When the emotion tank runs out in the business of emotions

You don’t forget the first time you hear of someone from the industry dying of a heart attack in their 30s. Or the art director who collapsed mid-pitch. Or the copywriter who quietly slipped into depression and never really came back. These are real stories of real people, who broke under the weight of what we still like to call “a cool job.”

Advertising, an industry that sells happiness, emotion, and human connection, yet treats its people like deadlines, decks, and tools. It’s a business where a breakdown is followed by the next client call. 

The everyday emotional gymnastics in agency life have long taken a quiet toll, surfacing in tragic headlines across the globe. In September 2020, India’s advertising industry lost a young professional due to stress-induced cardiac arrest.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Azazul Haque, Group Creative Officer at Creativeland Asia, recalled getting panic attacks just eight months into a high-pressure job at one of India’s renowned agencies. The post read: “If I had continued then, I could have died at 30 of some heart-related problems.” 

Because in adland, we tell ourselves it’s worth it. That the pressure, the late nights, the endless rounds of feedback are the price of greatness. That one day, we’ll win the Lion. That this is just how agencies are.

But here’s the real question: does it have to be?

Why are we so uncomfortable with conversations around burnout, mental health, grief, or personal identity? Why do we still pretend that vulnerability makes us unprofessional? 

Creative folks peel back the layers for us, and what emerges is a pattern: loud, clear, and painfully familiar.

Zoom out, and agency culture looks like one big machine, but zoom in, and every team runs on its own emotional engine, for better or worse.

Ever wonder why culture feels different in every team?

Some of us show up to work and find a second home, not because the job is easy, but because the people make the pressure feel bearable. The manager cracks a joke before the brainstorming session begins. Teammates check in when your Slack replies go silent. Deadlines still exist, but so does breathing space.

I’ve been lucky, my team feels like a safe space, and that’s because of my manager and the culture she brought along with her. We’re friends before we’re colleagues, not by crossing lines, but by building trust. You won’t find that kind of culture in an HR deck or a mission statement slide. It comes from a leader who chooses empathy over ego, and kindness over control.

I’m not saying every manager has to be your best friend. But the least they can do is ask how you’re doing. That one question can change everything. But that kind of emotional safety isn’t universal. In many teams, it’s the opposite: work speeds up, but empathy slows down.

“It is a company-specific phenomenon and depends on the management style that your leadership deploys,” shared Prateek Varma, Creative Director at Hogarth. “The fact is that we are racing against time in the agency world. Whether it is a trend, a new format, or deadlines. And therefore human emotions take a back seat. The show has to go on.”

But while some accept emotional detachment as a necessary trade-off, others have experienced a very different version of agency life. 

Adyasha Roy Tomar, Creative Director at McCann Worldgroup, echoed this contradiction. She said, “I’ve been in agencies that are deemed traditional but house the softest and most understanding of people, and in agencies which are ‘younger’ and more in sync with mental health conversations, outright reject emotional expression — labelling it weakness or a ‘cop out.’”

She pointed out that emotional expression doesn’t follow company reputation; it follows leadership. “I would be oversimplifying it to now put it all under an ‘agency culture’ umbrella – it now depends on the atmosphere your manager builds.”

And that atmosphere is deeply shaped by leadership legacies. “Emotional restraint is a leadership style,” she continued. “But I’ve seen leaders being vulnerable, open, raw. That’s the way to go — to show that behind the designation, there sits a real person.”

Garima Khandelwal, Independent Creative Expert, agreed. She said, “You play the role of a nurturer as a leader. It’s very important to create a space for creativity to blossom.”

She questioned the idea of emotional restraint at work, especially when we spend more time with colleagues than with our own families.

“We deal with different clients, different problems, there are no formulas to the daily job lists, and to hustle and tackle those, you need people to check in with passion and trust for you and the business, and that is only possible by creating safe spaces for them,” Khandelwal added.

This shift, however, takes unlearning. 

Because ‘manager culture’ isn’t always intentional, it’s often inherited. Some leaders simply mirror the environments they were shaped by: burnout cycles, toxic urgency, or emotional neglect repackaged as ‘tough love.’ Some pass it on. Others choose to break the cycle.

