Credit: Nikolett Emmert via Unsplash
The media and advertising industry in 2024 excelled at using weasel words to describe something difficult to do or hard to watch because others are getting hurt.
The bent path communication -- as opposed to stating the facts and then getting on with business -- in an industry of communicators usually centres around the delivery of bad news: job losses, poor financial results, synergies and the black cloud of restructuring.
No-one gets fired or loses their job anymore, they are made redundant. Sackings are for others.
The positioning for this, a deliberate exclusion of anything indicating bloodshed, is usually explained this way: We don't want to cause staff unnecessary stress.
And so the industry digs deep to find ways to indirectly describe restructuring. Lately they've been pitched as a simplification, or optimising or an evolution of the business.
Therefore, we assume, nothing to worry about.
These words usually herald dismissals, as the Fair Work Act officially describes the act of people getting fired.
And the stress remains despite the soft words, just like children in class who see another told off by the teacher. Will we be next?
This year a string of new words appeared, many of them applying directly to the industry.
Some were made words of the year, including brain rot (Oxford University Press) and Enshittification (Macquarie Dictionary).
Brain rot is a polite way of describing what happens when you spend too much time on social media looking at low quality (rubbish) content.
This probably is driven by what has been termed careless content. “... the internet itself is now flooded with careless content, AI-generated or otherwise, and the effort to sift through it doesn’t pay off like it used to, for readers and listeners,” said writer Joanne McNeil.
Enshittification is a decline in the quality (swamped by commercial messaging) of an online platform in the name of better profits.
These two are quickly understood.
HR expert Virginia Skully sees Enshittification as a warning sign our industry needs to heed, and it struck a deep chord for a reason:
“Every decision we make either resists or enables enshittification. The choices seem small at first: Will we chase quick profits at the expense of quality? Will we reduce rich strategy into mere performance metrics? Will we use AI to substitute humans rather than amplify their capabilities? These are the crossroads we face, and our choices matter more than ever.”
Other phrases gaining (dis)honourable mentions from Macquarie Dictionary include the “right to disconnect” and “rawdogging” (taking a long plane flight without electronic entertainment).
But it’s those in senior management who excel as spin doctors, packing cotton wool around touchy subjects.
Restructuring across the advertising and media sector in 2024 resulted in roles being lost, some belonging to high profile figures.
Sacking people is always a brutal task and describing the process has a long history of using weasel words to hide the deed.
Take rightsizing which came after downsizing started to stink. But a step up from “workforce imbalance correction” or “involuntary separation”.
This repositioning is mostly a failure. The truth behind the spin can’t be hidden.
Examples in 2024:
WPP, while acknowledging restructuring across the company, including merging creative agencies, described changes at GroupM, the big media arm, as a form of “simplification”. This included streamlining operations and back-office functions.
The global advertising group argued that “simplification” was not in itself a restructure. But WPP has a target of £175 million in gross savings from both back office and commercial delivery.
In Australia, Lee Simpson, stepped down as CEO of whiteGREY, a casualty of WPP’s global restructure. whiteGREY was absorbed into AKQA, the digital design and communications agency, in a move described as a "realignment".
Nine Entertainment's statements were straightforward, with job cuts a “loss” of roles. The media group talked of “reducing the publishing division headcount” due to the loss of Meta money for content.
Seven West Media Seven positioned its cuts, with around 100 redundancies, as optimising a new operating model.
In the process, three senior executives -- chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette, CMO Melissa Hopkins and head of sport Lewis Martin -- went.
Paramount's 10 had its cuts earlier in the year.
But the job losses weren’t confined to the tight advertising market for television.
M&C Saatchi made a “small number” of people redundant as it reorganised its creative team. Staff were informed about the “evolution" in "our creative ambition” in an email.
In October, UM Australia talked of a “structural alignment” across IPG Mediabrands, with the role of UM COO “closed”.
More to come. The end of year holiday period has always been a danger period for redundancies with senior managers trying to clear their Bad Santa duties before the holiday break.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.