Oh, you work in advertising? Allow me to show you the door.
How a new business model transcends a poor economy
If you’ve ever needed a barometer for the state of the U.S. economy, you don’t have to look further than the advertising industry. On the whole, we are one of the first industries to get taken down by an economic downturn, and one of the last to recover. It’s one of the main reasons this career can feel so stressful — aside from the knowledge that you could walk into work one day to find out that a client has disappeared, and your job along with it, you also have to contend with unexpected recessions where your clients reduce or even eliminate their marketing budgets. And right now, there are a lot of people in advertising either without jobs or with reduced pay in order to keep their jobs. My LinkedIn feed looks more like an unending list of people announcing bad news.
Luckily, UpperNinety hasn’t experienced any of that. We were designed to circumvent the pitfalls of the standard ad industry model — and It’s working.
No payroll to make means no jobs to lose
UpperNinety is designed to work by augmenting a strong creative vision with a team of talented freelancers. The talented people on our roster have multiple income sources, and if work slows down, they don’t lose their jobs — they just continue their freelance hustle. So, while we at UpperNinety get to work with these great people less frequently right now, no one has had to scramble to find a new job due to the economic devastation caused by COVID.
The loss of big projects leaves more room for small projects
UpperNinety is not immune to the lack of opportunity for larger projects right now. They’ve mostly slipped away, save for a couple. But, that’s okay. By not being an agency of record for anyone, we never actually “lose a client” in times like these. We simply gain more time to take on small projects. And those small projects have kept our revenue from slipping. in fact, the sheer number has even improved our internal processes, ensuring that no deadline is missed and keeping our workflow neatly streamlined.
Minimal overhead means minimal headaches
UpperNinety has not had to deal with the hassle of switching from an office setting to remote work, simply because we’ve never had an office to begin with. We’ve been working from home since before it was cool. But the big takeaway from our choice to work in this manner is that, while we’ve watched our friends at other agencies fret over the costs of their physical offices while less money is flowing into their business, we have never lost any sleep over that scenario. Having fully embraced remote work from our inception, we’ve been able to deliver the same caliber work as our in-office agency counterparts at a lower cost.
Business as usual
All of this is to say that, at UpperNinety, it has been business as usual. We’re all still here, we’re still busy, and we’re still working at top form. So, if you’re a business that needs a hand with their marketing, or if you’re an agency who has lost staff but has a new opportunity and need creative work done, just reach out. Looking forward to hearing from you.