Four Minutes and Eleven Seconds of Career Guidance.

I'm 166 years old. Or at least I feel that way. Especially when I have revisions to do on things that shouldn't be revised. 

When I worked at Bloomingdale's as a copywriter in their in-house advertising agency, I never avoided doing the work that was assigned to me. 

Except drapery and blind ads. They demanded creating long rows and columns on my typewriter. Different lengths and widths for different window-coverings. Tough for a bad typist working on a typewriter, not a computer. I avoided those ads.

Today, I avoid revisions. Especially when I don't agree with them.

I wish I had seen the clip above, from the Coen Brothers' great movie, "Inside Llewyn Davis," when I was 16. Or 26. Or even 36, 46, or 56.

At about 3:12, F. Murray Abraham delivers a stare and a single sentence that everyone in our business--or any business--would do well to consider.

This is somewhat painful to write about. 

To say aloud.

To admit to the world.

And maybe it's a function of being old.

Of coming to the end of a lifetime in advertising.

Or, of working with smaller clients now, who when they spend money on advertising are spending their own money. When you work for a big agency and big clients, your clients are spending their budget. 

When you work for start-ups and you're dealing with owners or founders--even if their company has a market cap of $20 Billion--you're spending their savings. You're spending their rent money. The money they need to pay for their kids' college. Or their retirement fund.

When you're working for such companies advertising hurts. Spending on it isn't a whim. Taking a chance is fraught with peril. Advertising is no longer an art-project. Or a silly exercise in creativity. 

Look at me! I won a trophy! It's a Lion!

It's about spending one-dollar and getting back two.

Somewhere along the way we've forgotten the derivation of the word "agency." We are agents--motive forces of our clients' success. 

We are in business not to promote our brilliance but to promote their brilliance. To show the world why our clients are important, needed, and why they should be bought.

We are agents who work for clients to make them money.

That doesn't mean we sell out and scream at people, the way so many advertisers do. Or break into dance to convey euphoria. That doesn't mean we aren't invested. That doesn't mean we should do things that are barbarous and ugly and short-term.

It means that in each thing we do, we need to calculate the rise over run. The "worth-it-ness" of our work to a client's business.

How will this thing we do--our chosen profession--make our clients money?

I stole--and adapted--the thinking below from an art director and friend, Neal Raphan, over 35 years ago. I've carted it around for all those years. I carry it as a shibboleth. You know, "In hoc signo vinces."

Llewyn should have had these words, this--maybe this is pompous--guidance.

Then F. Murray Abraham at 3:12 might not have hurt so much.

Maybe we all should.