Growth is killing us
A couple of weeks back we had the great Steve Harrison in the agency to talk about the great Howard Gossage (Steve will happily pop round to your agency to do the same. Comment if you want me to put you in touch).
In the Q and A at the end I said that one of the many things Howard was remarkably prescient about was his desire to keep his agency small. He worked in an old fire station in San Francisco and never employed more than a few people because he couldn’t see the point in growing. He was the font of quality, aided by a few others; why dilute that by increasing in size?
These days that idea is ridiculous. Of course, if you are doing something well you do more of it and earn more money. Then you get more people to join in and do the work you can’t do and earn even more money (never mind the question of diluting the quality of the work). And on and on until you become Martin Sorrell.
It is taken for granted that what human beings want is ‘progress’, but that is defined as ‘moving onward or forward to a destination’. The problem here is that we have no destination. In general, people just want more than what they have. The idea that anyone should be satisfied with the way things are and just stop is a bit of an odd one to get your head round. You can’t just stop. That’d be crazy. What would you do? How would you be able to afford a bigger TV or go on more holidays or just be more ‘successful’?
But the problem is, as Steve said to me, capitalism is just one big Ponzi scheme and at some point we’re all going to realise that we can’t just keep taking to make more. Whether it’s the massive and obvious destruction of the environment (have you seen the weather lately?) or the terrible consequences of financial and political greed that millions of people continue to suffer, this love of progress doesn’t seem to be improving the world (see here for why the introduction of agriculture screwed the human race in so many ways). Of course, making progress in civilisation, learning and creativity are not bad things in themselves, but marching on to ever greater levels of consumption will have to end somewhere disastrous.
Like many things happening right now (any support for Mitt Romney, climate change, Rupert Murdoch not being in prison etc.), I don’t really understand why nothing is being done. Why aren’t we collectively demanding justice, or an improvement to the way we live on this planet?
My little effort is this blog, but beyond that I feel pretty powerless to stop what appears to be a great slow slide into oblivion.
If I’ve got it all wrong, please let me know in the comments. I would love to believe it’s not as bad as it seems.
A look at history suggests that levels of global poverty, political oppression and warfare are as low as they have ever been right now. The environment, however, not so much. So don’t get too out of shape.
I think blaming rampant consumption on capitalism is ascribing blame too narrowly. Not-for-profit economic systems have had insatiable appetites for resources – the Soviet Union for instance. I think the problem is more fundamental, perhaps in the nature modern man. Or it may be something just about man.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with Gossage’s perspective (I read the bio you recommended on holiday and thought it was great). But it takes a lot of confidence – not to mention the latitude granted by being self-employed or having a very flexible employer – to do less for less.
Nevertheless, from what I see (in London) a more varied and less intense mode of working is catching on, partly for cultural reasons and partly because technology is enabling less-structured ways of doing things. The flipside of this is greater casualisation and insecurity amongst those who haven’t got skills the market really values.
That’s why I like freelancing. I work until I have earned enough money to stop working for a while and do nothing but potter around.
It’s nice to see him referred to as the ‘great’ Steve Harrison.
In particular as the old Scamp/ITIABWC days used to laugh at direct as being for second class citizens. Though, in truth, probably more on Scamp than on here.
Also, Steve has what you might call ‘Bogusky’ syndrome.
Capitalism is terrible once you’ve picked all the fruit.
Alex is a saint now. He makes the world a better place. After making millions selling burgers to kids.
Give it all away, then preach. But don’t keep the spoils and then deny the next generation.
It’s hypocritical.
I haven’t picked all the fruit and I worry about capitalism. TBH, Steve’s agreement with me is a tangential aspect of my point.
And Gaw, ‘a look at history suggests’ is a bit vague. Of course less people are poor: loads more money has been created, but it’s what created it that worries me.
Maybe ‘we’ are getting less intense, but there’s still a hell of a lot of consumption out there, and it’s increasing every day.
I wasn’t sniping at you, Ben. You’ve always had reservations about the game. At least from what I’ve read on here.
What you call, Ben, ‘a hell of a lot of consumption’ is for billions of people the beginnings of a living wage.
I don’t know what is going on right now. What I know is that majority of people are/or feel poorer yet top 500 global companies are making the biggest profits in their history. How this is possible?
