It's Groundhog Day! Again.

For Americans, Groundhog Day is when Punxatawney Phil – the eponymous groundhog – emerges from his hole and looks to see his shadow. If he does, it’s six more weeks of winter. If not, then hello spring.

But, after the 1993 film, starring Bill Murray, Groundhog Day took on a new and more universal meaning. His character, Phil Connors, is cursed to repeat the day over and over again, stuck in the purgatory of Punxatawney, until he becomes a better person.

So, now we use the term “Groundhog Day” to express that familiar feeling Phil has when he says: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”

It's how you probably felt during the pandemic. But for me it has a different message altogether. It should for the advertising industry too.

Phil is actually the luckiest guy in the world. He gets to grow and learn, acquire new skills and wisdom over the course of single day: a process that takes most of us, many many years. He gets to take risks without consequences, injury, humiliation or unemployment. Or dying.

For us mere mortals, the only way we grow and learn is through living, making decisions (sometimes bad ones) taking risks, and learning from them: growing better, smarter, stronger. Lived experience. There’s no substitute for that. Or shortcuts. Until someone invents Life GPT. What? They have already?

It’s something the ad business – in its old age – seems to have forgotten. As there are so few people in it who have this lived experience: like those over the age of 50. Or even 40. Especially in creative departments.

Phil sometimes makes the same mistakes twice. Three times even. But then he learns. That’s human. Where are all those people who’ve made the mistakes, two, three times or even more? Not in too many ad agencies.

That’s what you’re paying for, as a client or agency, with a truly senior creative. Someone who’s already made the mistakes working for someone else, so they won’t make them for you. And can help more junior colleagues avoid making the same ones. Which means they can make things better, and often faster too, because they’ve had the time to master their craft. Like Phil Connors, when he becomes a brilliant piano player, French scholar, doctor…

Speaking of. If you needed open heart surgery and you had a choice of a cardiologist with two years’ experience or one with twenty, which one would you pick?

Of course, just because someone is older, doesn’t always mean smarter. A lifetime of experience could still be a lifetime of f***wittery. But that’s easy to root out, by looking at their track record. The longer it is, the better idea you will have. And the better ideas they will probably have.

If any of this gives you a sense of déjà vu, well you probably have heard it all before. You’re not stuck in Punxatawney. But maybe the ad industry is and, like Phil Connors, needs to think a bit more creatively about how to get out.