Jimmy Gilmore

War­ren G Hard­ing ran for pres­i­dent for promis­ing a “return to nor­malcy.” The word nor­malcy didn’t sound nor­mal back then either. But his slo­gan did tap into the uncer­tainty and rapid change of the time.

They’d just gone through a war in which the rules had changed thanks to a tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. The whole coun­try had just been con­nected by a transcon­ti­nen­tal tele­phone line. And mass pro­duc­tion and a chang­ing labor mar­ket made prod­ucts rad­i­cally cheaper but also caused uncer­tainty and resent­ment from workers. Sounds kinda like the world today except back then they hadn’t yet plunged into to their eco­nomic crisis.

Nowhere is the world more uncer­tain today than in mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. Will we return to a sense of nor­malcy in this industry?

That depends on what you mean. Will the pace of change get back to a slower rate and will we get our lunch hour back? Nah.

But those that do accept that we’re now liv­ing in a state of con­stant change where we are 24/7 con­nected to our work may find a new normal.

Let’s face it. This has always been a bru­tal busi­ness. It chews peo­ple up and spits them out. It used to chew peo­ple up for not being cre­ative enough, hip enough, smart enough, or con­nected enough. Cur­rently it is chew­ing up and spit­ting out­dated busi­ness and career plans. Plans that aren’t adapt­able to change.

Don’t worry, this busi­ness will chew you, but you can sur­vive the maul­ing and get a lit­tle “nor­malcy” back to your mar­ket­ing career if you adapt to the con­stant change. So go ahead and skip all that denial and resent­ment stuff and go ahead with accep­tance. And get a Twit­ter account while your at it, for cry­ing out loud.