It's Friday.
The end, thankfully, of a long hard week.
A long hard week, a portion of which I spent being poked and prodded and scanned and echoed by various doctors.
I am the only one in my office space now, except for a young production assistant out in the back making coffee no one will drink.
Our weeks are high-speed cyclotrons of spouting and confusion.
Noise goes into and comes out of the machine relentlessly.
We have forgotten the need for filters.
We just clatter over more cliches.
And spew out jargon like a firehose dropped on the ground.
This is what happens when there are no longer any leaders. When everyone gets a vote and when discipline and authority and grown-ups have been excised.
We have big data.
In fact, we also have big blather.
A tale.
Told.
By an idiot.
Full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.
"Big blather" is the best phrase I've read all week. Completely agree with you.
ReplyDeleteDo you love or disdain advertising?
ReplyDeleteHow does your own work stand up to the best out there?
Is it that you believe that the best days are behind us or is it just possible that its where you work..the agency I work at is pretty cool (not going to mention names but there is an ampersand involved) and we create some the nest work out there so I believe it could be about where you work rather than writing off every agency on the planet.
If you have little regard for your co-workers etc then why not move on to a new place?
Matt
Hey, Matt,
ReplyDeleteLet's fast forward 30 years. Odds are you won't be using terms such as "pretty cool" and you won't be in the industry. (Think service sector in the New Normal Economy.)
What you don't seem to grasp is that no matter how proud you are of the "work", it isn't what's most important to a client. A good client cares about the result of the work - sales.
Oh, and once upon a time ago, we had fun while creating advertising that generated those sales.
Until you grasp the fact that you have to justify your existence by that metric, you're just a dangleberry and similarly will meet its fate.
hey anonymous,
ReplyDeleteMy career arc and yours may have nothing in common.
Obviously its about results.
Are you telling me something I don't know? I don't think so.
A "dangleberry"? Please, your ego and attitude are dated bud.
Matt
Whoa Mr Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteYou sound (fast forward 30 years) like a bitter older generation ad type. The way I read Matt's post, it was neither naive nor n observation requiring "schooling."
Telling him he won't be in the industry seems to me like a Freudian slip about where you are currently or fear you may be.
I can't sh#t on people because theyre under 30. You were once too and you probably though the generation behind you was "missing" something.
It's his pov and it has validity. I've worked at agencies that became something other than the place I was hired at due to cultural changes, politics and I left to find a place more amenable to my style. philosophy and skill set.
I know George dislikes this word .."curmudgeon"..but that's what you sound like to me.
I don't know Matt but I wish him the best. His career might well eclipse ours. It may not but therein lies his journey.
Elena Tzardofsky