About big and small – when I started 10 years ago our agency was #1 in the country with just 23 people in it. Today we have tripled the people, maybe tripled the clients too yet we are out of top 5.
I earn a good salary, but I don’t consider myself particularly ‘successful.’ Maybe I should work harder at happiness and less at fulfilling the need to buy stuff? I blame advertis… Oh. Scratch that.
My favorite Gossage quote, and becoming more relevant as time goes by:
“I love the advertising business.
I truly do, although it’s no business of a grown man. I love it because it’s such a lovely Augean stable to clean up.”
this debate is all a bit GCSE and top of mind.
and the same old middle class standpoint of capitalism is to blame, is the reason a previous generation thought marxism was the answer.
now that’s out of your system and you’ve noshed off the poetry professor, can we have some ads to be jealous of please?
But Gaw, where will it end?
Anonymouse, you’re quite right.
G-L, ‘noshed off the poetry professor’? If there’s anything more facile than my post, it’s your comment.
Where will it all end, Ben?
Well, with a bit of luck, peacefully in your sleep at a ripe old age.
If you’re unlucky, it’ll be writhing in agony in some godforsaken NHS hospice. Or worse.
Either way, the world and it’s billions of people will keep rushing on.
Why waste a perfectly good Monday afternoon worrying about this crazy, mixed-up planet we live on.
I guarantee it will never return the favour to you.
Answer this one, Steve. A book you wrote three years ago, which I perused in Waterstones, was a bit unmoved by, so decided not to buy for a tenner or so, is now on Amazon for upwards of five hundred quid
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0273725181/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
This isn’t David Bailey’s Box of fucking Pin-ups, so why not just reprint it to order, or have the past fifteen years of print on demand passed Prentice Hall by?
can’t have this place being all grown up and talking about world affairs.
it needs a nosh reference or two.
I was just reading an article from the Guardian on the way home which was touching on this subject, but more from a purely economical point of view: http://gu.com/p/3a6ee
I found interesting the way to look at the system as a whole (see the fifth paragraph) and it all goes back to that great line in Wall Street “How many yachts can you water-ski behind?”
coincidentally i just watched a documentary on oil. of course we’re screwed. we are running out of oil. without oil no gasoline and no everything else that makes modern life possible. we are facked!
The answer is to stop reading the Guardian.
Bringing it back down to the sordid level of advertising for a moment, I’m with Gossage. It seems the only accepted measure of business success (not just in advertising, it has to be said) is growth. What a very sad state of affairs that is. Campaign produces league tables of billings wins, ranks agencies by size and turnover. Yet we can all see, plain as day, companies that have grown massively over the past few years by producing dross.
Is it predictable, ironic, odd, or all of the above that we write about conspicuous consumption from the perspective of the carrot-holders?
People want. What people want often depends on what others have. That may be the evolution of our basest survival instincts. In the old old days, if Og in the cave next door had more food, that meant there was probably a lot less food out there left for you to find.
I know that’s a gross miscarriage of evolution and history, but I don’t think people have changed much over time. Otherwise, advertising wouldn’t work at all, right?
S!S!, that’s what I mean. Quantity beats quality every time, when it should be the other way round, both for ideological reasons and because the current state of affairs fucks the world and the people who live in it.
Interesting post, Ben, and one that touches on subjects I’ve been increasingly thinking about these days.
I believe it comes down to laziness. We’re lazy to actually think about our lives, therefore we cram it full of activities and superficial goals (money, tits n’ ass (the superficial kind), and shiny things) to not have to think about it.
I recently had an intense discussion with a gentleman on Union Square about the next wave of innovation/the next culture to lead the world. His view was that the western culture is doomed to fail due to a non-sustainable way of existing. According to evolution, we will extinct. All due to being too lazy to think.
Very plausible. Also too lazy to do.
Ben,
Is there anything in your own life that would be deemed superficial and wasteful? Arsenal season ticket perhaps? For me, it’s just breathing. I guess we are all culpable to some degree and we all delude ourselves that we offset the crap in some way or other. Personally I wouldn’t worry about it. Maybe the trick is stop thinking about it. In fact just stop thinking. Just be.
I didn’t think I was having a go at superficiality.
And you can stop thinking and stop taking responsibility for the world you live in. Up to you.
