The Numbers Paint a Complex Picture
The shift away from traditional higher education isn't just a temporary COVID-19 blip. We're staring down what experts call the "enrollment cliff," a steep drop in college applicants due to declining birth rates after the 2007 recession5. The generation that should be flooding our internship programs and entry-level positions is choosing radically different paths. Please do not misread what I am saying; we are fortunate to have incredible interns at our agency, but the submissions are different.
The reasons are compelling: with college costs more than doubling in the 21st century6, 51% of Gen Z graduates say their degree was a waste of money7. For a generation watching millennials struggle with student loan debt, this math simply doesn't add up. But here's where it gets more complex for our industry. While Gen Z walks away from traditional education, AI is simultaneously eliminating many entry-level positions. Earlier this year, the rise of AI in the ad and marketing industry is fundamentally reshaping the job market, with 50% of the responding executives reporting that AI adoption has actively reduced the number of available entry-level positions 8. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, 40% of employers anticipate reducing their workforce in roles where AI can automate tasks 9.
This creates a perfect storm: just as our traditional talent pipeline shrinks, the entry-level roles that typically serve as career launching pads are disappearing.
The AI Paradox: Efficiency Versus Opportunity
Here's the uncomfortable truth our industry must confront: we're contributing to the very problem we're trying to solve. As agencies rush to adopt AI tools for efficiency and competitive advantage, we're inadvertently eliminating the grunt work that has traditionally been the entry point for new talent.
The irony is stark. Gen Z sees skilled trades as "future-proof" compared to white-collar careers because they believe electricians and mechanics, for example, are safer from automation than account executives and media planners. When 49% of US Gen Z job hunters believe AI has reduced the value of their college education in the job market10, we can't ignore that our industry's AI adoption is reinforcing their fears.
Yet AI doesn't have to be the enemy of entry-level opportunity. The key lies in how we implement it. Rather than using AI to eliminate junior roles entirely, forward-thinking agencies can use it to augment and enhance these positions. AI can handle repetitive tasks while freeing new talent to focus on strategic thinking, creative ideation, and client relationship building from day one.
What This Means for Your Brand
For retail brands, this isn't just an agency problem. It's our collective problem. The creative minds who will shape your brand's future, understand emerging consumer behaviors, and navigate new platforms are increasingly coming from non-traditional backgrounds.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey, 36.2%11 of Americans aged 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Requiring a degree for a role automatically eliminates nearly 64% of the potential talent pool. That's not just limiting diversity; it's limiting the very perspectives that could unlock your brand's next breakthrough.
Gen Z values authenticity, purpose, and real-world impact over credentials. It's no surprise to me that they would rather be self-employed than work for a company. The question isn't whether they have the right degree. It's whether we're creating the right opportunities to harness their entrepreneurial energy and digital nativity.
The Shared Responsibility: How Agencies and Clients Must Evolve Together
The solution requires fundamental shifts from both agencies and clients. We must move beyond transactional relationships to embrace a shared investment in developing the next generation of creative talent.
Expanding Learning Opportunities Beyond Direct Contribution
Currently, agencies often exclude junior team members from client meetings, presentations, creative sprints, and collaborative jam sessions because there's a value contribution concern attached to each person involved. If someone can't directly contribute to the immediate deliverable, they're left out. This short-sighted approach starves emerging talent from the very experiences that build strategic thinking and client relationship skills.
Clients must recognize the intrinsic value of supporting agencies including observers and learners, not just contributors. When a junior creative sits in on a brand strategy session, they're not just learning about your brand—they're developing the strategic mindset that will make them invaluable to your future campaigns. The cost of including them today is an investment in the quality of thinking they'll bring to your brand tomorrow.
This principle extends far beyond meetings. Consider these additional shifts both agencies and clients should embrace:
Cross-Departmental Exposure: Clients should encourage agencies to rotate junior talent through different disciplines during projects. A junior art director spending time with strategy or account management isn't just broadening their skills; they're developing a holistic brand understanding that creates breakthrough creative work.
Client-Side Shadowing Programs: Forward-thinking brands could invite agency junior talent to shadow client-side marketing teams during key business moments, product launches, market research sessions, or executive strategy meetings. This exposure to the client's business challenges creates more strategic agency partners.
Reverse Mentoring Initiatives: Gen Z brings digitally native and cultural insights that senior professionals need. Clients should support structured reverse mentoring programs where junior agency talent teaches senior team members about emerging platforms, cultural trends, and consumer behaviors. This isn't charity, its strategic intelligence gathering.
Innovation Lab Participation: When clients invest in innovation labs or experimental campaigns, they should specifically request that agencies include junior talent in the process. These high-stakes experimental environments are where creative minds learn to think beyond conventional solutions.
