Do Not Go Into Advertising. Do Something About It.
This is a counterpoint to Gawker’s piece, Do Not Go Into Advertising.
True. Advertising is an industry that many people fall back into. As Gawker writes, “Advertising is the industry that people who were not lucky enough to get actual “creative” jobs end up in.” Yes. Many who are in it are content to trade up their titles every few years by switching agencies while staying the course in their careers, managing the whims of their clients.
That is because when you get down to it the advertising industry is actually a service business. But the services we render have shifted from leadership to execution, and therein lies the problem.
A problem that can be solved if we start thinking about it and selling it differently.
Gawker’s claims are correct, if not jaded, if we purely think of the advertising business as a creative one. But our products are hours — the hours needed to deliver great creative. No one “pays for the work” like they would pay an artist. They pay for the work needed to make the deliverable.
In order for this to change, and to make people WANT to work in advertising (which is easy to do before they actually start doing it), we need to do something radical. Current agency models and silos need to be blown up and reassembled into leadership-focused integrated solutions, because that what is needed now; not antiquated commodity-creating mass machines — which is what holding companies have brought about. That antidote was the revelation that led me to start Deep Focus 10 years ago. And it’s something I’m still trying to figure out.
People will want to work in a place where their creativity and leadership is respected internally and externally, and where that expectation is set and met regularly, no matter how many procurement exercises that place has to go through. These places should be places that lead, because that is what is asked of them. If you want something else, go hire one. There’s a lot of them around.
Advertising is evolving. And the places that conduct business in that industry are evolving too. You just need to look for them and not make blanket statements.
Nearly every industry is in a hyper-evolutionary state these days. For example, it would be easy to say that journalism is dead or dying, but there are places that are trying to re-think the model, like Gawker. It would also be easy to say that blogs are the places that journalists go to work when they can’t get journalism jobs. But I don’t believe that. Gawker is attempting to redefine/re-imagine the journalism business in its own way, just like many companies in the advertising space are so Gawker can continue to make money (see Nick Denton’s awesomely candid Rock Center segment from a few weeks back). Love ya, Nick.
But Hamilton, ask the people that have been laid off in the last few years because ad spending was down, if advertising is stable. Ask the people that are still looking for work after their clients’ company hired a new CMO. Advertising is anything but stable. I risked everything I had to build a business that could help change advertising. This thing is hard freaking work. Stable my ass.
So yeah. Don’t go into advertising if you want a comfortable life where you do things to make people happy all day and compromise your integrity. F- that. I’ve fired clients that have threatened to take us there. But if you want to really do something about what advertising has become for many (including @hamiltonnolan, obviously), and actually make it something that it could actually work towards enhancing the daily lives of people that engage with it AND make money while doing so, then Deep Focus is hiring, and not just for the positions listed here.
Or you can check out advertising.gawker.com.
But if you still hate advertising, there’s always Pit-Pat.
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Facebook comments:
Thanks for this thoughtful reply – it’s easy to judge any occupation form the outside.
I have to say that I love working as a medical copywriter, because it’s allowed me to leave the lab bench, but continue to learn about science, and find creative and engaging ways to share that with other people.
I’ve met creative people making great work. His view of advertising was sad, and doesn’t equate with my experiences at all.
The argument the author makes on Gawker is such a shallow way of looking at things (and I thought us folks working in advertising were shallow!) Don’t you just love broad, sweeping statements that indict an entire profession? People hate lawyers until they are charged with a crime.
As someone who teaches advertising in a school of journalism and as someone who has worked in and around the film business for many years now, I can say that I’m totally comfortable doing what I do. Advertising is charged with making folks buy things, yes. What happens if no one buys stuff? The economy goes south. What happens if the economy goes south? Folks don’t work. And we know what happens when folks don’t work. So we have a pretty important job.
That’s the system we live in. I think it’s the best system in the world. No, I don’t love corporations. In fact, I’m not really a corporate kind of guy at all. I don’t shop at Walmart. I try to buy local when I can, and I support small business. However, I respect the effort that goes into the competitive world of big business. I’ve worked with numerous large multinational corporations and continue to consult with several on a regular basis, so I’m not one of those ivory tower types either.
Some of my closest friends are on the production side of the film/television business and are writers and journalists of all types. Hell, I do some of the above as well. There are good and bad folks in all “creative” industries. You definitely have to have an ego before you put pen to paper or pick a camera up. Again, that’s the name of the game.
I loved my time working for a studio on the marketing side of things. There I worked with some of the smartest and most creative people I have ever met. Yes, some of those folks “fell into” the marketing side when their various creative pursuits didn’t work out. In fact, I can say that I was one of few who started out on the ad side. However, from my vantage point, I saw some ridiculous things on the production side of things. Most of the funny stories you hear about Hollywood are true (see above comments about ego).
As for advertising vs. journalism, there are dark sides to both professions. I’ve never had to stick a microphone in someone’s face after their loved one was killed or try to write an “impartial” story about someone I felt was morally repugnant. On the other side, I’ve occasionally worked on films I knew were not the best in the world and may not live up the “thrill ride of the century” label.
Now I’m in a position where I actually do what the author was criticizing. Yes, I try to convince folks to go into advertising. I tell them it is a great business because it is changing so much. I totally agree with Noah when he says that the interruptive model is on its way out or at least to the scrap heap of outdated methods. Real brands are going to have to tell real stories about great products to survive. To me that’s cool. We have the opportunity to be on the ground floor of something great. We can invent the next model, a more transparent, inclusive model. We can change how brands tell their stories. We can empower good. And yes, folks will buy stuff. And I’m okay with that.
“Current agency models and silos need to be blown up and reassembled into leadership-focused integrated solutions”
What the fuck does that even mean?
I’ll “unpack” that for you.
Current agency models and silos = what holding companies have turned ad agencies into — commoditized service offerings that win by delivering scale and efficiency, by creating specialty areas that can’t exist on their own anymore. Like “media”. And “creative”.
Leadership-focused = actually telling clients what they should be doing (and being expected to do the same), because we’re experts with experience and depth.
Integrated solutions = getting rid of silos because that’s not how real-life works anymore. Creative looks like media, media looks like creative, media looks like PR, creative looks like social media, etc.
Does that help?