Reality Check

I work in advertising, so I am allowed to slag it off. It's like with family. You can bitch and moan about them to all who will listen, but if anyone not related to you dare criticise your own flesh and blood...well, that's totally out of order. I can slag off advertising because it has had the best years of me, it has had some of my best ideas, it has had more waking hours of my life over the past few years than any of my friends or family have. Anyone who doesn't work in advertising yet slags it off is undermining those past 7 years of my life, reducing them to the subjection of disdainful regurgitated mis-quotes from Bill 'If you work in marketing you should kill yourself' Hicks, a man who incidentally was ultimately killed by a brand's marketing. Marlboro, anyone? And who's dead now? Not me! Cock.

Anywayyy, I digress. Not to put too fine a point on it, advertising is about selling things to people and [the ambition is that] creativity is the guile with which advertisers do this. It takes some skill to be creative, admittedly, but one should never ever kid oneself that advertising is anything other than making things look pretty and then putting them in the place where they will get noticed the most. Nineteen year olds in provincial towns have been trowelling on slap, Lynx, hitching up their skirts, unbuttoning shirts and standing in clubs and bars looking easy for decades. They don't need Oxbridge degrees to tell them that a person is more likely to take something (someone?) home with them if it looks good, and is readily available.

The problem with advertising is that it is its own victim. It believes its own lies, which I suppose is an endorsement, in a sick kind of way, of its genuine-ness. In order to create good advertising, it is necessary to become completely immersed in and obssessed with, the product you are selling. So convinced are those in the advertising industry that every brand and client (read: hand that feeds) they work with has been shat out of the anus of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that by osmosis they come to believe it of themselves as well. I've worked at some of the best advertising agencies in the world and have not yet managed to cease being amazed at the delusions of grandeur, and what are nothing short of God complexes, demonstrated by those at the very zenith of the industry.

And it is just these such people who are selected weekly by industry magazine, Campaign, to deign to enlighten the lowlier reader with fascinating insights into their brilliant, brilliant, witty and brilliant minds, by answering Campaign's equivalent to The Guardian Q&A; The Hot Seat.

As a regular reader of this feature I began to notice some disturbing trends. 1. That nearly every single interviewee was a man and 2. That they nearly all had some weird perception of themselves as intrepid and pioneering and consistently identified with famous explorers or royalty.

Remembering that some among these men have been responsible for such cultural contributions as Barry Scott in the Cillit Bang ads and McDonalds' I'm Lovin It, just look at the following examples of real responses given to the question:

- Which historical figure do you most identify with and why?

(out of cowardice and self-preservation, names have not been given in case I ever happen to apply for a job with their agency in the future!)

Men:

"Ernest Shackleton on his polar expedition - particularly the ocean voyage in an open boat in winter to seek rescue. A resolute but flawed leader, but much-focused on keeping his men well fed. His insight in this regard I find evocative and compelling."

"Captain James Cook. We both left Whitby at a young age to explore the world. Well, he did. I ended up in Ilford, but I do travel a bit now."

"Attila the Hun."

"Hannibal. Not Lecter. The other one. Because he took on the impossible and did it in the Alps."

"Christopher Columbus. He too came back from America very excited about life."

"King Arthur."

"Captain Cook. Great seaman." [ho ho]

Tellingly, the most successful and highly lauded of all interviewees responded thus:

"My high school teacher, Con O'Haplin, who taught me history isn't about the past. It's all about the future."

Proving that humility is the best USP of all.


I could only find one woman interviewee on their archives. Hopefully that's because there are no more out there like her; she sounds like a right royal pain in the behind:

- Which historical figure do you identify with and why?

"Elizabeth I, because she was Queen and she kicked arse."