Just a Question. Do you actually hate your Job?
Dezember 1st, 2011 • Allgemein, People, Poll
Working in an agency is a strange thing: Usually you work more hours per day than most of your friends who are employees of a Bank, an Insurance company or who may be Gardeners. Many in our industry earn less than what they could get paid if they would have gone to ‘the industry’ (a mystical word in agencies that describes an unknown Utopia, think: Xanadu). And few people really have a good plan what to do with their career once they crossed the 45 without being CCO. Long story short: Deciding to work for an agency is quite a stupid decision.
But then: You love the fact that it’s a dynamic and young environment. Sure, the typical agency has changed over time. But the places I worked at employed some of the most interesting, gentle and even some of the smartest people I ever met. It would be unfair to attach the term Playground to it – at least that’s not how I experienced it – but it was a good time wherever I worked. Agencies may be run sometimes by stressed, professional lifetime teenagers. But generally we are talking about very interesting places where people like each other and a kind of a community forms.
I guess there is not one agency person who at some point in his life raved about changing into ‘the industry’ (where everything will be good) or to be self-employed (where also everything will be good). So actually only few of the marketing peeps I got to know in my life would get up and fight to death if the concept of ad/marketing/whatever agency would be endangered. But isn’t that strange? Isn’t there a reason why we actually like to work for agencies as improvable as it is as a concept?
A couple of days ago I posted the following Dilbert cartoon on the Facebook page of this blog.
My Facebook page has about 520 members and an average post gets 5 to 10 likes. This particular one received 366 likes as it was apparently shared 280 times since I posted it (and I just stole it and re-posted it either). Oh…and that’s just my starting point. In the summer 2010 a hilarious Tumblr concept went viral: ‘Things real people don’t say in advertising‘…
The title says it all: It is a concept that makes fun of the idealistic way agencies and clients describe their clients. Because to be perfectly honest: Few of us really believe that the ordinary customer is interested in more branded messages. And yes, that is a conflict in what many of us must say professionally.
Did I mention ‘Women alone laughing with Salad?‘, another site dedicated to take the piss out of brand marketing. This time out of stock photos which pretty much look the same.
And I don’t even want to mention the brilliant video pisstakes John St did to ridicule award shows and narrow-minded agency concepts, Adverbatims – the most horrific client quotes and a lot more.
At the same time there is still this fascination for advertising, marketing and agencies. But: While digital marketing has more than obviously started (and won) the revolution against the ad agencies we seem to downgrade this in our relationship to the marketing industry. Mad Men? This is a series about the dark ages of advertising, about BUY, BUY, BUY. And still agencies dress up as Draper’s agency Sterling & Cooper while their community manager simultaneously tweets about the dawn of a new agency era.
Seriously: Have agency peeps become a bit romantic? You know: Miserably living in the present while silently wishing back the past (when everything was clear, sexy and being an Art Director was exotic and very well paid)?
I am just very surprised why constantly making fun of our own industry constantly makes us happy. I simply assume that both me and my colleagues are actually glad to work for agencies. But I am under the impression that making fun of agencies, their processes, and their way of interacting is the most simple, guaranteed, populist way to gain karma points from your marketing friends. And even though I do it personally – I haven’t fully figured out why all of us do it.
Let’s try to explain it.
Option A: Are we Romantics who are actually by far not as modern as we wish? Secretly wishing back the good old days? Or is it B) just a way to release pressure? A bit of irony here and there – a running gag? Option C: In reality all of us unhappy, bitter, cynical cowards who are just not curageous enough not to quit.
My guess is clear (not C). What is your position?
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Tim
