I work as an Associate Director overseeing a team of 5 at an advertising agency.
My client is a well known food and beverage brand.
I'm really struggling to find purpose or meaning in what I do. I think agency life is definitely a grind and the deliverables and deadlines never stop. So it's just non-stop work and it just feels like there's never a moment to breathe. If the client says anything that can be interpreted as remotely negative the agency is in complete scrambles. It makes sense but I think agency life might not be for me.
Now, I'm just feeling like I'm stressing out and working late hours over a picture of a damn burger or French fries or a sandwich. It all just feels so meaningless to me.
I think it really hit me when we were in the middle of a client call and we spent about 5-10 minutes on which animated character should we feature for a social ad. "Do we go with the dog with sunglasses or the cute panther.. well the CMO really likes the Panther in our commercial spot so we should swap him out instead".... I just don't care.
The client is very demanding.and constantly flip flops on feedback. And it makes it feel that much worse that not only am I working on stuff that I really am not passionate about, but I'm also getting pressure and added stress on top of it.
I've also been in social media for 11 years and It hit me that social media is literally all I've done. The trivial day-to-day conversations have really made me question my purpose and what my future holds. The fact that "which emoji should we add?" Is really a conversation to be had in this career field blows my mind.
For the record, I think I go day to day pretty fine. I like my team and I know it's just a job. But then I hit these slumps and then I look back and think, "Damn. What a waste." So much stress and grind over a post that got 1k likes a post of someone holding a hamburger.... for something that people spend 10 seconds on, gives a double tap and keeps scrolling. Cool. Was it worth my sanity? Were the headaches from my client and the anxiety of hitting deliverables worth it?!
Thinking back at the time spent, That's roughly 22k-23k hours doing something that makes me feel purposeless.
I'm not trying to trivialize or minimize our career field. We are all smart, capable, witty individuals. I don't want to offend anybody. What we do isn't easy, people may think it is. But it's not! But for me - it also feels empty.
I think I'm just having an existential crisis and need to lean on a community with similar experiences or someone that has advice on how to pivot and find meaning in what you do!
Has anybody felt this way?
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