When spring comes,
you let spring turn your head.
When autumn comes,
When autumn comes,
you let autumn turn your head.
Everyone is just waiting for
Everyone is just waiting for
something to turn their head.
Some even make a living turning heads:
they produce advertising.
Some even make a living turning heads:
they produce advertising.
- Zen master Kodo Sawaki,1880-1965
A society in which consumption has to be
artificially stimulated in order to
keep production going is a society
founded on trash and waste,
and such a society is a house built upon sand.
- Dorothy Sayers, ''Why work?''
Social change cannot come about where commodities
contain the limit of social betterment.
It requires that people never concede the issue of
who shall define and control the social realm.
artificially stimulated in order to
keep production going is a society
founded on trash and waste,
and such a society is a house built upon sand.
- Dorothy Sayers, ''Why work?''
Think of what it can mean to your firm in profits
if you can condition a million or ten million children,
who will grow up into adults trained to buy your product,
as soldiers are trained in advance
when they hear the trigger words, ''Forward March!"
Yes, just think of it!
if you can condition a million or ten million children,
who will grow up into adults trained to buy your product,
as soldiers are trained in advance
when they hear the trigger words, ''Forward March!"
Yes, just think of it!
- Clyde Miller
Social change cannot come about where commodities
contain the limit of social betterment.
It requires that people never concede the issue of
who shall define and control the social realm.
- Captains of Consciousness, 1976
The fact is that 'fake' is a billion dollar industry
full of struggling dinosaur companies.
- Stefan Engeseth,
Fall of PR and Rise of Advertising, 2006
full of struggling dinosaur companies.
- Stefan Engeseth,
Fall of PR and Rise of Advertising, 2006
Consumerist capitalism is largely an exercise in gilding the lily.
We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display:
language, intelligence, kindness, creativity and beauty-
and then forget how to use them in making friends,
attracting mates, and gaining prestige. Instead we rely
on goods and services acquired through education, work,
and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others.
These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading,
so others usually ignore them. They prefer to judge us
through natural face to face interaction.
We think our gilding dazzles them,
though we ignore their own gilding
when choosing our own friends and mates.
This is an absurd way to live,
but its never too late to come away from it.
We can find better ways to combine the best features of
prehistoric human life and modern life.
ignorance and boredom. Runaway consumerism alone offers
little more than narcissism, exhaustion and alienation.
We need the freedom to explore different ways of displaying
our traits to the people we care about....
... Humans may never give up their drives for status,
respect, prestige, sexual attractiveness and social popularity,
but these drives can be channelled to yield a much higher
quality of life than runaway consumerism offers.
We can flaunt our fitness with more individuality,
ingenuity and enlightenment.
- Geoffery Miller, Spent: sex, evolution and consumerism, 2009
An organization is neither conscious nor alive.
Its value is instrumental and derivative.
It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that
it promotes the good of the individuals who are
the parts of the collective whole.
To give organizations precedence over persons
is to subordinate ends to means...
...The key words in this Social Ethic are
"adjustment," "adaptation," "socially orientated behavior,"
"belongingness," "acquisition of social skills," "team work,"
"group living," "group loyalty,"
"group dynamics," "group thinking," "group creativity." ....
People are related to one another, not as total personalities,
but as the embodiments of economic functions...
Its value is instrumental and derivative.
It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that
it promotes the good of the individuals who are
the parts of the collective whole.
To give organizations precedence over persons
is to subordinate ends to means...
...The key words in this Social Ethic are
"adjustment," "adaptation," "socially orientated behavior,"
"belongingness," "acquisition of social skills," "team work,"
"group living," "group loyalty,"
"group dynamics," "group thinking," "group creativity." ....
People are related to one another, not as total personalities,
but as the embodiments of economic functions...
They (individuals) are normal not
in what may be called the absolute sense of the word;
they are normal only in relation to a
profoundly abnormal society (organisation)...
in what may be called the absolute sense of the word;
they are normal only in relation to a
profoundly abnormal society (organisation)...
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
The whole culture of globalization
is based on waste and fierce competition.
It is based first of all on waging war against nature,
against the natural world, leading to further
environmental destruction of the worst
kind. People in Tehran and Dacca may be
polluting their own cities, but who is
cutting all the trees of Borneo?
Are not the Japanese and the
Americans destroying the quality of water
through copper mining and
similar activities in South America,
Indonesia, and Africa? Who has
caused the destruction of so much
of the Amazon? It is the peasants of
Brazil who are mowing down and
burning the trees, but it was the
World Bank that encouraged such behavior.
