🎉 Welcome back, friends, enemies, and silent Slack lurkers.

We’re back for Season Four of The ADOTAT Show, and we are not here to tickle your inbox with mild insights and vibes-based career tips.

We're here to burn down the house.

Or at least, the part of the house still pretending open-plan offices are a culture strategy.

This time I sat down with a man so sharp, he could cut through HR buzzwords with a spoon: Rishad Tobaccowala.

Or as I like to call him, the Digital Dalai Lama, the Marketing Madonna, the one-name philosopher-warrior who makes business strategy sound like beat poetry and makes you question your entire org chart over coffee.

☕️ And yes, mine was cheaper than your current CPM.

This conversation? Not TED Talk-deep. Not LinkedIn-deep. This was “staring at your ceiling at 3AM wondering what the hell you’re doing with your life” deep. We didn’t just talk shop—we dismantled the damn store.

Rishad doesn’t sugarcoat it. He says that hybrid work isn’t a bold new chapter—it’s fear disguised as flexibility. It’s what companies say when they don’t trust you unless they can watch you sit in a chair.

Executives may talk about culture and collaboration, but let’s be honest—they want you back in the office because they’re terrified of losing control. Not productivity. Not collaboration. Control. They slap on words like “togetherness” and “synergy,” but what they really mean is “I can’t lead unless I can see you blinking at your screen.”

People aren’t resisting the office—they’re resisting their bosses. The problem isn’t geography. It’s power.

Rishad calls this moment the age of debossification. Employees are rejecting the outdated command-and-control model. They don’t want a manager who tracks screen time and checks digital presence—they want a leader. Someone who understands people aren’t robots and Slack isn’t a personality test.

The reality? Most of the reasons leaders give for wanting people “back” don’t hold up. Training? That happens at events. Creativity? That happens offsite. Relationships? That happens at bars. The office isn’t where the magic happens—it’s where the printer breaks and no one knows how to use the coffee machine.

Let’s get something straight: no one is saying work should be a spa. You don’t get paid to feel fabulous. But if you enjoy your work 70% of the time, you’ve basically won the cosmic lottery.

Rishad points out that work should be meaningful, not miserable. The goal isn’t utopia—it’s doing work that fits into life, not the other way around. And no, that doesn’t mean always working in pajamas. It means having the autonomy to choose how and when you’re most effective—and being trusted to deliver.

That’s the radical concept most companies still don’t get. They’re so busy forcing everyone into the same mold, they forget that talent isn’t plug-and-play. It’s human. Messy. Brilliant. And it doesn’t thrive under fluorescent lighting and badge scans.

If you’re still treating yourself like an employee and not a business, Rishad says you’re falling behind. He believes everyone should operate as a Company of One. That doesn’t mean going freelance or starting a Substack. It means thinking like an entrepreneur inside your own life.

You need a craft people will pay for. A reputation for being collaborative and generous—your own internal API. A growth mindset that keeps you relevant as the ground shifts. And most importantly, you need to understand that your résumé isn’t what’s on your hard drive—it’s what shows up when someone Googles you.

Rishad updated his LinkedIn just weeks ago to reflect this mindset. He removed the fluff, reframed his narrative, and ensured that AI systems like Gemini and ChatGPT surface the version of him he wants the world to see. He’s not looking for a job. He’s looking to remain discoverable, useful, and ahead.

That’s not vanity. That’s survival in a world where digital reputation is professional currency.

This is not a theoretical conversation. This is the now. The office is no longer the center of gravity. Power has shifted from capital to talent. From control to trust. From management to influence.

Rishad makes it clear: companies that still operate like it's 1999 are going to lose. The future belongs to organizations that empower rather than extract, adapt rather than enforce, and hire humans—not outputs.

He summed it up beautifully: companies don’t change—people do. And right now, the people are waking up, scaling up, and opting out of leadership that refuses to evolve.

– “Hybrid” isn’t bold. It’s fear-based compromise.
– The office isn’t the hub of creativity—it’s often the bottleneck.
– Employees don’t want bosses—they want mentors, coaches, and leaders.
– Every individual is now a Company of One—and AI is watching.
– Your résumé is dead. Google is your reputation.

Let’s get to it: is advertising evolving, or are we just putting QR codes on the same dusty rabbit we've been pulling out of the same hat for two decades?

I asked Rishad Tobaccowala this straight-up, and his answer? Brutal. Honest. And completely correct. Most agencies, he says, are still trying to use AI to make their horses faster—instead of realizing they need to invent a car. Spoiler: horses aren’t coming back. And neither is the agency model that charges by the hour, bills for PowerPoints, and hopes clients don’t notice the interns running strategy behind the scenes.

Welcome to the Great Unraveling. Here are the Four Irreversible Shifts hitting the ad industry like a caffeine crash at 3pm in an open office.

If you're still charging by the hour, you might as well be billing in dial-up tones. AI now cranks out briefs, creative iterations, media plans, even pitch decks—faster, cheaper, and at scale.

This isn’t about efficiency. It’s about existential risk. Agencies built on FTEs and labor hours are going to watch their margins dissolve like cheap paper in a rainstorm.

Clients don’t want time. They want outcomes. And AI doesn’t take coffee breaks.

