Know thy frenemy. Part 1 of 3. Home of the brave, land of the free-lance.

By Gonzalo López Martí  –  LMMIAMI.COM

• If, like yours truly, you run a more or less conventional advertising operation you might be quite aware by now of the fact that there’s an awful lot of excess capacity out there.
• Brainpower for hire.
• Free agents.
• Galore.
• They are hungry.
• They are equipped.
• They are MILLENNIALS.
• You pro’bly know too that these little bastards are digitally and socially ganging up on us.
• Let’s call it “crowdsourcing”, for lack of a better neologism.
• No new news there.
• Well.
• We can circle the wagons.
• We can try and ignore them.
• Block them.
• Even attempt to defeat them.
• (No chance).
• Or we can join them.
• How?
• Co-opt them.
• Use them.
• I was gonna say “hire” them but the word is a bit of a misnomer.
• “Retain” them would be a better notion.
• Cuz they’re not interested in a 9-2-5 job.
• They couldn’t care less about health benefits, a 401k or vacations.
• They don’t need a cubicle or a computer.
• They don’t need visas or work permits from La Migra.
• You might not ever meet them face 2 face IRL.
• IRL stands for In Real Life.
• They just want a piece of the action.
• Needless to say, they will take it.
• They will cut the middlemen (and middlewomen).
• Sooner rather than later.
• Whether we like it or not.
• We can steward them into the game.
• Coexist.
• Or they will steward us out.
• The action is far removed from Madison Avenue these days.
• Remember the old adage that said something like “the main asset of an ad agency rides the elevator up every morning at 9 and rides it down at 5.”
• Those Don Draper days are over.
• Let’s see what the Harvard Business Review has to say about the aforementioned excess capacity talent pool:
• “… there are now an estimated 17.9 million ‘solopreneurs’ — people working at least 15 hours a week outside of traditional jobs — and another 12.1 million “side-giggers” who do regular independent work but for less than 15 hours a week, according to the fourth annual ‘State of Independence in America’ report from MBO Partners. The number of solopreneurs making more than $100,000 from their independent work was estimated to be 2.7 million…”
• These 17.9 million are on US soil.
• Add the rest of the world to the equation and the talent pool could easily be multiplied by 20.
• Darling, if you thought free-lancing is the province of little odd jobs like logos for neighborhood hairstylists or hipster gastropubs, think again.
• This ginormous availability of talent could solve the oldest conundrum in the business world: navigating the uneven tides and waves of bottlenecks and excess capacity.
• Reducing delays, drag & friction.
• Increasing efficiency in unheard of ways.
• Needless to say, it might & will undercut our already slim profit margins.
• Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger.
• Encroaching will be futile.
• We’re witnessing firsthand the reaction of the establishment against Uber (and Lyft, its competitor): the taxi lobby is rattling its saber.
• It’s just a matter of time though.
• Taxis as we know them must evolve or they will die.
• They won’t defeat the new paradigm.
• They’d better join it.
• As should we in the ad racket.
• The digital era is about processing large amounts of data in a short period of time?
• Yes.
• The digital era is about mobility & cutting cords?
• Sure.
• But none of these definitions fully captures the essence of the era we are living in.
• The digital era is, simply put, DIY taken to 11.
• On steroids.
• Millions of little Don Drapers, male & female.
• Hungry, equipped and ready to rumble.
• To be continued next week.