The demonstrations held
fairly recently in Washington dealt with
that very issue. Fortunately, the
World Bank has now learned some
of its lessons. Nevertheless, most
people do not want to pay attention
to the fact that the whole idea of
development combined with globalization
in the modern sense is based
on aggression against the rest of creation.
It is as simple as that, and
globalization simply exacerbates the situation
by spreading destructive
economic and technological processes
all over the globe. And then there is the war
within ourselves, because this globalization
is based on intensifying the passions for possession,
for acquisitiveness, for domination;
so it is not going to lead to peace at all,
but rather to homogenization, greater quantification,
and the further destruction of the quality of life.
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr, In search of the sacred
is based on waste and fierce competition.
It is based first of all on waging war against nature,
against the natural world, leading to further
environmental destruction of the worst
kind. People in Tehran and Dacca may be
polluting their own cities, but who is
cutting all the trees of Borneo?
Are not the Japanese and the
Americans destroying the quality of water
through copper mining and
similar activities in South America,
Indonesia, and Africa? Who has
caused the destruction of so much
of the Amazon? It is the peasants of
Brazil who are mowing down and
burning the trees, but it was the
World Bank that encouraged such behavior.
The demonstrations held
fairly recently in Washington dealt with
that very issue. Fortunately, the
World Bank has now learned some
of its lessons. Nevertheless, most
people do not want to pay attention
to the fact that the whole idea of
development combined with globalization
in the modern sense is based
on aggression against the rest of creation.
It is as simple as that, and
globalization simply exacerbates the situation
by spreading destructive
economic and technological processes
all over the globe. And then there is the war
within ourselves, because this globalization
is based on intensifying the passions for possession,
for acquisitiveness, for domination;
so it is not going to lead to peace at all,
but rather to homogenization, greater quantification,
and the further destruction of the quality of life.
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr, In search of the sacred
Turned into a commodity to be used by the
ever growing avaricious appetite of
modern humanity as consumer,
the natural environment soon began to suffer,
leading to the environmental crisis which now threatens
the web of life on earth.
Even today few want to accept
the direct relation between the materialistic view
of nature and the destruction of nature
on the unprecedented scale
that we observe everywhere on the globe today.....
...her (nature) order has been nothing
other than our order,
and her harmony that inner harmony
that still chants the eternal melody
at the center of our being
despite the cacophony of our ego
dispersed in its world of forgetfulness.
The limbs of nature are our limbs,
her life our life, and her destruction
our destruction.- Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
In the beginning was Consciousness
ever growing avaricious appetite of
modern humanity as consumer,
the natural environment soon began to suffer,
leading to the environmental crisis which now threatens
the web of life on earth.
Even today few want to accept
the direct relation between the materialistic view
of nature and the destruction of nature
on the unprecedented scale
that we observe everywhere on the globe today.....
...her (nature) order has been nothing
other than our order,
and her harmony that inner harmony
that still chants the eternal melody
at the center of our being
despite the cacophony of our ego
dispersed in its world of forgetfulness.
The limbs of nature are our limbs,
her life our life, and her destruction
our destruction.- Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
In the beginning was Consciousness
When we live immersed in the modern world of generalized
communication, where every natural boundary is violated,
we are constantly assaulted by images, messages, ideas,
all of them having their origins outside the boundaries
of our responsibility and control, all of them having been
crafted by someone for some purpose of their own,
and all of which in the end serve to manipulate us.
The profound and magical news of the human that
communication, where every natural boundary is violated,
we are constantly assaulted by images, messages, ideas,
all of them having their origins outside the boundaries
of our responsibility and control, all of them having been
crafted by someone for some purpose of their own,
and all of which in the end serve to manipulate us.
The profound and magical news of the human that
Shakespeare once brought, has now degenerated,
at the end of literacy, into Advertising and mere 'News'.
at the end of literacy, into Advertising and mere 'News'.
In other words we seek guidance from the fickle and
morally-bankrupt worlds of marketing, fashion, soap-operas
and consumer research– all of which are based on
adversarial politics and a divisive rather than
an ethos of interconnectedness and harmony.-
morally-bankrupt worlds of marketing, fashion, soap-operas
and consumer research– all of which are based on
adversarial politics and a divisive rather than
an ethos of interconnectedness and harmony.-
David Catherine, Nature, theophany and the
rehabilitation of consciousness, 2007
rehabilitation of consciousness, 2007
Business and commerce
take place in a frame,
an arena defined by unwritten rules.
Within the business arena,
normal ethics is suspended.
The aim of a philosophy for business
is to understand the rules that define
the business arena, in other words,
to grasp from an ethical perspective
how business is possible...
...My aim is to defend ethics
against pressures that would weaken or dilute
its requirements in order to fit in with a
so-called 'business ethic'.
