Why Managers Should Nominate the People They Cannot Do Without
Every agency has someone the whole team quietly depends on. They are the first person copied on the difficult email and the last to leave on the night before a pitch, and they are almost never the name on the credits. They are also the least likely person in the building to put themselves forward, which is exactly why managers should nominate them.
If they left tomorrow, the team would notice within a week.
Why managers should nominate, not wait
Recognition in advertising has a habit of following visibility rather than contribution. The people who present, pitch and post tend to be the people who get noticed. Those who hold the work together behind them, the planner, the producer, the account lead, the media specialist, the designer who fixed the thing at 2 am, are left to hope someone else says their name.
That is why managers should nominate. A manager sees the contribution that never reaches the client presentation. A nomination from them carries a kind of evidence that a self-entry cannot: someone who has watched this person work, under pressure, is willing to put their judgement on the record.
What recognition does for the person
For someone early in their career, being named alongside their peers changes how they see their own work. It tells them that what they have been doing is not just useful but noticed, and that the industry has a place for people like them. It gives them something to point to in the next conversation about responsibility, and a reason to keep raising their own standard.
What it does for the agency
Talent in this industry moves. People leave agencies less often because of money than because they feel invisible. A manager who recognises their best people publicly is making a statement about the culture they want to run, one that everyone else in the team reads. Agencies that celebrate their people build a reputation that makes the next great hire easier, and the current ones more likely to stay.
A nomination is a small amount of effort
Writing a strong nomination takes an hour of honest thought. What did this person change? What would have gone differently without them? What have they done that their title does not describe? The answers are usually already in a manager's head. Putting them on paper is the part that rarely happens.
The Next 50 is a single national class of fifty professionals under 30 on 31 August 2026, chosen across ten disciplines from creative and strategy to client partnership, production, media and agency culture. Managers and agencies can nominate the people they believe belong in it, and there is no limit on how many of an agency's people can be put forward.
Think of the person your team cannot do without. Then say so.
Nominations for The Next 50, Class of 2026 are open. Nominate someone who deserves it, or enter yourself, at adtribe.world/events/the-next-50. Entries close 15 November 2026.