To care, to pretend you care, or to not care? That is the question…
Interesting pair of comments on the blog today:
Anonymouse says…
Dunno why but all these advertising self-references put me off the industry. All the tumblrs, the virals, etc. I just hate them.
I think it’s because they always make out like we do a stupid job. Which doesn’t have to be the case. It used to appear quite cool. Now we position ourselves as childish and moronic.
To which Crappywriter replies thus…
I think you’re right. But, with our collusion, we have allowed a once reasonably noble industry with clever people doing wonderful things to become moronic. We are moronic. You only have to go to a tissue meeting with a client to understand that we are now cunts.
Maybe you don’t like these things because they are true.
I no longer give a fuck. I have been in it a long time and they’ve won. We have lost. If you give a fuck you go mad. Just take the money, say “leverage” at meetings, write their stupid ads that make them happy and laugh at them behind their backs.
That’s what I do.
I think that’s a fascinating subject/point/area.
There’s a lot of truth in what Crappywriter says about the state of the industry; the job has changed enormously, and now the days in which the swashbuckling genius of a Carty and Campbell was hitched to a maverick visionary like Kaye or Glazer, seem as distant as the days in which Greece produced the world’s entire supply of enlightened thinking. Our stock has fallen and, like a climate change denier, you’d have to be wilfully bloody-minded to be under any other impression.
But what to do about that?
Relatively good work and/or salaries are still possible, of course, but the 90s don’t appear to be on their way back, and those days of helicopter shots in the Mojave have indeed been replaced with huge numbers of tissue meeting wankathons (for most people. I’d just like to say, for the avoidance of doubt, that my job genuinely involves none of that stuff and I’m quite delighted about it), but can anything be done about the seemingly inexorable slide to further dreadful hours in Slough pretending to give a shit about brand equity?
Well, the short answer is always ‘yes’. How can it not be? If Gandhi kicked Britain out of India, and Mandela led his country after 27 years inside, then you – yes, you – can sure as hell take a once-great industry back to its halcyon days. And the moment you think it’s impossible it will indeed be so.
So the question is do you care enough to put in the effort to change it, or would you rather be pissed off with your lot and see out your days Slough-bound?
There’s no right or wrong answer. All I’d say, as Gandhi would, is ‘be the change you want to see in the world’.
But of course, if you don’t really want to see that change, carry on as you are. Nothing bad’s going to happen, except you could well get to the end of your life and reflect on what might have been in a way that makes you cry quite a lot in front of your grandkids.
Seems like a bit of a waste of your time here…
Do good stuff whether the clients want it or not and sometimes they find that they prefer the good stuff.
come on, its not that bad is it?
i’m with you.
thoroughly bored of doom and gloom.
be positive. be grateful. it’s contagious.
it’s easy to look back with misty eyes.
it wasn’t better. it was different.
creatives got away with murder?
(well, a small percentage did)
there were 10 times that many working longer hours than we do now, producing work that’s as bad as our worst.
what about the horror stories. what about the CD’s reviewing work through a sock puppet? what about the alcoholism disguised as creativity? the work place bullying?
i wouldn’t swap working in the industry now and in the future, with surviving in it now and in the past.
no way.
Well put.
I don’t think the internet helps us much.
Now anyone with a twitter account is a KOL on copywriting. Someone from Wrexham called @copyrabbit shares shit puns with a 10k following and our craft is belittled.
Juniors celebrate the fact that clients blow our ideas out and our craft is belittled.
There’s nothing funny about clients blowing out good ideas and being dicks. Nothing funny at all. Talented people (you hope) put energy and skill into those ideas. And they should be respected. Real talent is not a commodity. It’s rare as rocking horse shit.
Of course it’s important not to take yourself too seriously. But by laughing at yourself too much you make yourself a joke.
I honestly believe that creatives are to blame for the problems which it’s fair to say *do* exist. Not clients. Not suits. Not planners. They were always dicks. It’s creatives who have changed.
“Be the change” is exactly right. And trust life to look after you.
I once used the word leverage in a meeting with my boss. I don’t know where it came from. I was mortified. Got a promotion though.
I think self-parody is probably undervaluing but also has therapeutic tension release effect. You can cure a phobia by carefully controlled escalation of exposure to the feared or loathed thing or situation. We are trying to cope with the Catch-22 situation.
I’m with the Crappywriter on the “If you give a fuck you go mad” part. You can’t “give a fuck” about everything. As old Chinese said “pick your fucks”
Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight.
only speaking for myself,
talent level aside, i’ve always cared about doing good work. and though i find it hard to respect people that play it safe, i understand. being brave has gotten me a book with little produced work and gotten me laid off from 3 agencies. however now i’ve admittedly lowered my standards but i’m collecting more money and going home at a decent hour.
i just see it as a job that allows me to be creative. with so many factors and variables in play, i feel it almost might be foolish to let my advertising career validate my creativity.
unfortunately, it’s what i love so i think it always will.
@Shambro: regarding your other question, the answer is no.
I’m with “me!” on this one. Advertising isn’t the refuge of rebels and rejects anymore like it once was. You’re not allowed to fail spectacularly, or fail at all for that matter.
I used to believe every brief was a possibility to do great work, but a few years on I’ve realised it’s all about focusing your efforts on the right briefs. A POS piece where the client tells you exactly what needs to be on it, copy and all, is not going to win a Grand Prix anytime soon. It saves disappointment and effort to only go for the ones where you have the (lets face it, slim) chance of doing something good. So I’d say, don’t care at all, and care a lot. Just apply the right mantra at the right time.
People see caring too much as being difficult and not part of the solution. You can’t always be the one who stands up for something if you have no backing. Clients hold all the power and advertising agencies are clinging on to accounts to stay in business and no one cares anymore about the lone voice talking about quality of work and making a difference. You either fit in or you are out.