Ultimately, we are all members of the moral world,
whatever games we choose to play,
whatever other worlds we may inhabit,
no one escapes ethics.
- Geoffrey Klempner, The Business Arena, 2004
take place in a frame,
an arena defined by unwritten rules.
Within the business arena,
normal ethics is suspended.
The aim of a philosophy for business
is to understand the rules that define
the business arena, in other words,
to grasp from an ethical perspective
how business is possible...
...My aim is to defend ethics
against pressures that would weaken or dilute
its requirements in order to fit in with a
so-called 'business ethic'.
Ultimately, we are all members of the moral world,
whatever games we choose to play,
whatever other worlds we may inhabit,
no one escapes ethics.
- Geoffrey Klempner, The Business Arena, 2004
Grasping generates becoming:
the more one grasps after consumer goods or values,
the more one becomes a consumer,
leading to ''birth'' of the self identified ego
that defines life primarily as consumption.
- Hooked! Buddhist writings on greed,
desire and the urge to consume, 2005
desire and the urge to consume, 2005
Orpheus has entered into an alliance with Pavlov
-- the power of sound with the conditioned reflex.
For the commercial propagandist,
as for his colleagues in the fields of politics and religion,
music possesses yet another advantage.
Nonsense which it would be shameful
for a reasonable being to write, speak or hear spoken
can be sung or listened to by that same rational being
with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual conviction.
Can we learn to separate the pleasure of singing
or of listening to song from the all too human
tendency to believe in the propaganda
which the song is putting over?
music possesses yet another advantage.
Nonsense which it would be shameful
for a reasonable being to write, speak or hear spoken
can be sung or listened to by that same rational being
with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual conviction.
Can we learn to separate the pleasure of singing
or of listening to song from the all too human
tendency to believe in the propaganda
which the song is putting over?
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
It was recognised that in order to get people to consume,
and more importantly, to keep them consuming,
it was more efficient to endow them with
a critical ''self-consciousness'' in tune with
the ''solutions'' of the marketplace,
than to fragmentarily argue for products on their own merit.
and more importantly, to keep them consuming,
it was more efficient to endow them with
a critical ''self-consciousness'' in tune with
the ''solutions'' of the marketplace,
than to fragmentarily argue for products on their own merit.
- Captains of Consciousness, 1976
The principles underlying this kind of propaganda
are extremely simple. Find some common desire,
some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety;
think out some way to relate this wish or fear
to the product you have to sell;
then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols
over which your customer can pass from fact
to compensatory dream, and from the dream
to the illusion that your product, when purchased,
will make the dream come true.
are extremely simple. Find some common desire,
some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety;
think out some way to relate this wish or fear
to the product you have to sell;
then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols
over which your customer can pass from fact
to compensatory dream, and from the dream
to the illusion that your product, when purchased,
will make the dream come true.
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
Accused of cultivating an unreal world,
advertisers have turned again to the
shadowy world of "hyperreality"
where encodings of reality appear to
universally simulate reality itself (Baudrillard, 1983).
Self-consciously hyperreal advertising
critically 'acknowledges' the generic field of 'hyperreality'
by technically modifying the encodings of realism
and drawing attention to the codes of media realism.
These ads tend to appropriate
critiques of consumerism as a means of
disguising and masking the question
of needs and their satisfaction.
Reflexively confronting these criticisms has
enabled advertisers 'to say' to viewers
that they recognize them as savvy
consumers capable of both choosing from
among many options as well as
recognizing a ruse when they see one.
Advertising has entered a stage
based on hypersignification, a stage in which
"semiotics gets increasingly annexed
by the advertising and marketing industries"
(Hebdige, 1988: 211) ......
Advertising in the age of hypersignification
no longer tries to conceal the code-
the metalanguage of the commodity aesthetic,
but tries to turn the "code" itself into a Sign.
- Theory, Culture & Society,
(Advertising in the Age of Hypersignification),
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, 1994
advertisers have turned again to the
shadowy world of "hyperreality"
where encodings of reality appear to
universally simulate reality itself (Baudrillard, 1983).
Self-consciously hyperreal advertising
critically 'acknowledges' the generic field of 'hyperreality'
by technically modifying the encodings of realism
and drawing attention to the codes of media realism.
These ads tend to appropriate
critiques of consumerism as a means of
disguising and masking the question
of needs and their satisfaction.
Reflexively confronting these criticisms has
enabled advertisers 'to say' to viewers
that they recognize them as savvy
consumers capable of both choosing from
among many options as well as
recognizing a ruse when they see one.
Advertising has entered a stage
based on hypersignification, a stage in which
"semiotics gets increasingly annexed
by the advertising and marketing industries"
(Hebdige, 1988: 211) ......
