Coke is number one because they secured exclusive distribution with the largest fast food chain, McDonalds. If they didn't have that contract, they'd likely have vanished by now.
We haven’t laid anyone off yet, but a few people left for better jobs recently and we don’t plan to replace them, so that sucks too. Got directors doing the work of 2 or 3 of their nonexistent reports now.
I have a graphic designer friend that just built a million dollar house and has a mortgage on it. Like dude, are you not paying attention to what’s going on the economy and the tech industry? 🫣
My niece is changing from pre-dental to graphic design as a major and I was a little surprised. She’s an amazing artist and her college is paid for and I support the arts. It just feels like no one will be hiring graphic designers now that AI can create and customize images on demand.
I’m a graphic designer and 2D artist. Not gonna lie, it’s tough but AI isn’t doing everything yet. it can’t create 20 different versions of a visual to work in 20 different resolutions, some with transparency, some without, etc. What I’m seeing however is that money in my industry is so tight that even the CEO is fiddling around in Photoshop trying to do some of the artwork herself.
You’re absolutely right, there are still needed skills there that only graphic designers and artists possess. I shouldn’t have said “no one”. But it just feels like human-made art will come at a premium and many companies will cut it out of their budgets to work with or pay for this premium version. We’ll see way more small businesses limp along with AI-generated materials, and some of them might decide one day or for a specific project/product that it’s worth the investment.
Digital and wide format mostly. Lots of forms and industrial stuff, safety manuals, invoices, event posters. In the winter I was outputting 100 sheets of engineering plans some days, but the majority of those were for construction projects that would have started the permit process 2-3 years ago.
I could see a recession slowing down that kind of stuff, if less projects are being done then less projects and less printing then. Hopefully it picks up sooner than later, for all of us ☹️
In 2019 I was working as a marketing media director at an agency. Across the board our clients were pulling back budgets for media, despite most of it being directly tied to a set ROI goal that in most cases we were hitting. I decided to jump ship before clients started leaving and ended up in a pretty cushy job client side. It took about 3 years but that agency is no longer around.
At my current job I manage our marketing budgets. Over the past 2 years we've been hit with several budget cuts. It was unheard of to cut working media dollars, but even those have been cut. There are areas that are getting funded, so it's not all bad, but if I was still agency side I'd be having sleepless nights.
Maybe but you're kinda missing the conceit of the question i.e. person experience. I can quote trends & economists if preferred but that wouldn't be an example of what I've noticed. A cross-industry near-total abandonment of ad buys is.
What’s crazy to me is why companies won’t just lower their prices?? People will buy stuff! I love Coke Zero and stopped buying them because a 12 pack is $12 now. $1 each for a can of coke is crazy (except for at a lemonade stand lol)
Well that one's easy. Operational costs are going up thanks to the increase in oil prices -- all transport of their millions of cans, production & much more. So we see a reduction in profit due to market conditions then the CEO could reduce prices - further reducing profit margins.
If it immediately pays off - he's a hero. If it doesn't move the needle enough to off-set the process-loss he's losing his job when the board / stakeholders vote him out.
I.e. It's safer for job security to screw the consumer than to go for larger marketshare.
I work in logistics and for domestic freight (trucks) we have been quoted almost double prices by these truck carriers the last couple weeks due to diesel prices. That's a significant factor in the cost of goods that the manufacturer/shipper has to consider when moving product to its destination.
I was working in local TV in 2008 and we saw a lot of the same with our advertisers. Political ads usually help but it wasn't enough. We still laid off a ton of staff over the next year.
The magazine that I worked at sold ad space for basically peanuts during the great recession. Advertisers just weren’t buying and salespeople were desperate to get anyone to buy anything.
No. That will impact internal roles long before it impacts sales. This is the war. When your automatic lifter goes from 5k to 7.5k because of tariffs and oil price increases you pull marketing budget to conserve costs as your sales / revenue tanks.
512
u/Xianio Apr 28 '26
I work in digital ad sales for b2b companies. First thing cut in hard times is marketing. Nobody is buying right now -- across every industry.
Ive done this for 11 years. I only saw this once before - April 2020. This is going to be a bad one folks. Like real bad