Could advertising go back to its golden days? I’d argue that advertising doesn’t matter that much anymore and that’s nothing to do with crappy clients etc…
Westerns aren’t going to come back in a big way either.
It’s not a reflection of the quality of the work. It just isn’t. Although I cannot prove it because the work is abysmal.
I think you can find fulfilment, as I now do, outside working hours. Pretending to give a shit and saying “leverage” is what I do to give me the money to do stuff that I do find interesting. Arty farty stuff like riting and taking photographs. That way I won’t end up crying in front of my grandchildren.
I got the tip about doing stuff that you enjoy from you Benjamin.
Ta.
Deep down, however disenchanted with the business we claim to be, we all care.
We can’t help it. No matter what shit we’ve been put through in the past when we’re faced with a blank sheet of paper we can’t help but think this time it’ll be different.
Which makes it all the harder to take when its not.
But then that goddamned blank sheet of paper comes around and we go again.
And again.
@Crappywriter: that is another way to work it.
Hey, if you’re fulfilling on your possibilities what more can you ask for?
@Ben
Nothing. I’m as happy as a stick. Pretending to care and saying “leverage” is a small price to pay.
The only difficult thing is keeping a straight face.
I’m not sure that anyone ever did advertising for the creative fulfilment. It’s always been a job. But it’s a fucking good job and one worth keeping. Which means that you have to care.
Advertising can still be a great business to be in. We enjoy it over here, but that’s because we’re doing it the way we think it should be. No crap, no bullshit, no saying ‘leverage’. We are just one tiny corner of advertising, but if we can do it, any fucker can. Just takes a bit of balls and standing up for what you believe, and putting a bit of skin in the game. Of course, to do that, first you need to give a shit. There are still good people in the business who do give a shit. But somehow they have been convinced that it’s not worth the fight, or that they can’t make it what they want it to be. But that’s just not true, it is possible. Get out there, break a few eggs, upset a few people, fight back against the bean counters and the awards-obsessed drones, and dull, grey play-it-safe civil-servant-esque types who have dragged the industry down.
If a couple of fuckwits like us can start a company with no money, no clients, and no promise of clients, and still be here after eight years, even though we walk the walk of our creative standards, win and lose clients because of our principles, have a no bullshit approach, and stick by our refusal to be bullied or have the piss taken out of us on time and fees by clients, then literally any any fucker who cares can do it – and probably do it much better.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Well said, Sell! Sell!
Yeah, Nobby, we did advertising for the creative fulfillment. It might have been in the 70s, but I reckon it can still be a fucking good job. Hang in there. Advertising needs people like you.
Don’t you just fucking love Sell Sell? I want to work for you, man.
The rise charlatanism in, and dominance of planning and digital strategists, making clients finally believe advertising is a science and can be formulated – isn’t helping one fucking bit.
High five sell sell.
@Sell Sell
I admire your optimism and perseverance and wish you all the breast….I mean best.
What the hell and breasts.
Inspiring stuff, @Sell!Sell! More power to you and your agency.
I disagree with @Crappywriter that we have allowed a “reasonably noble industry with clever people doing wonderful things to become moronic.”
I’ve been doing this since the so-called glory days (or at least the tail end of them) and, as far as I can see, there have always been morons and visionaries at both agencies and clients. No more morons now than there were in the 80s. No more geniuses either.
If you don’t like how things are, then try to change them. And if you won’t or can’t try, then get out, or – like @Crappywriter – just get on with it, take the money and don’t complain.
I think this is the best time to work in advertising that there’s ever been.
You just have to work in the bit of it that’s growing, making amazing shit and adding value to people’s lives.
No the bit of it that’s dying, prostituting itself and turning inward to eat itself with its own bile.
Here’s a thought. Totally unworkable but who cares. At the moment we ask people with no imagination (clients,research groups) to select the best idea and suggest improvements. And we have to pay them to care. Then we make the ads and an army of unpaid, imaginative (you’d hope) communication savvy people queue up to pull it apart in blogs and on juries, and then moan that ads are all shit. Surely there’s a way of flipping that. An online scamp judging forum that vets the people who comment, is anonymous so there’s no bias (you’d have to leave off logos… Ok we need to think about that one, and we’d need to make sure rivals are kept apart) where ideas are improved and the general standards of the industry goes up. I’ve got ‘we are the world’ humming in my head. I’d better leave.
FYI, Ben: this post, and a movie about sushi, prompted me to post this.
http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/2013/11/the-power-of-dreams-sushi-style.html
Thanks for that, Neil.
very interesting…
Good post Neil. I found it particularly interesting because it chimes with something I believe about advertising – which is to do it at it’s best, to take on the metaphor of the Sushi guy – you don’t have to be working in the equivalent of a 300 table mega-restaurant on a luxury liner, you can do it in a tiny, 10 seat place on a back street.
An old hand once said to me “Advertising is about working at big agencies for big brands”. But I’m not so sure any more. While the lure of the big agency, and challenge of turning around big brands is great, most big brands are oil tankers that take years to effect even five degrees of improvement, in an environment where change is seen as dangerous. Why potentially waste your talent on that, when you could be making real waves elsewhere? If you value your craft like the sushi man, maybe do what he did and open your own great little place. And I reckon that more small, genuinely creatively-led agencies would improve the business.
Thanks for the kind words all, btw. Much appreciated.
[…] came across two contrasting views of life and work. The first was on Ben Kay's ad-related blog If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas. Ben wrote a post entitled "TO CARE, TO PRETEND YOU CARE, OR TO NOT CARE? THAT IS THE […]