Advertising in the age of hypersignification
no longer tries to conceal the code-
the metalanguage of the commodity aesthetic,
but tries to turn the "code" itself into a Sign.
- Theory, Culture & Society,
(Advertising in the Age of Hypersignification),
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, 1994
The real evil of the media image of women is that
it supports the sexist status quo.
In a sense, fashion, cosmetics,
and “feminine hygiene” ads
are aimed more at men that at women.
They encourage men to expect women to sport
all the latest trappings of sexual slavery-
expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive. . . .
For women, buying and wearing clothes and beauty aids
is not so much consumption as work.
One of a woman’s jobs in this society
is to be an attractive sexual object,
and clothes and make-up are tools of the trade.
-Redstocking Feminist Group, 1971
it supports the sexist status quo.
In a sense, fashion, cosmetics,
and “feminine hygiene” ads
are aimed more at men that at women.
They encourage men to expect women to sport
all the latest trappings of sexual slavery-
expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive. . . .
For women, buying and wearing clothes and beauty aids
is not so much consumption as work.
One of a woman’s jobs in this society
is to be an attractive sexual object,
and clothes and make-up are tools of the trade.
-Redstocking Feminist Group, 1971
In commercial propaganda the principle of the
disproportionately fascinating symbol
is clearly understood. Every propagandist
has his Art Department, and attempts are constantly
is clearly understood. Every propagandist
has his Art Department, and attempts are constantly
being made to beautify the billboards with striking posters,
the advertising pages of magazines with lively drawings
and photographs. There are no masterpieces;
for masterpieces appeal only to a limited audience,
and the commercial propagandist is out to captivate
the advertising pages of magazines with lively drawings
and photographs. There are no masterpieces;
for masterpieces appeal only to a limited audience,
and the commercial propagandist is out to captivate
the majority. For him, the ideal is a moderate excellence.
Those who like this not too good, but sufficiently striking,
art may be expected to like the products
with which it has been associated
and for which it symbolically stands.
Those who like this not too good, but sufficiently striking,
art may be expected to like the products
with which it has been associated
and for which it symbolically stands.
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited 
Book Extract: Nature, theophany and the rehabilitation of consciousness, 2007
A Personal Summary of a Book
A page from my Diary
Advertising (or) how to come up with ideas
when you have no idea about life.
A selection of reviews of some current advertising:
''The jingle drives home
the brand name quite admirably;
by employing a six-part harmony
for voices, it manages to
squeeze in the brand name
over 200 times in 30 seconds.''
''It's refreshing to see yet another
good looking, happy looking family
prancing around the dining table
with a carton of something
that is of central importance
in their lives and a true source of joy.''
''Corrupts your mind as you are watching
but when you are not looking.''
''Idea not included!''
''Of the lowest form of thought. Packaged well.''
''Sell. Yell. Doesn't tell.''
''Pathbreakingly anal !!!''
''Sexy! Sensuous! Sheer snort!''
''Such originality! Sure to delude.''
''As wonderfully fake
as the celebs who endorsed it
and the ad guys who created it.''
''Very International! Very Colonial!''
''The advertisement has all the values
an idiot can identify with.''
''Brilliantly banal. Definitely deserves an award
considering it was made only for that.''
''As wonderfully fake
as the celebs who endorsed it
and the ad guys who created it.''
''Very International! Very Colonial!''
''The advertisement has all the values
an idiot can identify with.''
''Brilliantly banal. Definitely deserves an award
considering it was made only for that.''
''Many people in the team are claiming credit for the ad.
Rumour has it that the guy who actually did the ad
was sacked a week before the awards.''
Rumour has it that the guy who actually did the ad
was sacked a week before the awards.''
''Don't miss. Made by and for morons.''
'' All philosophy and fart.''
''The ad is totally grounded in fact.
The fact that the people who worked on it
continue to earn fat salaries
as they have made a solemn pledge that
they will never bother to find out
about reality and life.''
''1 account. 20 agencies pitch.
Finally, a boring 30 second release.
Just like sex.''
''Watch now. Be an idiot for free.''
The fact that the people who worked on it
continue to earn fat salaries
as they have made a solemn pledge that
they will never bother to find out
about reality and life.''
''1 account. 20 agencies pitch.
Finally, a boring 30 second release.
Just like sex.''
''Watch now. Be an idiot for free.''
''Vulgar. Shallow. Mediocre. Pretentious. A hit!''
''Builds a unique relationship
with the consumer: exploitation.''
with the consumer: exploitation.''
''One-upmanship. Inadequacy.
Self-consciousness.
