Brown dwarfs are the universal in-between – neither a star, nor a planet. They were potentially stars, but failed short. They failed to shine. Unlike the sun, the nuclear reactions on a brown dwarf sputter unstably, sometimes being extinguished of that majestic fire altogether.
Its death is slow, degenerate. It contracts, cools, degenerates very slowly, forever.

Advertising industry is the brown dwarf of the capitalist 21st century.
It’s capabilities are falling short in the arms race for talent. It doesn’t pay to attract good talent at entry and mid-level. It won’t spend money to train the potentially great entry, mid-level talent either (almost every one is potentially great). So it’s stuck in a degenerative loop. It’s leaders spin furiously in their little cocoons at the top without affecting any change in the lives of people who actually get shit done. A lot of hot talk remains trapped inside air conditioned boardrooms.

Agency business is a good business with decent margins serving a need that is never going to go away. People will always need help with influencing others. But the ways in which people can be influenced changes with times. Other industries are stepping in and re-configuring the way people want, the way people seek and the way people connect. The tragedy is, the agency leadership still doesn’t get this. The margins are fat enough now for the leadership to remain complacent and live off the dividend. But the brunt of accumulating inefficiencies, incompetencies has to be faced by the entry, medium-level folks. As such, the best among them keep on leaving.

So this spinning circle jerk is contracting day by day, jettisoning the best and brightest among the young who feel – ‘i can do better than this’. This leaves behind the not-so-bright-but-cocky-enough-to-compensate folks at the center of accretion disk.

Unless agencies start paying, listening to and adopting ideas of its bright young folks, agencies are destined to deteriorate like a brown dwarf.