Obituary: Jeremy Southern's Career

Jeremy Patrick Southern’s career passed away aged 28 years on Friday 25^th of July after a long and well-documented battle with ageism.

It had been in poor health for many years, surviving on little more than the occasional freelance gig and the still more occasional royalty cheque from a poorly received children’s book.

The official cause of death is listed as malnutrition and neglect. AKA starved of work and overlooked for jobs.

Despite promising beginnings, including doing well at Award School and getting a placement at Saatchi’s, Jeremy’s career never really fulfilled its potential.

It wrote a couple of half-decent ads, won a few awards, and did a 14-year stint overseas as ECD in Dubai and S.E Asia before returning to Australia in 2017.

Sadly, in 2020, a routine check-up with a well-known Australian recruiter revealed that it was suffering from advanced Hyper Seniority Syndrome. A debilitating, often fatal illness that affects marketers over the age of 45.

Despite embarking on a radical course of treatment including removing all incriminating dates from the CV, applying heavy age-reducing filters to photos and lying brazenly about its age, it was already too late and chronic invisibility had started to set in.

In its last few years, Jeremy’s career retreated to the tranquillity of the Blue Mountains and attempted to reinvent itself with a move into the digital space.

However, these efforts were somewhat marred by a series of bizarre ‘old man

yells at cloud’ style posts on FB and LinkedIn, railing at perceived injustices in the advertising industry.

Some of you may remember those seemingly interminable, oft-nonsensical rants targeting recruitment, AI, job seeking, ninjas, CVs, rejection letters, ageism and more.

Jeremy’s career will be remembered chiefly for its darker than usual sense of humour, waspish comments and relentless pessimism. Which is probably exactly what it would have wished.

The family requests privacy at this difficult time.

Jeremy was a Sydney-based writer and creative. If you wish to resuscitate his career with a creative/writing job, you can contact him at jeremys2211@gmail.com