It plays on your emotions. Dramatic!!''
''The creative and management
have collaborated remarkably
in giving us another sham.''
Self-consciousness.
It plays on your emotions. Dramatic!!''
''The creative and management
have collaborated remarkably
in giving us another sham.''
The good. The true. The beautiful.
Some admen have a long way to go
before they can realise what these simple words mean.
Maybe some creative folks should stop
trying to come up with ideas for a while
and start getting an idea about themselves.
Maybe some management folks
instead of trying to build a brand
should begin dismantling
their defunct value systems.
(Any media buyers for this article?
Please contact me.
Commission rates absolutely negotiable.)
Some admen have a long way to go
before they can realise what these simple words mean.
Maybe some creative folks should stop
trying to come up with ideas for a while
and start getting an idea about themselves.
Maybe some management folks
instead of trying to build a brand
should begin dismantling
their defunct value systems.
(Any media buyers for this article?
Please contact me.
Commission rates absolutely negotiable.)
Film: They Live (1988)
Fair Use: Screenshots used for non-profit educational purposes only.
Article: The Future of Advertising By John WinsorThe traditional advertising model is broken, argues John Winsor of new-model agency Victors & Spoils. It's time for the old guard to wake up.The question for creative agencies is whether they can wake up, react to what's going on, engage the crowd make themselves a part of the new reality."
I posed this teaser in a businessweek.com article published just over a year ago. At the time, the question was purely rhetorical. But in the ensuing conversations it quickly became obvious that the answer was a resounding "NO."
Realizing this inspired me to quit my job as executive director of
strategy and product innovation at the advertising agency Crispin,
Porter + Bogusky to co-found Victors & Spoils, an advertising
agency based on crowdsourcing principles. Now I find myself at the
center of the debate about the future of advertising, design, and
marketing—even the future of work itself.
Seven months in, we've had the opportunity to work on everything from
TV and radio to brand strategy, including digital an social media,
product design, service design and graphic design. We've done projects
with clients including Dish Network (DISH), General Mills, and Virgin,
with confidential clients in financial services, quick-service
restaurants, and packaged consumer goods. As we continue to explore
uncharted territory, we're learning every day. Here are some of the
most important insights we've gleaned to date:
The Model Is Broken
Advertising is all about relationships, and at the heart of the
client/agency relationship is trust. That trust has been eroded by a
lack of transparency and, often, resistance to change. Over the past few
months, I've spent a lot of time with the chief marketing officers of
Fortune 500 companies. The theme is consistent. They tell me stories of
being charged $10,000 per second of video editing for clips to go on
YouTube, $1,000 for a single foamcore presentation board, and $25,000
for event banners; an unwillingness to collaborate; and myriad indirect
charges for parties and travel.
Somewhere along the way, the big-agency business became a lifestyle.
But clients, who want the best creative work, don't want to pay for it
anymore. And they're figuring out that they don't have to. Smart
agencies need to adapt their business models and fast, or they won't
have the opportunity to rebuild these relationships.
The World's Your Creative Department
The old system of agencies employing a few creative teams to come up
with agenda-setting ideas simply doesn't make sense in a digital era
where ideas can and should come from anywhere. Digital tools can be used
to tap into the wider world of creativity, and can do so with a lean
infrastructure. It's a win for the client, who gets access to a
diversity of ideas. It's a win for creative talent, who aren't bound to
work on the particular accounts held by their agency.
Pick the Right Crowd
Mass collaboration, co-creation, and crowdsourcing are becoming
increasingly important vehicles for clients looking to engage the voices
of consumers with brands. At last count there were more than 100
crowdsourcing platforms available for some kind of design or marketing
work. Picking the right one is key. There are many factors to consider,
from who is in a particular crowd to how talent is paid or how
intellectual property is handled. Many times success will come from
breaking a project into smaller pieces and tapping different crowds for
the various different elements. In general, it seems it's best to
combine small private crowds (these days known as "expertsourcing"),
where everyone working on the project signs a nondisclosure agreement,
with bigger, more public crowds (crowdsourcing) to generate more ideas.
Stay Involved
In any management role, the key is to be actively involved. It's even
more critical when directing a digitally distributed workforce. These
days, people no longer have to move to the right city or work for the
right company to participate. They can work where they want, with whom
they want, and how they want. When harnessing the crowd for creative
work, every participant deserves feedback and direction. That's easier
said than done. But it's a big reason people get involved—and managing
both expectations and rewards is the only way to see this type of
business into the long term.
Help Clients Face the Challenge of Innovation
Clients need solutions that allow their brands to engage with their
consumers and that get the results they need to move their marketing
strategy forward. However, crowdsourcing platforms have proven unruly
for many clients. In a recent corporate identity project we ran, we
received 3,300 designs. The number of possible solutions created and the
effort to keep things on strategy for a brand can be overwhelming.
