‘Real’ work
When I first joined the workforce, around the year dot, I was so immersed in the novelty of it that I didn’t have much time for introspection. That, and the fact that in your twenties, you’re too busy living life to contemplate or introspect; such ponderous pursuits are best left to the geriatric brigade.
A few years down the line, however, I started to suspect that the work I was doing had no ‘real’ value. My benchmark for comparison was my immediate family, most of whom are medical professionals.
They deal with real problems, I’d be thinking; their work is important, it’s about saving lives. My grandfather was in public health. My father, paediatrician and family doctor, dealt on a daily basis with really sick children, and often their really sick siblings and parents. My brother and sister-in-law, both oro-maxillo-facial surgeons, have had some really horrific trauma surgery cases to deal with.
Real lives, real people, real work. And sometimes, real life-and-death situations.
As against that, there I was, in advertising. The heady, fluff-&-froth business of selling dreams, lifestyles and products that people didn’t really want, but we helped convince them they needed. Perhaps I grew old before my time, because I remember spending a great deal of it on the geriatric pursuit of pondering the validity of what I was doing. And more often than not, grappling with a work-induced ethical dilemma or two, thrown in for good measure. Like, should I really be getting a fat paycheck for sitting in an airconditioned office and doing rubbish like this, when the man fixing the road in front of our office in the heat of a relentless Indian sun, subsists on less than a dollar a day?
False premise, false pitch, false work?
I eventually concluded that we can’t all be doctors; some of us had to be the patients, too. And I accepted that while the medics might be the ‘real’ doctors, we were the ‘spin’ doctors. And that the work I was doing did have value, just a different sort of value. Like telling consumers about our client’s product or service so they could make an informed choice.
Then I hit the ‘cynical’ years, which generally happens at 30-something, and realized that we can convince ourselves of the validity of anything, to justify why we do it.
That said, there was no denying the high of belonging to the ad frat. As Jerry Della Femina once famously said, advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. If you’ve been in advertising for at least 25 years, you would have read his bestselling book, From those wonderful people who gave you Pearl Harbour (1971), the clever title of which was actually a tagline proposed for his client, Panasonic, during a brainstorming session. Of course he was kidding, and fortunately his Japanese client seemed to have caught the humor, or that story might well have ended very differently.
Stories that end very differently are a recurring theme in advertising. So is the song with the ‘killkillkill’ refrain, a favorite with ad agencies. Why? Because the client is top dog, and the client knows it.
One of the unwritten rules of the game is that clients can get away with making insane demands and agencies will have to hop to it, or risk losing the account. This is a fairly ancient tradition, and has outlived blue-chip clients and hot agencies alike. It is still the top-rated rule of them all.
Although not every client is an ogre, I'm convinced the perfect client-agency relationship simply does not exist; it’s just another myth, like the perfect marriage. The primary focus of pitching for business has changed from bagging a new account to desperately trying to hang on to an existing one, because everybody’s trying to get in bed with everybody else. So when clients call for their incumbent agency to join a pitch, it’s like telling your spouse, “We have a great relationship, nothing has changed; but I sometimes wonder what I’m missing out on, and what it might be like if I switched partners, you know, just to see what it’s like.”
So, kicking and screaming, the incumbent agency joins the pitch, in a desperate bid to retain the business. What else is there to do?
Then comes that agonizing hiatus between pitch and signed contract, which is probably what drives ad execs to the brink. All that time to obsess over the horrific prospect of losing the pitch, of not being the ‘it’ agency or creative team any more. Of the damage that would do to the Q2 numbers. Not to mention how it would impact the outcome of the next performance evaluation and paid vacation someplace exotic, if the agency doesn't make the cut. All in all, it's an edgy way to live.
If they were to do a market research on antacid sales, I'm sure they'd find that ad execs account for at least 80% of total offtake.
Seriously though, after more decades in the business than I care to mention, I have finally come to the conclusion that the real work we all have to do eventually, is on ourselves. Which is what I’ve been focusing on lately. I’ve detoxed my liver, had my chakras cleared, learnt how to breathe from the stomach and seriously contemplated giving up smoking. I am currently considering giving away all my worldly goods, and taking up a vow of silence. Or celibacy. Or both. Nothing permanent, mind you, just toying with the idea and wondering how long I could make it last. Around as long as a pitch, I’d imagine…