“Most leaders wore the stress and anxiety like a badge because they saw their leaders do the same,” explained Naila Patel, Independent Consultant. “But every once in a while, we come across leaders who have prioritised mental health and the teams have thrived.”

Sometimes, it’s not about radical overhaul, just a leader who says, “I’ve had a rough day too.”

After all, as Varma said, “Leaders are the ones people look up to. If they are more emotionally evolved, the teams will be too.”

But he also added, “Sometimes it is because of leadership that lacks spine or vision — or both. Then such places become sweatshops, where emotional expression is called weakness and an excuse not to work.”

That is because maybe, sometimes, the people shaping your “culture” are just too exhausted to do anything but survive the deadline. And in their silence, the culture speaks for itself.

Rishabh Pande, Associate Creative Director at VIRTUE Asia, said, “Agency culture is not built by the place but the people that run that place.”

And until we change the way we feel inside our agencies, no amount of “empathy-led storytelling” will mend the wounds outside. We know how to move people with stories. Maybe it’s time we listened to our own.

Why we don’t talk about burnout at brainstorm sessions

There’s a reason vulnerable conversations often feel out of place in agency hallways. Not because people don’t feel, but because there’s fear.

“There’s a fear that certain things can’t be shared with your boss because they might be held against you,” said Pande, “or will limit the kind of work you’re given.”

Varma believes the avoidance is systemic. He said, “The systems in the agency are not perfect. So burnouts are called excuses. So is anxiety. And work-life balance. It’s easy to shift blame back on the people, rather than fix the system.”

The stories are eerily similar across generations. Recalling her early days, Patel said, “I remember my first day at a new agency very early in my career. And the client servicing head jokingly asked me if my family would be ok not seeing my face for a couple of days a week. The agency boasted of a culture of working overnight to deliver on tight deadlines. So most assume it comes with the territory. The agency veterans will always have interesting stories of how they delivered fabulous work under duress, legitimising the process.” 

Khandelwal, too, reflected on an earlier era. She said, “In earlier days when I joined the business, agencies welcomed idiosyncrasies. If one didn’t follow a norm, it wasn’t looked down upon; it was celebrated, along with the work that it yielded.” 

But not all hope is lost. “I’ve seen serious conversations happening around burnout and mental health taking place in agency corridors,” Patel added.

But structures and support? That’s where the gap still lies.

Building better structures

The way forward isn’t just softer hearts. It’s smarter systems.

“A junior once told me she hated being called a resource,” said Roy Tomar. “It’s such a small thing, but that’s where we start from, right? The small things.”

Pande believes emotional safety at work isn’t built through policies, but through everyday moments. “Create the smaller but more human rituals with the team,” he said. “Regular check-ins that aren’t about work, open forums where hierarchy takes a backseat or even leaders simply modelling emotional openness. When people see their managers talk about bad days and therapy without shame, it gives others permission to do the same. Emotional safety needs to be built informally. The formal structures can follow to support it.”

Quoting Star Wars, Varma said, “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.”

In the Star Wars universe, this line reflects how Sith thinking reduces complex situations to binary choices, “you’re either with me or against me.” Varma believes agencies must resist this kind of rigidity. Instead, they need a hybrid structure. Formal enough to be taken seriously, informal enough to allow humans to be human.

And for Patel, it’s about visibility and access: “Mental health professionals, support groups, and normalising vulnerability across the floor.”

We can no longer afford to confuse resilience with repression. Or ideas with output. Or resources with people.

This isn’t a call to tear down the agency model. It’s a plea to soften it. To allow emotion to exist not just in the campaigns, but in the culture.

Because behind every award-winning insight, there’s a human performing emotional gymnastics, stretching to meet deadlines, balancing between burnout and brilliance, bending without breaking. They’re tired, maybe hurting, maybe healing, trying to show up for the work and for themselves.

It’s time we made space for both. Not as a perk, but as a baseline. Because the best ideas come from feeling deeply and feeling safe enough to do so.