Curation and creative direction is the key to helping clients innovate.
A year after first asking the question above, the answer is still "No."
Too many agencies still are not making themselves an integral part of
the new reality. As the world becomes more digitally connected, we
should celebrate the fact that marketing and advertising ideas are
coming from everywhere. For me, it's inspiring to see the radical
evolution of an industry and watch individuals take control of a
once-closed society made up of Mad Men. The new world can be scary for
people who still work in the old model. We get that. Change is scary.
But it's also a reality.
John Winsor is co-author, with Alex Bogusky, of Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves and author of Flipped: How Bottom-Up Co-Creation is Replacing Top-Down Innovation.
The former executive director of strategy and product innovation at
Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, he co-founded Victors &
Spoils in 2009.
From 'Fall of PR and Rise of Advertising'
by Stefan Engeseth, 2006.
www.detectivemarketing.com
Article
Article
The Culture of Commercialism: A Critique
© Center for the Study of Commercialism, Washington, D.C.
Are we immune to commercialism?
Each of us would like to believe that we're immune to the effects of advertising and commercialism. Maybe other people are affected by ads, but we ourselves are too smart, too savvy.
Yet are we really immune? A lot of evidence suggests that we are influenced. Think about the nationally-advertised products we buy, the style of our clothes, the kinds of food we eat, the attention we give to our appearance, and our encyclopedic knowledge of brand names. In these ways and others, our lives reflect the ads around us.
Over the years, the sophistication of marketing has increased a great deal. The messages that encourage us to buy are designed by creative, talented people. Modern scientific knowledge of human psychology and of how the brain processes visual information is used in developing ads. An array of technical equipment and resources is also used. Ads talk to our conscious, rational mind and to our subconscious fears and desires.
Of course, no one would advocate a ban on marketing. Ads provide information that can be helpful to us as consumers. Ads increase our understanding of the product choices available to us. And in an economy based on free enterprise, ads play a vital role for the business community. Ads are a valid part of modern life.
Some people are concerned about all the advertising we're exposed to. They feel that the constant message to buy influences us in ways that are not to our benefit. One concern is that the message to buy overshadows other messages about helping each other, caring for our environment, and contributing to community.
What follows is a summary of concerns about the influence of commercialism in our lives. The information is not presented as an objective argument on the pros and cons of commercialism. In fact, this list and essay were put together by an organization that works to fight commercialism. Do you think these concerns are valid? Why or why not?
What are the effects of advertising and commercialism?
Commercialism has clear parallels with industrial pollution. Just as modest amounts of waste can be absorbed by the natural environment, so modest amounts of commercialism can be assimilated by our cultural environment. Large amounts, however, can totally overwhelm either environment, and such is the case today.
For decades we failed to recognize, let alone control, the harm caused by industrial practices. In some cases, such as air pollution from coal-burning furnaces, the problems were obvious but were either ignored or justified on the basis of short-term economic gain. In other cases, such as toxic chemicals that pollute the air and water, the dangers were not even recognized. So it is with commercialism: We excuse its obvious defects in the name of economic progress; we don't even try to identify more subtle effects.
Again as with pollution several decades ago, the consequences of excessive commercialism remain unexamined and unproven. Our understanding rests on a handful of often preliminary or inconclusive academic studies. The fact is that, despite the dominance of commercialism in our culture, social scientists have barely begun to explore its nature and its consequences. Moreover, government regulatory programs are inadequate to contain commercialism. Agencies that focus on deceptive advertising have such small budgets - totalling only about one thousandth as much as what is spent on advertising - that only the most blatantly dishonest advertising can be stopped. Other forms of commercialism go completely unexamined.
What, then, is the impact on our society, when, as Advertising Age [a technical journal for people who work in the advertising industry] wrote, "mass-media advertising explodes out of a shotgun and sprays everyone in its path, kids included"? And beyond advertising, what are the effects of living in a culture where even schools, museums, sports and non-commercial broadcasters have been commercialized? Does commercialism turn engaged citizens into mere consumers?
End of Article.
''A Short Lesson in Perspective'' from www.lindsredding.com
Many years ago, when I first started to work in the advertising industry, we used to have this thing called The Overnight Test. It worked like this: My creative partner Laurence and I would spend the day covering A2 sheets torn from layout pads with ideas for whatever project we were currently engaged upon – an ad for a new gas oven, tennis racket or whatever. Scribbled headlines. Bad puns. Stick-men drawings crudely rendered in fat black Magic Marker. It was a kind of brain dump I suppose. Everything that tumbled out of our heads and mouths was committed to paper. Anything completely ridiculous, irrelevant or otherwise unworkable was filtered out as we worked, and by beer ‘o’ clock there would be an impressive avalanche of screwed-up paper filling the corner of the room where our comically undersized waste-bin resided.
