I've been at Nemo for four and a half years now and I love it. I genuinely do. But agency life is a specific thing and nobody prepares you for the specific ways it shapes you professionally. Here are the things I wish someone had said clearly on day one.
But agency life is a specific thing and nobody prepares you for the specific ways it shapes you professionally.
Your best ideas will sometimes die in committee. Not because they're bad, but because risk-averse clients will water them down until they're safe and boring. You will learn which clients actually want great work and which clients want to feel like they approved something. Knowing the difference will save you from heartbreak.
You will care about brands that don't care about you. You'll pour yourself into strategy for a company that ultimately goes with a cheaper agency's mediocre work. This is not personal. It's business. But it feels personal every time and you never fully stop letting it.
The skills that make you good at agency work (speed, adaptability, client management, the ability to context-switch between five brands in a day) are genuinely valuable. But they can also prevent you from developing the deep expertise that comes from living inside one brand for years. Both paths are valid. Neither is complete.
And finally: your colleagues are your real career. I've made friends at Nemo who I'll work with for decades across whatever companies we all end up at. The people are the thing. Jenny, if you're reading this, you're still the best creative director I've ever worked with and I'm buying karaoke beers until one of us retires.