How ’bout that glamour then?

Posted by John Mescall on March 18, 2011

I was grabbing a coffee from the place around the corner, when I bumped into a certain ECD from a certain agency. I must’ve caught him at a weak moment, because the conversation quickly turned to how much of a slog advertising has become, compared to the mythical ‘good old days’. Days that pretty much precede us all, but the stories live on.

Anyway, he suggested I “write something about how distinctly unglamorous our supposedly glamorous industry really is”. Conveniently ignoring the fact that we both work a job that allows us to hang out in hip little espresso bars, drinking something called ‘bespoke coffee’ (yes, I know. The needle on your wank-o-meter just went off the scale, and rightly so) I said “sure.”

And so here we are. Actually, here I am… in the office on a holiday weekend, perhaps proving the point that if there is any glamour in the advertising industry… well, obviously it’s happening to somebody else.

So. What, exactly are the glamorous bits about working in advertising? Surely all those big shoots in interesting places. Not sure about you, but if I ever have one of those ‘life flashing before my eyes moments’ the ‘shoot’ part will be me, cold and bored, in a place I’d never choose to otherwise visit, waiting for what seems like hours for the fucking director to be happy with the fucking lighting.

How about all those lunches then? No. If you see people talking business over lunch in a nice restaurant, they’ll be property developers. We’ll be the guys stuck at our desk, trying not to spill sandwich-juice into the keyboards of our Macs. Tip: sweet chilli is particularly bad for mmmmmmmmaking the keys stick.

The excitement of working in a buzzy creative industry? Sure. But you have to remember that ‘buzz’ is just another way of saying ‘incredibly sphincter-tightening deadlines on a daily basis’. It’s exciting, but so is pissing on an electric fence to check if it’s on. You sometimes pay a hefty price for such excitement.

Awards ceremonies? We’ve all seen the Oscars, and they’re pretty glamorous. So ours are too, yeah? Sorry, but when you take the Oscars and remove Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Scarlett Johanssen and their ilk, what you’re left with is a bunch of ordinary-looking people that no-one cares about, picking up statues in craft categories that no-one cares about. And a roomful of other ordinary-looking people seething with hostility and resentment that THEY didn’t win. And that’s what OUR awards shows are like.

The money? Let me put it this way: when an account executive in an advertising agency gets a spam-mail from Hector Raveriz, promoting some scheme whereby they can make hundreds of dollars a week selling weight-loss pills from home… they sort of think twice before trashing it.

The fact that we don’t have to wear suits and ties? OK, fine. I’ll give you that. Never having to choke on a piece of polyester is precisely 20% of why I work in advertising.

Now I hope you don’t think I’m bitching, because I’m not. I love what I do, I’m uniquely suited to it (which is a nice way of saying I’m uniquely unsuited to do pretty much anything else) and the satisfaction I get out of using a mix of creativity and logic to solve other people’s problems will probably never wane.

But glamour? Sadly, I think the opportunity to pay a premium for a cardboard cup of ‘bespoke coffee’ is about as glamorous as it gets.