❌ Who’s most at risk?
Mid-sized shops pretending that “junior analyst” equals strategy. If your core value prop is “we’re cheaper than Accenture,” congrats—you’re already in the crosshairs of OpenAI-powered automation.

Martin Sorrell’s big swing post-WPP—S4Capital—was supposed to be the agile, digital-native messiah of adland. But even that model is looking a little… analog.

Rishad was clear: we’re not in the digital transformation era anymore. We’re in the AI-native reinvention era. That means integrating intelligence into the business DNA—not layering it on like a shiny new app over broken infrastructure.

❌ Who’s most at risk?
Any agency still playing merger Jenga instead of building full-stack AI solutions. You can't bolt on innovation.

WPP, Publicis, IPG, and the rest of the usual suspects are looking increasingly like bloated cruise ships trying to pivot mid-iceberg.

Margins are shrinking. Headcounts are bloated. And private equity firms? They’re circling like sharks at a yacht club buffet. Their plan: buy cheap, break apart, flip fast.

Think: performance marketing boutiques + AI-driven creative shops + brand-safe media swaps.

❌ Who’s most at risk?
Legacy holding companies that still think “culture” can be fixed with rebrands and a shared Slack channel.

Here’s where the hammer really drops: 90% of agencies use AI as a crutch, not a catalyst. They plug it in to make reports faster, or optimize media buys. That’s cute.

But the winners? They’re already replacing entire workflows.

We're talking:

✅ Who’s winning?

If your revenue still depends on billable hours, you're not competing with other agencies—you’re competing with AI.
And guess what? AI doesn’t sleep, unionize, or ask for a 401(k).

If you’re waiting for holding companies to transform, you’re betting on an org chart from 2004.

The only path forward?
🚘 Invent the car—rebuild your services from the ground up, AI-first, customer-centric, outcome-driven.
🐴 Or keep racing faster horses. Just know the track is collapsing behind you.

Let’s just get this out of the way: work-life balance is dead. It died sometime around the moment Slack released a mobile app and your boss started “just checking in” at 10:41 p.m. on a Sunday.

We’ve now entered a new, messier, more honest era—what Rishad Tobaccowala calls “life, with work duct-taped to it.”

You heard that right. Not balanced. Not harmonious. Not one of those self-care influencer infographics with a sunset behind a latte. Duct. Taped. On. Like a bumper sticker on a rented Tesla.

Here’s the headline: people aren’t avoiding the office because of the coffee. They’re avoiding it because they don’t want to sit under the fluorescent hum of mediocre leadership. Rishad summed it up perfectly—this isn’t about place, it’s about power.

We’re not in the age of return-to-office. We’re in the age of debossification.

That’s right. Employees aren’t quietly quitting—they’re loudly outgrowing the tired notion that “leadership” means breathing heavily over someone’s shoulder while they copy-paste from Google Slides.

Meanwhile, your CEO is giving a TED-style talk on “building trust,” while simultaneously tracking employee badge swipes like they’re running security at Area 51.

If your culture relies on proximity, you don’t have a culture—you have a monitoring system with a snack drawer.

And before anyone starts with the “kids these days don’t want to work” trope—let’s talk about Gen Z. Because guess what? Two-thirds of them with full-time jobs also have side hustles. Not just to afford rent (though yes, thanks to inflation, a bag of groceries now costs the same as a Peloton).

They’re not lazy. They’re strategic.

These “side gigs” are escape hatches. Backup plans. Brand builders. Optionality machines. They’re not waiting to be promoted—they’re building leverage.

It’s not freelancing. It’s future-proofing.

Rishad, as always, said the quiet part out loud: work is not a spa.
You’re not being paid to feel amazing.
But also? It shouldn’t feel like you’re stuck in an eternal episode of The Office where everyone’s slowly dying inside during a “mandatory fun” meeting.

According to him, three things make life fulfilling:
✔️ Relationships
✔️ Health
✔️ Meaningful work

Not just “a job.” Not just 40 hours of performative busyness for a biweekly deposit. Meaning. Which is a foreign concept for companies that confuse performance reviews with therapy.

And then came the real mic drop:

Companies need to enable talent, not extract it like it’s an oil reserve.

Because that’s what a lot of places are doing, right? Drilling down into people, squeezing every last ounce of productivity, and acting surprised when they burn out faster than your brand’s engagement metrics post-algorithm shift.

You want loyalty? Try not treating your team like data entries with dental plans.

Here’s the brutal truth (because I’m feeling generous):

This isn’t a “future of work” trend report. It’s the reality slapping you across the face with a side hustle and a Calendly link.

So maybe it’s time we stop obsessing over how to “get people back in the building” and start asking:
💡 What do we need to build so they actually want to stay?

☕ For Less Than a Dirty Coffee in NYC, You’re Missing This:

💥 Market Share & Margins: The Silent War in Retail Media
Jay Friedman’s pulling the curtain on retail media’s power grab—and let’s just say, it’s not your media agency calling the shots anymore. Walmart’s playing chess. Dollar General’s quietly cleaning up. And agencies? Stuck playing musical chairs on a sinking boat.

📖 Radical Transparency: What If Everyone Had to Open Their Books?
Jay says a third of agencies would spontaneously combust. The markups, the arbitrage, the verification scams—it’s all here, and it’s not pretty. Unless you like watching the house of cards sway.