What The Great Resignation Taught Me About Advertising

About corporate culture, blind faith & the future of work

Work culture or corporate cult? 

That was the question millions had to ask themselves when they were locked away in home offices and had to see their work in a different light.

In 2021 a record high number quit their jobs in the irrational face of pandemic uncertainty.

Toxic culture, poor leadership and lack of purpose were cited among the main reasons.

Any group of people bound together by a common challenge will develop a shared narrative to place their struggle in a better light.

Under the wrong circumstances, the narrative becomes scripture and the group a cult.

The modern workplace is no exception — and COVID 19 proved it.

I was one of the quitters who in the naked light of lockdown had to reconsider if the mission was still meaningful — and not only left my job but changed industries entirely.

Here’s why.

The Cult of the Office

There’s a snake handler in a tent full of people. Everyone is singing, fainting, and speaking in tongues. The context of the seance is much more persuasive than an advertising flyer saying “God is with me — or a venomous viper will kill me live on stage”.

There’s a kind of supervisor in sales who is all about pumping up the employees before a shift. It’s like a NXVIM meeting at Joe & the Juice. The more dubious the job is, the more it looks like a motivational coach on meth trying to talk the sales force into a frenzy.

And in truth, there’s a bit of mass psychosis in every workplace.

Brand courage comes in many shapes…

Even without a middle-manager quoting brand scripture, any group of people working together will soon agree that what they do is more important than it actually is. It’s a mix of groupthink, confirmation bias and the trivial fact that your livelihood is disproportionally important to you.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze argued that the symbol of post-modern control is the office (like the prison was for Focault), where employees surveil each other and become unknowing agents of the workplace.

The physical office is an echo chamber of inflated faith in a shared mission. We make believers out of each other simply because it makes us feel better about what we do.

It’s a kind of mass suggestion that can make you overlook significant problems in the organization — until pandemic disruption gives you new perspectives.

COVID 19 made an awful lot of people reconsider their purpose in life — almost two-thirds of working Americans according to a McKinsey survey — because working from home was stripped of the suggestive context of the workplace cult.

Without a choir to amplify the shared narrative, it suddenly became harder to tune out the nagging questions: What is the point? Where are we going? Are we actually selling snake oil?

Toxic Culture Exposed

A study from MIT Sloan Management Review finds that “toxic corporate culture” has been the main reason for The Great Resignation.

This includes “failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; workers feeling disrespected; and unethical behavior”.

It can seem curious that these factors only became evident from the home office. Unless you consider the reduced persuasive power of the workplace.

Toxic culture can hold you prisoner because bad behavior is normalized and you lose perspective. Like a cult is dependent on gradually distorting reality, an unhealthy business can rely on micro-mass-psychosis to maintain faith in the system and direction. Without distractions and social proof from colleagues, the shared narrative fades and you can spot faults in leadership, culture, and structure much easier. 

Once removed from the setting, the work is laid bare — and you no longer get to go home and compartmentalize it. The job doesn’t just follow you home anymore — it lives with you. But can you live with it?

I Quit

I played my own little part in The Great Resignation when I not only quit my job but changed industries. 

After almost a decade working with video games, I told my boss to shove it and ventured out as a freelance copywriter in advertising.

I only wound up in gaming by accident anyway. One drunken night at a bar got me hired in Nerd Land. I didn’t particularly care about tech but I’d played plenty of games as a kid and enjoyed the chance to write for a wide variety of imaginary worlds and different ToVs.

I really liked the colleagues, the private cook, and Massage Mondays — maybe more so than the actual job.

Because once the pleasant distractions and mass suggestion of the office disappeared, the depressing isolation of lockdown shook me hard and asked if the work itself was worth it. Was the purpose we claimed to clients and ourselves intact in the job we did? Did our shared narrative of quality and craftsmanship have any connection to reality?

I had to ask myself if I was helping clients as much as I could — or simply helping squeeze more money out of them.

It would probably be unprofessional to reveal the answer in detail. Possibly even illegal. But I decided to get so far away that I left gaming entirely. Make of that what you will.

Freelancers Unite

When you take a step back, you see more of the big picture.

Scripture changes meaning once you stop going to church.

The pandemic made people look at their work lives in a sober light and decide for themselves.

Uber disrupted transportation by understanding that certain assumed practicalities (like the taximeter and a sign to visually identify the car) were no longer necessities.

Disruption happens when people realize they don’t need the static solutions of old but can move into more flexible systems.

COVID 19 disrupted the power of the workplace and broke the spell of unhealthy corporate culture.

The Great Resignation is becoming a great re-imagining where companies need to practice what they preach or lose the faith of their servants.

When advertising fractured into specialized agencies it adapted to an increasingly shifty media landscape. But it didn’t face the disruption of the worst pandemic in a hundred years.

Ad Age predicts that 50% of ad-people will be freelancers by the end of the decade.

I suppose it’s only natural that creatives lead the way to new ways of working and into even more flexible structures.

But if “the talent drain” isn’t going to be permanent, advertising and marketing (like all industries) are wise to look inwards and see if the corporate values and harsh reality still look coherent from afar. Because that’s where future employees will be working and watching.