The freelance world is booming: Meet the William Morris of creative ad talent.
"I’m a writer, I want to make stuff that’s cool and fun. I don’t want to invoice people."
The marketplace of freelance creative people is exploding and not entirely because of lay-offs. If you’re an in-demand ad creative you can call the shots.
Jeff Levick stepped down as chief revenue officer at Spotify, because he didn’t want to continue the next five years of his life at the same breakneck speed. He detailed his thoughts on work/life balance in a Medium post in 2016 sharing that he was putting too much of a burden on his wife and that weekends were simply for gathering strength for the coming week. Now he’s the CEO of We Are Rosie, a company that helps put together freelance teams of creatives. He describes it as a William Morris-style of talent management. We Are Rosie is helping big corporations find ad executives who are gravitating away from traditional agencies and looking to put in work hours that fit around their lives.
“The world has chosen to live differently, to work differently and we were first in the market to build this community,” Levick told me. Fortune 100 companies including Delta, JP Morgan, IHG, Microsoft and AT&T have been tapping freelance teams formed by We Are Rosie which does everything from pulling in art directors, copywriters and fractional CMOs, to figuring out the right tax status for flex workers.
We Are Rosie represents 30,000 independent creative executives - data scientists need not apply. The company facilitates projects that may have a limited time span or could last for years. So-called Rosies helped Delta Airlines execute events at the SXSW festival and helped Intercontinental Hotels Group create an airport presence.
Jane Chance, an Atlanta-based creative director, who focuses mainly on copywriting and content strategy, told me, “I was in a place in my life where I had accrued a network, more financial security and a supportive partner where I could make the leap from full time work to freelance work.” She realized she needed a change when her partner told her, “I don’t want to live with you if you’re going to come home from that place and cry everyday.”
Chance had found that big corporations had too much red tape to deal with hiring single worker freelancers and through a friend she discovered We Are Rosie which now pays her as an employee. As agencies look to lay-off creative staff and replace them with AI tools, bigger companies are finding they still need the speed and efficiency of made-to-measure teams at what is almost certain to be a competitive price.
“I’m a writer, I want to make stuff that’s cool and fun. I don’t want to invoice people. I think a lot of freelancers are that way. It’s not enjoyable. It’s such a wonderful thing to remove that aspect of the business and focus on doing the best work for my clients,” said Chance.
If you’re a freelancer in media and marketing, I’m interested to hear your stories. How do you find new commissions? Has freelancing improved your work/life balance or is it worse? Are remote work opportunities disappearing?
Feel free to comment here or drop me an email: Claireatki@protonmail.com.
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