What I like about advertising

Posted by John Mescall on October 24, 2010

Advertising is harder work than it used to be. Margins are tighter, clients more demanding, pitch shortlists are as long as longlists used to be, and longlists read a lot like ‘A’ in the Yellow Pages. Fragmentation and the shifting sands of modern media means the whole thing is a lot more complex too.

But that’s ok, really it is. Because I still love my job and I have more than enough good reasons why. Behind me is a roaring fireplace with a lovely marble surround. It was fashioned from an old TV, some video footage of a log fire ripped from the interweb, and fake Italianate marble stuck onto foamcore. A colleague made it for me while I was in a client meeting.

The fake fireplace is a great thing, because it makes no sense at all. Admittedly, the fireplace itself is pretty crap, but I love it for what it symbolises: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom to try, freedom to fail. Freedom to utilise those hard-won but rarely used art and craft skills you learned in primary school.

What other business actively allows you to enjoy your work? Granted, it makes a lot of sense given we spend 80% more time here than we do at home… but how many people in the greater workforce are given permission to have a laugh while they’re on the job?

I like the fact that things are getting harder, not easier. I reckon our industry pretty much had it all figured out by, say, 1992: the TVC, the outdoor, the print ad. And if the world stood still back then, someone would’ve invented a version of Word that wrote the ads for us. And that would’ve been bad. Very bad indeed.

Another thing that tickles my fancy is the whole dress-code thing. Don’t let anyone kid you that creative departments don’t have a dress-code… they do, and it’s as rigid as any faceless corporate, or Singo’s back when Singo’s enforced a dress policy that sounded a lot like a bad Brisbane pub: no denim and no shirts without a collar.

But instead of having to get all trussed-up in suit and tie, all we have to do is ensure a steady supply of vaguely ironic t-shirts, and the job’s done. Tees are comfy, require no ironing, are relatively inexpensive, and you don’t have to ever worry about whether the tee you pull from your wardrobe is going to match the jeans crumpled by your bed, because the answer is always yes.

There’s only one downside to wearing comfortable clothes to work: you never get that “aaaaahhh… it’s the weekend, time to shed my wage-slave uniform and show the world the kind of guy I REALLY am” moment. Finishing work and changing into a slightly more casual t-shirt doesn’t really constitute decompression, does it?

I like the odd personalities you get to work with in agencies, too. Let me correct that: I think most people, deep down, are odd. It’s just that in most workplaces you’re forced to subdue your eccentricities. In advertising, they’re not only tolerated but welcomed. Unless said eccentricities involve personal hygiene, or amateur animal husbandry. Both are bad.

I like deadlines, because otherwise I’d never get anything done. That’s probably why I never married. No-one ever set a deadline, so it just didn’t happen. Sort of nearly happened once in Buenos Aires, but it all got too complicated.

What else? Ummm, I like that we make things that you can show people. Feels like you achieved something. I like TV shoots, and working with actors. I like winning pitches. I like changing people’s minds. I like selling things. And writing. That’s fun too.