Work in advertising long enough and you will eventually notice that there is quite a surplus of people who feel that they were duped into signing into the industry. Dreams, glitz, glamour and being hotter than a supernova were all possibilities if you put in the hours and the effort. That’s the advertisers dream, and to some degree or another, at least I fell for it and decided to enroll in the life on the fast lane. After a while though, that lane hardly seems like the best place to waste energy on. It’s just a lane after all and after more than a few share of accidents, you realize that the lifestyle you were sold as part of your day job actually becomes part of the job since your entire existence is based around advertising and everything related to your work. Few industries produce as many misguided workaholics as advertising and though things could be worse, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that thought at some point during my tenure that I’d rather shovel feces or flip burgers so I at least had an idea of when my shift ended.
For four years we’ve belted enough bitching to at least make people think twice before enrolling in the un-special services readily available to anyone that is thinking they’ll be the next big Ogilvy or Deutsch. The reality is that there’s not just one reason why advertising sucks and the fact that we can keep writing is evidence that there is something seriously wrong with the industry we call our own. The advantage to writing anonymously is that you have people from New Delhi, London, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Juan, Sao Paolo, Seattle, Brisbane, Sydney, Paris, Miami, and Bucharest relating to what we write. That’s because though the cultures and the languages change, the industry is the same and the joke was unfortunately on all of us.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely aware that there are people supremely satisfied with their experience in the bizz, but for my part, I’m pretty sure that people who think none of this is worth it outnumber the happy ADites twenty to one. So if you’re an intern, an ad graduate or just someone from the ad business looking for a reason why your role in this industry should be severely questioned, I shall be offering 100 truths about advertising that you may or may not know and that you may or may not agree with, but these are the truths from my experience in 6 agencies within 5 years.
Coming very soon
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