Humans are great at killing the messenger.
Not literally (at least most of the time).
But it goes something like this... someone tells you something you don’t want to hear, and instead of sitting with the message, you decide the messenger is the problem. They’re too blunt, too negative, too critical.
And just like that, you’ve made it personal.
It’s a strange thing we do—turning feedback into an attack.
You rationalize this so that if the person delivering the message is the real villain, then the message itself doesn’t matter.
And if the message doesn’t matter, I don’t have to change.
I can stay exactly where I am, and everyone else can deal with it.
But it’s not just avoidance. It’s self-preservation.
So you have two options. Both miserable.
When faced with criticism, you’re staring down a choice you don’t want to make:
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Paint the messenger as the tyrant. Convince yourself they’re the unreasonable one. This way, you get to dodge the hard stuff—growth, change, accountability—and stay blissfully stagnant. No risk, no progress.
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Confront the message. This one’s harder. It means facing the fact that you might need to do something new or uncomfortable. It means looking directly at the fear that maybe, just maybe, the messenger is right.
The irony is that we often combine the two. We dismiss the person delivering the message as unfair or unkind and then play the victim of their supposed tyranny. “They don’t appreciate me.” “They’re too harsh.” “I’m doing my best.” It’s a convenient little narrative that lets you sidestep growth entirely.
But it’s also a dead end.
It's called Ad Hominem.
Which precisely means an argument or reaction directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
Killing the messenger does more than ignore the message—it ensures you’ll never hear it. You can yell louder, dismiss faster, or stew longer, but it won’t make you better. You’ll just end up stuck, defending a version of yourself that doesn’t have to face the hard truths.
This happens everywhere.
A client points out flaws in a project, and suddenly they’re “difficult to work with.” A boss critiques your strategy, and they’re “micromanaging.” A team member raises a concern, and they’re “just being negative.” The moment we label the messenger, we sidestep the message. It’s a universal reflex, and it feels justifiable in the moment.
But the truth? It’s self-sabotage.
This instinct can poison any relationship—professional or personal—because it replaces growth with defensiveness. It shifts the focus from fixing the issue to preserving your ego. And while your ego might feel momentarily protected, your potential takes a hit.
When you make the choice to listen—to really hear the feedback without filtering it through defensiveness—you start to separate the signal from the noise. The signal is where the growth is. The noise is just your pride, yelling over it.
When you stop trying to kill the messenger, you’ll be shocked at how much clearer the feedback—and your potential—becomes.
Alright, my usual borderline existential spiral about whatever’s been gnawing at me is officially over. Now, let’s get into the good stuff: how we rebuilt after losing nearly 40% of our revenue, a FREE Meta ads creative framework (you're welcome), and how to create a media plan you’ll actually want to put your name on.
"Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots."
— Frank A. Clark
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times
A story from inside the agency...
It’s true, what I said: Most of these stories had me looking around, perplexed, thinking, “How the hell did I get here?”
But usually, in a good way. Like, “How the hell did I get here? This rocks!”
But in this case, it was more like, “How the hell did I get here? This sucks!”
At the end of 2019, our two largest accounts were AMC Networks and Jive. Combined, their retainer fees comprised 40% of our monthly recurring revenue. Things were good, really good. I felt like we were on the cusp of serious growth. Our account team was strong, and even though our payroll was higher than it had ever been, our numbers were healthy.
We were also outgrowing our second office. We needed more space. I had been looking at rentals, but renting a space that would accommodate what I was anticipating our growth to be over the next 2-3 years was prohibitively expensive.
One day, the broker calls me about this building for sale down the block. Patrick and I check it out. It needs a lot of work, but we saw the potential. Better yet, there were three tenants who’d help offset the mortgage payments while we grew into the space.
After some deliberation and negotiation, we bought the building.
The downpayment and closing costs wiped out nearly all of the company savings, but that was okay. It was a good property, a valuable asset for the company, and we’d be saving on what would have otherwise been a huge amount in monthly rent.
It was an exciting time. We did some construction, reconfigured the offices, made nice with the new tenants, loaded a couple of moving trucks, and relocated AdVenture’s corporate HQ.
Then three things happened, one right after the other.
We lost the Jive account. Then we lost the AMC account. Then COVID hit.
Maybe that’s what Dickens was getting at. That in the blink of an eye, before you’ve had a chance to catch your breath, what seems like the best of times can take a brutal about-face.
40% of our recurring revenue vanished into thin air. We needed to replace that revenue quickly, or I’d have trouble making payroll. Both accounts that we lost was doing incredibly well, and the people we interacted with at each company loved our team. AMC was acquired by a global media firm, and they rolled up their agencies to save costs. Jive was finally happy with our playbook, and they decided it was time to cut costs and outsource the work overseas. We didn’t see either of these losses coming—at least not yet, definitely not so close to each other.
Had we lost either of those two accounts before I closed on the building, I’d have backed out of the contract. Backing out of the contract would have been a major loss, but I’d have taken it.
