My point being that recently after financial crisis, many long time professionals has been let go due to redundancies. These people are professionals who I looked up to when I entered the industry and now they are given the boot – Not the way I thought these guys would retire. However, this is just one aspect of the dilemma. At the same time when senior professionals are exiting industry, there’s really not that much flow coming in.

I’ve spoken to many of my industry colleagues in other agencies and it seems like they’ve noticed the same phenomenon. There’s plenty of very creative people coming out of schools, but for some reason they don’t want to apply for a job in an agency. Many of them start their own one man band and choose freelance projects based on their interests. Others form creative collectives that  splits the overheads, but still gives them the freedom of freelance work.

That’s all very good and many new agencies are building business models based on large freelancer network and centralized project management. So far there’s no single agency in our market who has actually managed to sustain this way of organizing. I feel it’s due to our small market, where freelancers have enough work to source projects without agency in the middle. This then leads to small “networked” agency without a real applicable network.

Anyway, back to the discussion with the editor. One thing that worries me is the education in finland. I urge you to watch the Hyper Island video below. There’s huge amounts of info about HI, but one thing that sticks out is the fact that “Sandy” is on a trajectory to become an agency CEO. A modern age ad agency executive who’s fluent with transmedia concepts and a new agency structures.

My question is… where are the future leaders of our national ad-industry? Is Finnish advertising facing the same faith as Nokia, where the magnitude of changing market is overlooked until the gap is too wide to close without dramatic overhaul.

We as an industry, have always looked to sweden and analyzed what they’re doing, but it feels almost like we’ve given up like we did with Nokia. Farfar has come and gone without any comparable Finnish success story. Daddy merged with CPB produces outstanding creative globally. Hyper Island just opened their office in New York… Not sure how Aalto University compares, but I don’t see them working with agencies too much.

Personally, I’m on a mission. I still believe that by challenging existing structures and embracing the change there’s still hope. If you feel like you’re the future of Finnish advertising, drop me a line and let’s have a cup of coffee.

Pax vobiscum.

-Joni

P.s feel free to comment.

The end of winter 2009, UNIQLO launced a small blog widget and bookmarklet made huge movement.

A nice follow-up for the Super Sexy CPR by Forthnight lingerie.

Great concept!
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Now that we’ve got you interested in learning CPR and the abdominal thrust, go get properly certified by taking a class through one of the many certifying authorities in your local area.

The Super Sexy way to learn CPR.

In case of an emergency, please follow the procedure described in this brilliant viral campaign for Forthnight lingerie.

It’s nice to see that other lingerie brands are capable of doing clever advertising besides Agent Provocateur.