Oh, I added the superficiality in as it seemed to have been mentioned elsewhere and probably goes hand in hand with today’s internet generation. I’m not sure that thinking has a stranglehold on responsibility. I was trying to allude to a sense of being that was intuitively in touch with what’s right and and what’s wrong…rather than thinking about it. I wasn’t saying give up. Hell, far from it.
Ben,
Ultimately wouldn’t you say we should all just be young, foolish and happy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5B03qimRtU
Just the last one would be fine.
This topic has had me thinking a bit too recently.
Assuming that we as a race continue to breed and use the earth’s finite resources to produce stuff that we need or want – then at some point in the future (how distant is up for debate) we will have fucked the planet to a point where it is no longer capable of sustaining the entire human race. The state of the earth in Wall-E is scarily fucking accurate. And given human nature I can’t see how we can avoid it.
Agreed with the above. The Elephant in the room in all of these debates on consumption, the environment etc. is human population growth. If you can be arsed, look up a graph on human population growth and see where we’re at. We can reduce the environmental impact of all the things we use and produce, and try to arrest our rampant consumerism, but we will never be able to keep up with the rate of growth. So far I can see no one in power, nationally or in the global organisations who is even talking about engaging with this problem. People in power are way too scared to bring it up because it is such a huge and scary issue, no one wants to be ‘that guy’. Where will it end? We’re all fucked. However, luckily, most of us commenting here will have drunk ourselves in onto oblivion before the shit really hits the fan.
I’m no economist but the way it works in our little industry seems pretty plain. Agencies start up all the time. A few find some success and do good work. The founders want the business to be strong and dynamic so they pursue new accounts, and grow and diversify. Success breeds more success: they’re hot. It is assumed that at a certain point, the founders will sell the business to a big company. The big company puts cash into the business (and the founders’ pockets) to enable the business to expand. They’re not paying the founders for their past hard work, they’re paying them for the future value they will create for the big company’s shareholders. From this point on, it’s all about driving growth and profit to maximise shareholder value. If great work, a strong culture and happy staff can be demonstrated to drive growth and profit, then those things will be encouraged. But no shareholder cares about those things. They just want an investment that will grow in value. The founders stay with the company and work hard to drive continued growth over the years it takes to earn the pay-out for which the deal was done. Then, if they achieve that, it appears that they tend to count their money, look around them at what they have done and decide to go off and do something else, rather than stay at a company that no longer resembles that original start-up into which they put their heart and soul. And that’s the ‘success’ story.
Yes, it sounds very successful and yet somewhat unsuccessful.
Agreed Ben. Maybe ‘successful’ at the business of growing an ad agency and flogging it, but not necessarily successful at continuing to have a company that you’re excited and proud to walk into every day for reasons other than purely financial.
Ben,
Maybe you were taking the ‘Young and foolish’ bit too literally? I was thinking more in the line of when Jobs said, well I think it was Jobs, ‘Stay foolish’. Maybe the young bit could be Jung? Well you did say you’d done some mumbo jumbo test at some agency, myers-briggs was it? Would they have paired us up?! They probably would have done as some sort of experiment to see who would throttle the other first, perhaps?
The following quote from this week’s Campaign feature on start-ups reflects what I was talking about above.
“If ever there was a way to do a start-up, this was it: A&E sold for around £60 million.” Surely there’s another way that doesn’t involve selling to a holding company?
You might as well say, ‘he accomplished everything human beings hold dear: he won 3.8m on the lottery’.
the problem with the world are people. selfish in a stupid way. also that the concept of competition is praised as good and god given in an evolutionary context — which is odd in itself.
we are all part of a system. neoliberal ideology — whatever that is — has made people believe everyone is free to do anything, achieve everything if only s/he wanted to. we are not free to do as we like, but particles in complex systems. we have to adjust ourselves, subordinate to conditions. this whole idea of individual responsibility keeps shit going like it is and — apart from any conspiracy theories — serves those who are in power to manifest it.
that an individual has to adjust itself to the system to get further up the ladder in it, makes it all self-sustaining. to put it mildly, our lives are determined by idiots. this is why those who could prevent the destruction of our own habitat — due to their place in the hierarchy — are doing nothing. they are idiots. its as simple as that.