"While it doesn't say "explainer" on my resume, maybe it should. Over twenty-ish years, I've held many roles in digital advertising, media, and marketing, but I always wear the same explainer hat. Whenever something new and complex arrives on the scene-these days, that's clean rooms, identity, CTV, and increasingly, AI, I'm one of those people that colleagues turn to for clarification. If you're one of those people, you know what I'm talking about."
"There's no such role as a chief explainer person. It's a side hustle. It falls haphazardly into the laps of certain people whose superpowers are curiosity and turning complex topics into simple explanations. If there were an Explainer Olympics, it would be judged based on the number of open browser tabs. In many scenarios, the explainer side hustle pulls valuable talent away from their full-time jobs."
"All those last-minute 'Hey, can you join this client call?' Slacks add up. If you're measuring the cost of relying on your explainers, you'll discover that the organization is stealing from its count. But stealing from your headcount is only part of the problem. Unlike other roles and teams, explainers don't scale. Our deliverables are too ad hoc, reactive, and informal to grow with the business. And because we aren't growing with the business, we're inevitably overmatched by an ecosystem that's moving faster"
Explainers translate new, complex developments such as clean rooms, identity, CTV, and AI into accessible understanding for colleagues. The explainer role typically arises informally as a side hustle performed by curious employees who simplify topics using ad hoc methods. That informal model pulls senior talent away from primary responsibilities and accumulates costly interruptions like last-minute calls and Slack requests. Deliverables from explainers tend to be reactive and nonstandard, preventing scalability as the ecosystem accelerates and grows more complex. Some explainers lack deep subject expertise yet still provide the least-worst answers, leaving organizational knowledge gaps and operational risk.
Read at The Drum
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