Extended Project Timelines for Learning: Clients must accept that developing talent requires time. Building buffer time into project schedules for junior team members to present alternative approaches, ask questions, or explore tangential creative directions isn't inefficiency; it's talent development that pays dividends in future work quality.
Feedback and Critique Sessions: Clients should participate in structured feedback sessions where junior talent can present work directly to brand stakeholders. This direct client interaction builds confidence and strategic thinking while giving clients insight into emerging creative perspectives.
Reimagining Talent Development: A New Approach
The solution isn't to lower standards. It's to raise them in ways that matter. At BR, we're actively reimagining how we build creative teams, and we believe the industry needs to join this conversation.
Skills Over Degrees: Drop the bachelor's degree requirements, and you will see your applicant pools expand dramatically. We need to focus on demonstrated creativity, strategic thinking, and cultural fluency over diplomas and cultures that do not alienate by celebrating top college affiliations.
Apprenticeship Renaissance: Rather than only traditional internships, we’re imagining comprehensive apprenticeship programs that offer real career pathways. These programs provide paid on-the-job training combined with mentorship, creating more job-ready talent than traditional academic routes. Apprentices bring fresh perspectives while receiving structured development that benefits both the individual and the agency. The model allows us to shape talent according to our specific needs while providing meaningful career progression.
Community College Partnerships: Instead of only recruiting from expensive portfolio schools and colleges with prestigious ad programs, we're exploring relationships with community colleges offering design, digital marketing, and media programs. These students often bring diverse perspectives and practical skills without the debt burden that might make them risk-averse in their career choices.
Alternative Credentialing with Comprehensive Skills: Coding bootcamps, certificate programs, and online courses produce job-ready talent faster than four-year programs. However, we must ensure these alternative pathways don't just teach technical skills. The most successful programs integrate soft skills training including presentation abilities, collaborative problem-solving, empathy development, and resourcefulness. These human skills become even more valuable as AI handles routine tasks.
Balancing AI Adoption with Talent Development
The challenge isn't whether to adopt AI, but how to do it responsibly. We need to reframe AI as a tool that elevates rather than eliminates entry-level talent. This means:
Augmented Roles, Not Automated Roles: Instead of using AI to eliminate junior positions, we can redesign them. A junior copywriter equipped with AI tools can focus on strategy and creative concepts rather than spending hours on first drafts. A junior account coordinator can use AI for research and data analysis while concentrating on relationship building and strategic thinking. Leaders are now able to spend more time coaching and growing talent versus being entrenched in the day-to-day work.
AI Fluency as a Core Skill: We must train new talent to work alongside AI effectively. This includes understanding AI capabilities and limitations, prompt engineering, and knowing when human judgment is irreplaceable. We cannot merely use AI. We must maintain the courage to question it, cultivate the creativity to experiment with it, and wield the wisdom to direct it.
Preserving Human-Centric Learning: While AI can handle many analytical tasks, it cannot replicate the learning that comes from client interactions, creative collaboration, and strategic problem-solving without us. We must ensure our talent development preserves these irreplaceable human experiences and contributions.
A Call to Reimagine Our Industry's Future
The advertising industry stands at a crossroads. We can continue fishing in an increasingly small pond of traditional candidates while missing out on diverse, entrepreneurial talent. Or we can lead a transformation that makes our industry more accessible, more diverse, and more innovative.
This isn't about lowering standards. It's about recognizing that the most creative, culturally fluent, and digitally native talent might not follow traditional paths. It's about using AI as a tool to enhance human potential rather than replacing it. And it's about acknowledging that both agencies and clients share responsibility for nurturing the creative minds who will define our industry's future.
We're actively exploring these new approaches at BR, but this challenge is too big for any single agency to solve. We need industry-wide collaboration to develop new standards, create alternative pathways, and ensure that our AI adoption enhances rather than eliminates opportunities for emerging talent.
Join the Conversation
The future of creativity isn't just about the tools we use. It's about the people we empower to use them. Bob Bernstein has long said the most important inventory we have at Bernstein-Rein goes down the elevator every night. The next generation of people are taking paths we never expected, and they're questioning whether our industry has a place for them.
We're reimagining how talent enters and grows within our industry. We're exploring apprenticeships, alternative credentials, and AI-augmented roles that preserve the human elements that make advertising powerful. But we can't do this alone.
How is your organization preparing for this talent transformation? What role will you play in ensuring our industry remains vibrant, diverse, and innovative? Are you ready to invest in learning opportunities that may not show immediate ROI but will define the quality of creative thinking for years to come?
The conversation starts now, because the future of our industry depends on how we answer these questions together.
Sources
https://www.pellinstitute.org/news-impact/blog/the-meltdown-of-higher-education-a-detailed-analysis/
https://wfanet.org/knowledge/guides/2022/medias-got-talent/about
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-graduates-college-poll-206453
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/04/ai-jobs-international-workers-day
