Even with the excitement of a mass vaccine rollout, the anticipation of Roaring Twenties-style celebration and optimism is not necessarily on track to achieve a return to “normal” after a year of quarantining, decimated budgets and industry upheaval.
Advertising is one of the many sectors hit hard by the pandemic. In January, staffing at U.S. ad agencies fell to 186,000, the lowest figure since 2014. Even before COVID, the numbers had been trending downward from a high of 208,800 in 2018. That’s a significant number of people who have been laid off or furloughed, and who have been left wondering when and how they can bounce back in a changing industry. However, the most recent jobs reports showed improvement, with 2,200 ad jobs added in March, following 5,900 jobs added in February.
To help accelerate this positive trend, we took some of our strengths—namely, community-building, educational programming and a forward-thinking global network—and put together a first-of-its-kind program to help our colleagues in the ad industry. In 2020, we launched Rise, a free program focused on facilitating personal and professional growth, providing educational resources and connecting ad agency professionals with a supportive community. Tapping into the framework and resources from Facebook’s Blueprint training courses and other professional development resources, Rise aims to support our agency colleagues while they regroup and refocus on what’s next.
Learn, grow and thrive
The concept for Rise began with our team in Brazil. As with others around the world, its economy was devastated by COVID-19. Within weeks, nearly 8 million Brazilians had lost work due to the pandemic and employment numbers dipped below 50%, with more than half of the working-age population unemployed. The advertising and marketing agencies were hit so hard in that region that our Brazil Facebook team saw an opportunity to support these industry professionals. Last July, they launched Rise for anyone impacted by layoffs or staffing reductions due to COVID-19, and the program proved so successful that we’ve expanded the Rise program across Latin America, Canada, Italy, Singapore and the U.S.
Rise is a training and mentorship initiative designed to build social value and inspire resilience during these tough times. We built the program around three ”pillars”: Learn, Grow and Thrive.
- Learn. This segment focuses on training and continuing education. Our global education program Blueprint, which trains and provides certifications and credentials to thousands of industry collaborators, has become the backbone of this pillar, offering free skills training for a variety of curriculum. We’ve focused on three modules that are most judicious for agency professionals: Media Planning, Media Buying and Creative Strategy. Rise is offering free vouchers for community members to take any of the three certification exams and earn a credible badge. Certified learners from the program will be able to share their information with a consortium of more than 30 employees in the creative, media, brand and marketing space who are committed to sourcing skilled, diverse talent from the program.
- Grow. The Grow pillar incorporates virtual workshops focused on soft skills and personal development. We will provide professional guidance from various Facebook experts, as well as Vision Writing from Fast Forward, so participants can create a clear sense of direction for their careers in these uncertain times. Facilitators will be on hand to give tips and tricks, résumé prep, interview practice and more. In this pillar, we’re focused on building confidence and making sure people don’t feel discouraged with what’s happened in their personal and professional lives.
- Thrive. Keeping morale high is important, and the Thrive pillar acts as the inspirational arm of this program. Community members will hear inspirational stories of business and career reinvention from small business entrepreneurs and influencers and be encouraged to share their own. Thrive will help build resiliency for participants, so they feel mentally prepared to take on an uncertain world.
We’ve created this training and support to specifically cater to the needs of agency professionals. Rise’s end goal is to see the industry rebuilt by helping more agency professionals return to full employment, regardless of their ultimate goals: whether that means landing a job through our consortium, pivoting course or launching their own enterprises.
Optimism for the future
We’re proud to partner with organizations like 4A’s and Fast Forward. We want to ensure we’re positively contributing to the ad industry, and with Rise, we see a productive way to use our resources to help the industry recover. We believe fueling people is a key driver of business growth, and Rise is designed to build social value within our advertising community by helping to continually develop talent so that agencies remain at the forefront of innovation and growth.
In many ways, Rise is the culmination of our company ethos: Be bold, focus on impact and build social value. Let’s keep rebuilding; together.
If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about Rise, join our community.
