very hard to get everywhere. So we're going in with trying to kind of get everyone to these two moments so we can see everyone really quickly and then spend the rest of the time meeting our clients and hearing about the buy side proposals and the team builds that we're doing around the world. So yeah, it's going to be a hectic week. We fly at 5.20 AM. So when I'm next speaking to you, I hope I have a voice. I hope I have had a good week and I hope that we've had a lot of fun as a business with all of our friends. stay tuned. We'll come back on how that went. You might see some content flying around. I wait to put it out there. Thank you. If you're you've got this far. I really appreciate you listening to these things. I really want to turn this into more Q &A. I want to answer the questions that you guys have. We had some great questions last time. Ask me anything, I'll bring it up, I'll talk about it the podcast. I want to hear what you guys want to hear more about. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed this. I really hope I've survived Cannes and au revoir.