On a productive day, aside from the mountain of dead trees (recycling hadn’t been invented in 1982), stacked polystyrene coffee cups and an overflowing ash-tray, there would also be a satisfying thick sheaf of “concepts.” Some almost fully formed and self-contained ideas. Others misshapen and graceless fragments, but harbouring perhaps the glimmer of a smile or a grain of human truth which had won it’s temporary reprieve from the reject pile. Before trotting off to Clarks Bar to blow the froth of a pint of Eighty-Bob, our last task was to pin everything up on the walls of our office.
Hangovers not withstanding, the next morning at the crack of ten ‘o’ clock we’d reconvene in our work-room and sit quietly surveying the fruits of our labour. Usually about a third of the ‘ideas’ came down straight away, before anyone else wandered past. It’s remarkable how something that seems either arse-breakingly funny, or cosmically profound in the white heat of it’s inception, can mean absolutely nothing in the cold light of morning. By mid-morning coffee, the creative department was coming back to life, and we participated in the daily ritual of wandering around the airy Georgian splendour of our Edinburgh offices and critiquing each teams crumpled creations. It wasn’t brutal or destructive. Creative people are on the whole fragile beings, and letting each other down gently and quietly was the unwritten rule. Sometimes just a blank look or a scratched head was enough to see a candidate quietly pulled down and consigned to the bin. Something considered particularly “strong,” witty or clever would elicit cries of “Hey, come and see what the boys have come up with!” Our compadres would pile into our cramped room to offer praise or constructive criticism. That was always a good feeling.
This human powered bullshit filter was a handy and powerful tool. Inexpensive, and practically foolproof. Not much slipped through the net. I’m quite sure architects, musicians, mathematicians and cake decorators all have an equivalent time-honed protocol.
But here’s the thing.
The Overnight Test only works if you can afford to wait overnight. To sleep on it. Time moved on, and during the nineties technology overran, and transformed the creative industry like it did most others. Exciting new tools. Endless new possibilities. Pressing new deadlines. With the new digital tools at our disposal we could romp over the creative landscape at full tilt. Have an idea, execute it and deliver it in a matter of a few short hours. Or at least a long night. At first it was a great luxury. We could cover so much more ground. Explore all the angles. And having exhausted all the available possibilities, craft a solution we could have complete faith in.
Or as the bean counters upstairs quickly realized, we could just do three times as many jobs in the same amount of time, and make them three times as much money. For the same reason that Jumbo Jets don’t have the grand pianos and palm-court cocktail bars we were originally promised in the brochures, the accountants naturally won the day.
Pretty soon, The Overnight Test became the Over Lunch Test. Then before we knew it, we were eating Pot-Noodles at our desks, and taking it in turns to go home and see our kids before they went to bed. As fast as we could pin an idea on the wall, some red-faced account manager in a bad suit would run away with it. Where we used to rely on taking a break and “stretching the eyes’ to allow us to see the wood from the trees (too many idioms and similes? Probably.) We now fell back on experience and gut-feel. It worked most of the time, but nobody is infallible. Some howlers and growlers definitely made it through, and generally standards plummeted.
The other consequence, with the benefit of hindsight, is that we became more conservative. Less likely to take creative risks and rely on the tried and trusted. The familiar is always going to research better than the truly novel. An research was the new god. The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Lois Vutton luggage are not.
It takes a certain amount of courage, thinking out loud. And is best done in a safe and nurturing environment. Creative Departments and design studios used to be such places, where you could say and do just about anything creatively speaking, without fear of ridicule or judgement. It has to be this way, or you will just close up like a clamshell. It’s like trying to have sex, with your mum listening outside the bedroom door. Can’t be done. Then some bright spark had the idea of setting everyone up in competition. It became a contest. A race. Winner gets to keep his job.
Now of course we are all suffering from the same affliction. Our technology whizzes along at the velocity of a speeding electron, and our poor overtaxed neurons struggle to keep up. Everything has become a split-second decision. Find something you like. Share it. Have a half-baked thought. Tweet it. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Seize the moment. Keep up. There will be plenty of time to repent later. Oh, and just to cover your ass, don’t forget to stick a smiley
on the end just in case you’ve overstepped the mark.
So. To recap, The Overnight Test is a good thing. And sadly missed. A weekend is even better, and as they fell by the wayside, they were missed too. “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother turning up on Sunday!” as the old advertising joke goes.
