Can I Pick Your Soul?

There's a lot to dislike about the "contemporary ad agency ecosystem."

First, not everyone realized I was being an asshole when I called it an ecosystem.

But worse, is sitting out in the open at your ugly linoleum board laying on ugly Herman Miller sawhorses and having someone you barely know come up to you and say, "Can I pick your brain?"

Somehow, in our oh-so-politically-correct world, it's fine to ask someone if you can pick their brain. 

An essential organ is fair-game. 

Imagine.

Can I pick your pancreas? Can I pick your duodenum? Can I pick your pupik?

Pickable.

I was thinking about how many people used to ask to pick my brain when I worked at Ogilvy. You'd have thunk my synapses were like free after-dinner mints as a New York diner. 

Here! Grab a handful! They're free!

Essentially, something shitty is behind that pick-your-brain request. Here are a few of the shitty-isms I've come up with.

1. The holding company has fired all experienced people and so as one of the few remaining, we're asking you questions. 

We're asking you questions because training in an ad agency now consists of resizing mobile ads from small to microscopic.

2. We want the benefit of your intelligence, ideas and experience, but we aren't willing to charge clients for it. They don't want to pay for wisdom--procurement doesn't like wisdom.

3. We're asking you to think and work, and take time away from the job you're paid to do, and work for us for free. Because we don't own you for eight hours, though we pay you for eight hours. We own you in-perpetuity. Accent on the toooooey.

4. You're supposed to help others out of the goodness of your heart (and brain.) Just because no one else does doesn't mean you shouldn't.

5. When your brain is done being picked, or all picked out, or we decide we want a younger brain to pick, you and your brain will be kicked to the curb with no recompense whatsoever, even though you allowed free brain-picking.

Reading The Wall Street Journal about a week ago, I read this about one of the industry's prime brain-pickers.

As WPP was reducing its workforce from 2015-2021 from 200,000 people to 100,000 people, Martin Sorrell earned something like $200 million. He was fired from WPP half-a-decade ago, and is still being paid $500,000/year. (This data is true, btw. But no one knows about the halving of the holding companies. Because no one's left to report upon it except unpaid bloggers like me.)

$500K. That probably pays for his dry-cleaning.

He, and the legions of people like him, are perfect examples of "socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor." They pick brains and never pay. They pick brains then kick them to the curb like an old tin can. We support them. They pick our brains.

I saw this this morning. His math didn't work out. So he's firing 500 brains. 

The article says, "we have continued to maintain a disciplined approach to cost management."

The article should say, "we have continued to maintain a disciplined approach to cost management, except the costs of paying management. "

Q: Can I pick your brain?

A: Can I pick your pocket? 

Q. Can I pick your brain?

A. Can I kick your shins?

Q. Can I pick your brain?

A. Can I eat you alive?