Do We All Have A Time?
At some point your advertising career will come to an end for one of the following reasons:
1. You couldn’t keep up.
2. You interrupted a PPM with your elephant impression (the one involving your genitalia and trouser pockets).
3. You were sent down for a twenty stretch, possibly for the brutal murder of a client.
4. You couldn’t give the first fuck about 25×4 price ads for carrots anymore.
5. You kept getting kicked upstairs until the most important decision of the day involved choosing which helicopter to take into work. Going into work seemed pointless.
6. You died, possibly from the boredom of going to Slough for client meetings.
7. You time ended.
Point seven occurred to me the other day when I was downloading some Suede off itunes.
It’s often suggested that retirees may not be able to hack it any longer, or they don’t care anymore or people stopped wanting them. But what if, like Suede, they had a time?
In the nineties, Suede were pretty big. Now they’re not. Are they shit? Can they no longer play their instruments? Has their taste completely disappeared?
Maybe, but maybe they had their time, a time when their drive, talent and look was right for the public. Then it wasn’t. Is it their fault that they didn’t continue to adapt after Britpop to prolong their cultural relevance? were they lazy? Should they have compromised their art to shape to a perception of the market?
Perhaps they were just lucky enough to synch with a huge audience for several years, then most of that audience moved on.
If you’re creative you need a number of people to be receptive to that creativity. There are no guarantees (look at Gorilla and Trucks), so if people want your stuff, ride the wave while you can.
You never know when it’s going to end.