(The Origin Story No One Asked For)

I had the glasses.
The black t-shirt.
The neatly trimmed beard™.
I was him—yet another slightly tortured, slightly caffeinated creative living in a major city, saying things like “let’s push the brief” while pushing myself toward the next existential crisis.

New York. London. Barcelona.
Different skyline. Same pitch room.
Same buzzwords.
Same almond milk flat white.
Same half-dead look behind the eyes that says: “I’m on my fourth campaign about ‘connection’ and I haven’t connected with a real human since 2019.”

I worked at some agencies we all follow.
For some clients we all envy.
Making the kind of work that gets shortlisted and then quietly forgotten by Tuesday.

And for a while, that was enough.
The title. The agency parties. The feeling of being “in.”
I could speak the dialect of case studies fluently.
I had the LinkedIn swagger.
I even had a portfolio that made recruiters say, “Wow, impressive. Very W+K meets early Droga.”

But something felt off.
Like I’d spent so long trying to be different, I’d become just another variation of the same archetype.
Same references. Same case studies. Same “authentic” voiceover guy.

Then one day—no dramatic event, just a quiet Tuesday—I cracked.
Sat in front of yet another deck titled “Disrupting the Everyday” while realizing I was the everyday we kept pretending to disrupt.

It hit me like a triple-shot oat milk irony bomb:
I wasn’t bold. I wasn’t brave. I was beige.

Not in a bad way.
Not in the endearing “mid-century modern” kind of beige—but beige with capital B: bland, background, buy‑one‑get‑one‑free.

In a statistically average way.

The kind that comes from swimming too long in the same creative soup as everyone else, until you lose your flavor and just become… broth.

So I stopped.

I didn’t go on a vision quest. I didn’t microdose in the desert (though, tempting).
I just got honest.

I stopped trying to be original.
Stopped pretending I was the one who “saw things differently.”
Because spoiler: we all said that.
We all posted that.
We all pitched that.

Instead, I leaned into the truth:
I am The Average Adman.
A product of the system.
Trained in trend cycles. Fluent in jargon.
And now?
Now I use it all against itself.

I turned my creative midlife crisis into a brand.
My agency trauma into performance art.
My beige energy into satire so sharp it hurts in meetings.

Because here’s the thing:
Owning my averageness didn’t make me weak.
It made me dangerous—in a tote bag kind of way.

I stopped trying to be the loudest.
I started trying to be real.
Relatable. Boring, even.
Because in a world of curated chaos and contrived “disruption,” being honest is practically punk.

So here I am.
Still in black.
Still with the glasses.
But now?
I wear them with full self-awareness and mild contempt.

Welcome to the origin story of The Average Adman.
Born from sameness.
Powered by satire.
And on a very mediocre mission to say something real—by pretending not to.

From Stock Image to Storyteller
(An unauthorized remake of a book nobody reads anymore)

Confession 1: I Looked the Part Before I Knew the Lines
Long before I had a voice, I had the uniform.
Stock glasses. Stock smirk. Stock “creative” headshot—shot against a brick wall, obviously.
I looked like I had ideas.
I didn’t.
But I could quote Ogilvy.
And in this industry, that’s halfway to thought leadership.

Confession 2: I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing. So I Made a Deck About It.
My early ideas were… bad.
Like “rebrand almonds for Gen Z” bad.
But I learned that confidence matters more than craft.
So I made slides. Lots of slides.
Slides with arrows.
Slides with purpose statements that made people cry (or at least blink slowly).

Every time I felt lost, I’d write “insight-led, culturally resonant, emotionally compelling.”
No one ever asked what it meant.

Confession 3: I Wasn’t Breaking Molds—I Was Downloading Templates
Every “brave” campaign I pitched had three references from the same Cannes shortlist.
Every “original” strategy had the same three buzzwords.
I thought I was shaping culture.
Turns out, I was recycling decks from 2017 with slightly newer fonts.

And still, I got promoted.
Because in advertising, you either stand out—or stand in the right room long enough to blend in strategically.

Confession 4: The Real Turning Point (Was a Google Drive Folder)
It wasn’t a burn out.
It wasn’t a post by David Trott. 
It wasn’t a shooting in South Africa.
It was opening a folder titled “Final_Final_V37_FORREAL_THISONE.pptx”
Inside: 46 decks. Same case studies. Same fonts. Same “bold” ideas.

It hit me:
I wasn’t storytelling.
I was stock-piling.
A human Pinterest board of recycled cleverness.

Confession 5: I Found My Voice When I Lost My Pitch
One day, the client didn’t bite.
Not because the idea was too risky.
Because it was exactly like the last three they’d seen.
The silence that followed wasn’t defeat.
It was relief.

Confession 6: I Still Look Like a Stock Image. But Now I Write My Own prompts in Chat GTP.
Let’s be honest:
I’m still The Average Adman.
I still wear black.
Still quote Droga (ironically now).
Still get excited about ad campaigns that make no sense but look great on Instagram.

But something changed:
Now I know it’s a costume.
Now I say the quiet parts out loud.
Now I make fun of the system—from inside it.

Because the truth is:
Every creative wants to stand out.
But the boldest thing you can do in this industry?

Embrace your averageness.
And say it out loud.

And just like this, there’s the link to the store.