Cynics and Skeptics
The actual attitude problem
We have a pretty foundational problem: everyone’s a cynic, and no one is a skeptic.
The difference here is important, because it’s the difference between proudly remaining stuck in time, or being able to see through hype and make things useful.
Cynicism is pessimism in going-out clothes. You start from an assumption people (and therefore everything) is inherently self-interested, and therefore inherently untrustworthy. You use that perspective to justify disregarding anything that feels too new, too different, or too shiny. To succumb to cynicism is to reject things by default, usually with an air of superiority.
Skepticism, in contrast, is about the inclination to question things. When something new or shiny shows up, you insist on understanding it, on getting some rationale or justification for the enthusiasm you hear about. A skeptic wants to understand, and is willing to challenge commonly accepted beliefs to get there. To dwell in skepticism is to do the reading, by default.
Being skeptical is the root of strategy. Being cynical is the death of it. And when it comes to the big trends impacting advertising (AI, agency consolidation, declining trust), I am seeing a lot more cynics than skeptics. So let’s talk about how to stay skeptical.
As a skeptical strategist, the first thing you should question is the evidence. When you’re doing research, evaluating the source, but also the questions, the timeline, the assumptions, and the outside factors shaping the outcomes, is key. Cynicism dismisses any evidence that breaks your existing model. Skepticism is seeking clarity on what that evidence actually says.
Your job as a strategist is to be wrong, a lot. To be wrong quickly, again and again, so that the work has a better chance to be right. In order to do that, you need to be actively trying to disprove your assumptions, rather than just trying to prove yourself right. This is one of the gifts that AI is giving thinkers - you can sprint to broad ideas and understanding, and actuqlly have time for the marathon of challenging that understanding, again and again. You can’t just be skeptical of other people. You need to start with being skeptical of yourself and your own thinking.
You need to evaluate creative work as a gracious skeptic. Skepticism requires interrogation. Understanding why decisions were made, why a colour felt right, and why this is the best expression of the idea, lets you make suggestions and build. Despite people thinking they want unthinking, celebratory acceptance, they’re going to get a lot more out of active engagement.
But also, you need to be skeptical about the industry we work in, and the work we do.
Be skeptical about process. In conversation with a search consultant last year, he pointed out that every agency talks at length about how it works, and mostly clients don’t care because it’s all the same. Look hard at how you work, and whether it’s serving you (and the end product), or if it’s just what you were taught to do. The best reason to start being skeptical, is when the rationale is “that’s how we did it at [agency name]” or “that’s just my preferred style”. Your process should be a direct outcome of your perspective and beliefs, as a strategist, and as an agency. And that means it should always be subject to (considered) change, if the facts or outcomes change.
Be skeptical about results. As any halfway competent strategist can find statistics to support anything, any halfway competent agency can create a case video that claims they’ve had the most successful campaign of all time. So ask the important questions - how are they measuring, how much of this is broader economic or industry trends, how did this actually impact business results, what other factors explain these outcomes, etc. You can’t actually learn from a case study by reading it and operating under the assumption you’ve been told the whole truth.
Be skeptical about best practices. By definition, best practices will never help you stand out from the competitive set; this is a list of the stuff everyone is going to do. And very often, best practices promoted by a platform are a matter of teaching to the test - they aren’t changing customer behaviour or perception, they’re playing toward the platform mechanics or measurement strategy that will assign ‘success’. If I’ve learned anything from the last 20 years, it’s that media platforms will often misrepresent results in their own favour, and not necessarily through malice. It’s just that if the internal dashboard is saying video makes people successful on Facebook, Meta has no real reason to interrogate that.
Be skeptical about new ideas. Not that long ago, the entire advertising industry was preparing to pivot to NFTs, crypto, and the metaverse. Because they were new, buzzy, and smelled like the future. New things are awesome, because novelty creates contrast, and contrast is a hell of a teacher. But something can be both new, and crap, at the same time. Part of your job is to immerse yourself in new things well enough that you can speak the language, but also see through their hype. I was part of the generation of strategists that were convinced social media would save the world. We would have been better served by a hint more skepticism.
But maybe the most important thing: you need to be skeptical of cynics.
This industry is drowning in them. People who believe advertising serves no purpose, is a net drain on humanity, or is inherently evil. People who insist that no one has ever enjoyed a career in this industry, that it’s a trick and a trap, that everyone needs to get out as soon as possible.
This kind of cynicism is understandable, because this is a hard job. It’s a world where you get to be creative, and have a 50/50 chance to make a decent living, but as a result it’s ~50% as ruthless as purely creative endeavours, which is to say, still incredibly ruthless. Think of careers as operating on a creative validation / financial stability scale. In one corner is trying to be a movie star - high creative validation, but low financial stability. You will probably not become the next Tom Cruise. On the other end, trying to be an accountant - low creative validation, but high financial stability. You might love your job, but probably not for creative reasons. Advertising sits somewhere in the middle. Decent chance of creative validation, decent chance of financial stability - but only decent. No guarantees, at all, of either. If you didn’t know what you were getting into, I can see this pushing you toward cynicism. If you didn’t know what you were getting into, you probably have a right to be angry, either at others, or yourself.
But cynics are destroying this industry. The idea that the best thing we can offer is efficiency, is rooted in the cynical idea that we don’t add any real value. The common cynical suggestion that there is no genius-level talent in advertising, is so directly tied to personal insecurity that posting the idea on LinkedIn should trigger a coupon for therapy. If this is genuinely your attitude toward the ad world, it’s okay to leave. Every day I see another dozen people who are fighting for a spot.
Working with ideas for a living is pretty great, in comparison to many things. We owe it to ourselves, and to everyone who starts out in this industry, to both be honest with them, and to not let the cynicism take us.