PR / News

Jay Gelardi, CEO & Co-Founder of Gypsy Inc

20 October 2020

 

 

JAY GELARDI

CEO & Co-Founder, Gypsy Inc

Jay is a creative with 23 years experience working in the UK, Australia and the US, including ECD stints at CP+B, Huge and The Monkeys. Along the way he's picked up over 100 shiny gongs from all the usual places.
 
In an honorable effort to keep the brightest minds from leaving the industry, in 2019 he co-founded Gypsy Inc, an agency that enables the best creative and strategic thinkers from around the world to work together in remote harmony.
 
 
 
 

Le industrie est mort, vive le industrie!

As Covid-19 continues to ravage the global economy, it’s pretty clear that advertising, an industry already beset with a slew of underlying conditions, is in for a rough ride.
 
Rather than allow this global catastrophe to sound another death knell for our much-maligned profession, could this actually be an opportunity to rethink the entire thing, lock, stock and on-site barista?
 
When it comes to real structural change, there’s inertia in most established industries; but considering we spend so much of our time telling clients they need to be more innovative, it’s ironic to look in the mirror and see a model that hasn’t really changed since the Mad Men plied their trade.
 
We are in a service industry of sorts, but as any self-respecting shoeless cobbler's child will tell you, obsessing over your clients is important, but it shouldn’t stop you from getting your own house in order, especially when the out-dated blisters begin to show.
 
The harsh reality is that times have changed, and our industry just hasn’t changed with them.
 
The media landscape that we inhabit continues to fragment, meaning client demands keep increasing, while marketing budgets are falling, and the fixed costs of running an agency remain relatively unchanged. Ultimately leading to one thing. Less money being spent on the actual work, and the level of creativity / quality of output suffering, and it’s been suffering for a while.
 
Marketing problems that used to be solvable with a narrow set of creative skills now require multitudes of specialists that are expensive to keep on-staff, and getting up to speed on a new client’s business takes time and money. Both of which are increasingly hard to come by in an industry that is shifting from a long-term retained model to more of a ‘jump ball’ project situation.
 
Keen to move away from paying so much in agency/holding company fees, many brands have opted to switch to an in-house model, and many of the brightest, most creative minds are being snaffled up by the tech giants before agencies even get a lookin.
 
These are just a few of the seismic shifts that were happening around us, and that’s before Covid struck.
 
Creativity, the delicate mistress that she is, has also suffered from formula overload, with the same ol’ agencies, in the ol’ same cities, filled with the same ol’ ad school grads, sitting on the same ol’ Herman Miller chairs, making... well... the same ol’ work.
 
True original thought is stifled by this formulaic approach, and a reliance on tired and tested triggers that tell the conscious mind to ‘be creative’ lead to derivative ideas pieced together from annuals gone by.
 
Ho-hum.
 
Wait, didn’t you say something about “vive le industrie”? Yes! Sorry, I digress, which is easy to do when there’s such a torrent of “and another things” to wax on about.
 
The opportunity to step back and look at the way we operate, warts and all, doesn’t come around very often, if ever. Well this is one of those times. And the opportunity to rethink the whole twisted shebang has really never happened before. But this is it. We’re in it. Right now.
 
And sure, it’s probably easier to just go back to the way it’s always been, but simply because it’s always been that way doesn’t make it right. Just ask visionary Blockbuster Video CEO, Jim Keyes.
 
In the same way that decentralization has revolutionized many industries, I believe it's coming for advertising too. The means of production have become so democratized that very small teams from all over the world can collaborate seamlessly, all the way from initial concept to brilliant shiny thing ready to be pushed out into the world. Plus, the freedom to work on your own terms is not just good for the soul, it’s good for the work.
 
Maybe we should also rethink all these flashy buildings, adorned with foosball tables and all the microwavable burritos your heart desires, because the younger generation isn’t fooled by that stuff anymore. They want to live a better life with a modicum of balance. P sssh... balance? What’s that!? In my day blah blah blah...
 
As for the giant holding companies? Well we all know how pyramid schemes work. They’re great if you’re at the pointy end, and not-so-great if you’re the one propping the whole thing up. That’s not to say they’re all bad, but when you live in an ivory tower, you’ve likely used your homogeny blunderbuss to slay a few elephants, and that, they are guilty of.
 
For all the disruption Covid has caused our industry, in some ways, it’s catapulted us ten years into the future. Some of us will hopefully stay there, and others will languish in 2020. Surely a fate worse than a fate worse than death...
 
So, here we are friends. Standing at the precipice of the rest of our advertising lives, with a clean slate on the ol’ drawing board, and Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” blasting out the wireless.
 
What are we going to do? I suppose only time will tell.