Let alone losing both accounts.
We were scrambling, trying to acquaint ourselves with the new surroundings, trying to get back on our feet. But then COVID came. We shut down the offices, stocked up on Mucinex, watched the markets tank, and waited for clients to cancel.
And boy, did clients cancel.
We lost another 35% of our recurring revenue in the first wave of COVID hysteria. Some of our clients had to shutter their operations completely, and others paused all spending out of fear of the unknown.
I shuttered myself at home for 10 days, sort of avoiding the impending doom.
There’s something dark and perversely satisfying about catastrophe. We may not like to admit it, but I believe this subtle thread lives inside all of us, embedded in the human condition. There’s a comfort in catastrophe, a permission to cast off the yolk of responsibility, a weight that we carry with us, getting heavier as we mature and assume more responsibility, but a weight that we’d very much like to rid ourselves of—if we can do so with at least a plausibly justifiable rationalization. COVID was, perhaps, that justification, at least for me, and for ten days, I stared bleary-eyed at the same cycle of hopelessness being broadcast on Fox and CNN, feeding the dragon inside me who relished in the abdication of my responsibilities.
But then, one morning, I woke up, turned off the news, and went back to the office. I went through the motions. And the most inspiring thing to me was that our entire team was following suit. I was ashamed … but inspired. Everyone rallied themselves out of the anxiety that was surely enveloping them (to one degree or another)—and we just continued to produce good work. With integrity, positivity, and the willingness to face whatever came our way with our shoulders squared.
It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.
I looked at the middling savings we had left, our current revenue and payroll and expenses, and concluded that we’d be okay for the next two payroll cycles. Maybe that was optimistic (I’m not very good at reading P&Ls), but it was good enough for me.
Patrick started writing his daily Slack updates—and while we give him flack for them (deservedly), they gave all of us an anchor to reality. A lifeline of normalcy, optimism, and productivity.
Through the team’s collective good work and strength of character, we reminded each other why it’s infinitely better, in the long run, to grapple with responsibility instead of shirking it.
We signed Perfumania in the depths of COVID lockdowns. It was a turning point, for me at least. There was a ton of business out there, we just had to be ready and alert and awake. Shortly after Perfumania, the AstraZeneca pitch began in earnest. That story didn’t have the happiest ending, but some of my happiest memories from those months were working on that pitch with Ari, alone in the office, way into the night. We had our heading, and we stayed the course.
There was a lot of anxiety, illness, and tension during those long months—but there was also a lot of laughter, happiness, and excitement.
Of course, we climbed out of that deep hole, and over the next 18 months, we more than doubled our team, opened two new offices, and signed some of our largest clients ever.
I think about things differently now. It is not the best of times or the worst of times. It’s just time.
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Media Planning for 2025
To build a media plan you can actually deliver, you need to start with honesty. Not the kind of surface-level honesty where you nod along to ideas you hope might work, but the brutal, practical kind that forces you to confront what’s realistic and what’s just not. A media plan is about connecting vision with execution in a way that doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own ambition.
There are two kinds of inputs you can base a plan on. The first is data-driven: “I want to achieve X goal, and here’s how we’ll get there.” This only works if you have historical data to guide you. Real numbers. Past campaigns. Actual outcomes. Without that, it’s just guesswork dressed up in a spreadsheet.
The second approach is vision-based: “Here’s what we’re trying to build, and this is how we’ll make it happen.” This one leans less on past performance and more on clarity of purpose. You’re working backward from the long-term picture, reverse-engineering the steps to get there.
But here’s the trap most people fall into: thinking tactics are strategy.
Running ads isn’t a strategy; it’s just a tool. A strategy is the why—the vision driving every move you make. A media plan is the how—the practical steps to make that vision real. If your strategy isn’t rooted in the bigger picture of what your brand is trying to achieve, you’re not planning. You’re just reacting.
So where do you start? First, identify a SMART goal—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. Something clear and actionable that forces you to think critically. Then, define your vision. What’s the North Star? Are you building awareness, driving conversions, or staking out a position in a crowded market? Once you have those locked in, map out the path. What channels will you use? How will you allocate budgets? How will you measure progress and adjust along the way?
Then you need to define your guardrails. For example, ROAS can be your guardrail, while revenue remains the primary goal—your true north for success.
A media plan isn’t a shot in the dark. It’s a disciplined exercise in aligning your tactics with your strategy, and your strategy with your vision. It’s about building something you can actually deliver—something that doesn’t just look good on paper but works in the real world.
And if you can do that? You’re ahead of 90% of the competition.
For a comprehensive approach to 2025 media planning, I highly recommend Nechama Teigman's Strategy Lab. This course offers in-depth guidance on setting clear goals, developing effective media plans, budgeting, and effectively communicating strategies to stakeholders. If you have The Ultimate Digital Advertising Library (AKA: the All-Access Pass), it's already in your library. Just log in to access it here.
Isaac Rudansky
P.S.
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