The Adaptive Path article The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying To Deliver User Experience Design is a thoughtfully scathing attack on mainstream agencies and their approach to serving consumers through design. The comment thread on the article could wrap around three city blocks, and features voices from all tiers of the design and marketing industry. This post doesn’t really qualify as a response, but as someone caught between the grinding gears of the topic at hand, I wanted to share a bit of my own experience and perspective.

So I’ve gone from being a “UX” guy to being a “Digital” guy. All I had to do was change jobs. You might ask, what’s the difference? Truth is, I’m not exactly sure. Tags and labels, metaphorical or literal, make me itchy. But if I have to wear one, I’d much rather be associated with UX than a squidgy phrase like Digital. At least UX is specific in it’s implications. A UX Guy is interested in user experience. What’s a Digital Guy into? Calculators? Watches with calculators built in?

Once upon a time, right around the time young rockers traded in their Aquanet and spandex for flannels and army boots, I was called a Web Designer. A typical day consisted of meeting with a bunch of people to discuss abstract marketing and business goals, then heading back to my desk to transcribe all the biz-speak into layouts that could be clicked on. It was a brand new thing, and it was fun! My employers (not an agency)  relied on me to sort out the important info and make it navigable and pretty. If I had two projects going simultaneously, that was a busy week. Plenty of time to play Quake Arena with my pals. To this day I still have no idea what qualified or prepared me to do this job. I went to music school. Go figure.

Much later, I became a VP, Creative Director, Experience Deisgn. That’s a pretty long title, but an accurate expression of what I did. A typical day consisted of meeting with a bunch of people, discussing abstract marketing and biz goals, then meeting with smaller groups to rethink all that talk into a strategic design approach. Again, my employers (an agency) relied on me to sift through all the biz-speak, only now I had a design team to make the cool, clickable stuff. I was often responsible for several projects, new business pitches, and thirty or so recklessly conceived internal initiatives. My employees counted on me to make sense of what often feels like a senseless business, and to provide a little guidance through the same maze I had to run, slither, and scratch my way through to arrive at my lofty, long-titled perch.

At a glance, it might seem like the gap between Web Designer and VP, CD is pretty huge. And certainly the later role implies greater overall responsibility. But for the most part, the questions have remained the same: What are we saying? Who are we talking to? Why should they care? These are the questions I’ve stuck with throughout my career, whether I was pushing the pixels or shovelling the, er...strategy.

Art Director-UX-types like me are an emerging subset of designers. Most of us don’t have degrees (or even backgrounds) in marketing, art, or communication. We don’t come with simple, intuitive stories that make it easy for creative recruiters to slot us into open recs. So we have to be chameleons, tweaking our titles and roles to suit the environment and whatever set of puzzles we encounter. The trick, of course, is not getting eaten by the bigger lizards. Especially in big agencies, where politics and client services are the name of the game.

Many of these organizations will outwardly flaunt a passion for integrated digital work, built on audience insight and mutual value exchange. But internally they’re conflicted over how to do the work and what services to sell. They’ve had decades to master TV and print, but only a few short years to wrap their heads around service design, which, in case you missed it, is where Digital gets interesting (or integrated, as the case may be). It’s complex stuff, and where one brand succeeds wildly, another fails miserably – often with the same agency holding the reigns. Why is that? Will it really take decades to come up with formulas as beloved and bulletproof as “Make the Logo Bigger,” and “Sex Sells?”

I’ve recently landed at one of the worlds greatest advertising agencies, and like I said, it’s pretty clear that I’m largely seen as a Digital Guy. And it only took a few hours to see that U and X are fairly recent additions to an alphabet where T and V are the dominant letters. It’s very easy for me to feel like a fish out of water, and so I do...right now I really do. But they did hire me, and I don’t think it was a naive move on their part. Nobody expects me to throw a Digital Switch that illuminates the path toward Righteous Clicks. And nobody’s hovering in my office trying to glom my secret recipes for page layouts, user experience diagrams, customer journeys, or social media programs. I’m pretty sure the only expectation is that I’ll find my own ways to plug in, and that I’ll influence the culture from within.

Now, that has it’s ups and downs. It’s great to be a free agent, it’s nothing new to me. I’m a chameleon, after all. But it isn't exactly a treat to be 100% responsible for one’s own career path, 100% of the time. I’ve experienced my truest and best career growth when I’ve had the benefit of a real boss and mentor on my side. There is no substitute for someone who really gets you. But in my particular lane of expertise and experience, those folks are few and far between. For now.

I’ve spent plenty of time pondering whether guys like me will ever be a true part of the mainstream approach, or if we’ll always be the calculator watches* of agency culture; handy when you need us, but otherwise too fussy to deal with most of the time. Frankly, that kind of introspection hasn’t led me to any meaningful conclusions, just more questions.

What should I do? Should I keep fighting the good fight at agencies, hoping my incremental influence pays off through the work? Or should I try to find that one brand and audience that resonates with me and go client side? I could even – gasp – go deeper into technology, and trade all the biz-speak for some serious algebra. Eesh.

And what about my old, reliable questions? What are we saying? Who are we talking to? Why should they care? Now that I’m a VP Big Deal CD Digital Whatever, and I’ve been dealing with the inevitable frustrations and limitations of the business world for a while, it seems critical to modify these questions:

What do I want to say (create)?
Who do I want to talk to (serve)?
Why do I care (empathize)?

I am not a Digital Guy. I’m a designer. I’m a chameleon, and I’ve been at it long enough to know that sometimes an organization’s color rubs off on you, and some times it’s the other way around. And sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there, and you just can’t blend into anything.

I’m hoping my new, personalized questions lead to rich, fertile, creative ground – and that I’ll be inspired to drive great work, make cool stuff, and maybe even influence the way stuff gets done. It could happen right here in this big ol’ agency, or it may mean a bigger change someday. Either way, it’s up to me to ask the right questions, and to pave my own road toward fulfillment.

So if you’re a sort of a kind of a digital creative, try these questions out for yourself:

What do you want to create?
Who do you want to serve?
Why do you empathize with them?

And let me know what kinds of answers you come up with. This is where stuff gets personal and interesting – I hope you’ll share.

*For the record, I, um, don’t wear one of those. In fact, I don’t wear a watch at all. Oddly enough, the absence of a clock on my wrist was noted by one of my new colleagues as a Digital Guy Thing. Apparently we favor clock-watching by cellphone or laptop. Could this really be a thing? Really?