More Stupid Than the Others

See if you think this scenario is familiar: you go to a party or meet someone new, somewhere. Your friend introduces you to someone or you’re being approached by a new guy/girl yourself. You inevitably get to the ‘what do you do for a living?‘ question and that’s where things somehow go wrong. You tell them ‘I work in advertising‘ and you either get a ‘wow, that’s so cool’ reaction or ‘oh my god, how can you?‘ just put a bit nicely (or not).

I’m not sure how other people feel about this but I know for me time just stops at that moment. Very Heroes style, you’re stood there examining the look on their faces. You wave to check if time has indeed stopped for a second there and you can just move around and do rude things that they won’t know about. Then you sit and wonder what image they have in their heads. Are they picturing the creative that drives a red mini with stripes? That has an iPod and listens to ‘music that doesn’t even exist yet’ or has strange names? That wears a designer watch which looks nothing like a normal one but adds to the coolness. Does he sell retirement plans to cancer patients? Does he get all the girls in a club? Does she attract guys like a magnet because everyone thinks it’s ’so cool’? (For details see ‘Advertising sex life rankings‘ and curse or quit your current job, okay?) Does he or she go to Cannes and Portoroz for festivals and seminars and get shitfaced instead? Is he or she in some extension of his/her teens?

Probably most people think that and I just got a smile on my face when I read a post on Advertising for Peanuts (which got really nice these last months, is more honest and cool) : “Most of those working in the trenches of mundanity, I salute you” by Jim Morris:

“[...] it’s probably only one percent of us or five percent of us that actually do that stuff, while the rest of us are working on updating a cereal box, or developing a postcard mailer to executives at banks, or refreshing the website of a manufacturer of fasteners, or creating in-store signage at some donut chain, or shooting another sappy hospital commercial or a spot for energy bars or Endust, or putting together a sales kit to doctors promoting some new pharmaceutical product or working on some piece of a telecommunications company’s vast direct mail program or a new 4th of July promotion for frozen fish sticks or yet another banner ad for wireless headphones or . . .

None of which really qualifies, generally, as the cool stuff. “

It’s funny when people ask ‘So what ad have you done recently‘ in case they don’t ask ‘What does your job description mean?‘ and you can’t say ‘Yes, you see this is mine’ because it’s not yours entirely. If you say ‘we‘ suddenly it sounds like you did nothing. If you do say ‘Yes, I did this...’ then people are going to pass it on as ‘He/she did this, how cool is that‘ till you meet someone that happens to know you, on your own, haven’t done it and they give you the raised eyebrow.

It became so much of a cliché it’s not even funny any more. Next time anyone asks, I’m going to say I’m a student and therefore a full-time tramp, it might sound more reasonable and realistic to them and they won’t question it or give me the funny looks.