A week would be nice. A month would be an unreasonable luxury. I’ve now ‘enjoyed’ the better part of six months of enforced detachment from my old reality. When your used to turning on a sixpence, shooting from the hip, dancing on a pin-head (too many again?), the view back down from six months is quite giddying. And sobering.
My old life looks, and feels, very different from the outside.
And here’s the thing.
It turns out I didn’t actually like my old life nearly as much as I thought I did. I know this now because I occasionally catch up with my old colleagues and work-mates. They fall over each other to enthusiastically show me the latest project they’re working on. Ask my opinion. Proudly show off their technical prowess (which is not inconsiderable.) I find myself glazing over but politely listen as they brag about who’s had the least sleep and the most takaway food. “I haven’t seen my wife since January, I can’t feel my legs any more and I think I have scurvy but another three weeks and we’ll be done. It’s got to be done by then The client’s going on holiday. What do I think?”
What do I think?
I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a fucking TV commercial. Nobody give a shit.
This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.
The scam works like this:
1. The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally out of control ego. We tend to set ourselves impossibly high standards, and are invariably our own toughest critics. Satisfying our own lofty demands is usually a lot harder than appeasing any client, who in my experience tend to have disappointingly low expectations. Most artists and designers I know would rather work all night than turn in a sub-standard job. It is a universal truth that all artists think they a frauds and charlatans, and live in constant fear of being exposed. We believe by working harder than anyone else we can evaded detection. The bean-counters rumbled this centuries ago and have been profitably exploiting this weakness ever since. You don’t have to drive creative folk like most workers. They drive themselves. Just wind ‘em up and let ‘em go.
2. Truly creative people tend not to be motivated by money. That’s why so few of us have any. The riches we crave are acknowledgment and appreciation of the ideas that we have and the things that we make. A simple but sincere “That’s quite good.” from someone who’s opinion we respect (usually a fellow artisan) is worth infinitely more than any pay-rise or bonus. Again, our industry masters cleverly exploit this insecurity and vanity by offering glamorous but worthless trinkets and elaborately staged award schemes to keep the artists focused and motivated. Like so many demented magpies we flock around the shiny things and would peck each others eyes out to have more than anyone else. Handing out the odd gold statuette is a whole lot cheaper than dishing out stock certificates or board seats.
3. The compulsion to create is unstoppable. It’s a need that has to be filled. I’ve barely ‘worked’ in any meaningful way for half a year, but every day I find myself driven to ‘make’ something. Take photographs. Draw. Write. Make bad music. It’s just an itch than needs to be scratched. Apart from the occasional severed ear or descent into fecal-eating dementia the creative impulse is mostly little more than a quaint eccentricity. But introduce this mostly benign neurosis into a commercial context.. well that way, my friends lies misery and madness.
This hybridisation of the arts and business is nothing new of course – it’s been going on for centuries – but they have always been uncomfortable bed-fellows. But even artists have to eat, and the fuel of commerce and industry is innovation and novelty. Hey! Let’s trade. “Will work for food!” as the street-beggars sign says.
This Faustian pact has been the undoing of many great artists, many more journeymen and more than a few of my good friends. Add to this volatile mixture the powerful accelerant of emerging digital technology and all hell breaks loose. What I have witnessed happening in the last twenty years is the aesthetic equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The wholesale industrialization and mechanistation of the creative process. Our ad agencies, design groups, film and music studios have gone from being cottage industries and guilds of craftsmen and women, essentially unchanged from the middle-ages, to dark sattanic mills of mass production. Ideas themselves have become just another disposable commodity to be supplied to order by the lowest bidder. As soon as they figure out a way of outsourcing thinking to China they won’t think twice. Believe me.
So where does that leave the artists and artisans? Well, up a watercolour of shit creek without a painbrush. That one thing that we prize and value above all else – the idea - turns out to be just another plastic gizmo or widget to be touted and traded. And to add insult to injury we now have to create them not in our own tine, but according to the quota and the production schedule. “We need six concepts to show the client first thing in the morning, he’s going on holiday. Don’t waste too much time on them though, it’s only meeting-fodder. He’s only paying for one so they don’t all have to be good, just knock something up. You know the drill. Oh, and one more thing. His favourite color is green. Rightho! See you in the morning then… I’m off to the Groucho Club.”
Have you ever tried to have an idea. Any idea at all, with a gun to your head? This is the daily reality for the creative drone. And when he’s done, sometime in the wee small hours, he then has to face his two harshest critics. Himself, and everyone else. “Ah. Sorry. Client couldn’t make the meeting. I faxed your layouts to him at his squash club. He quite liked the green one. Apart from the typeface, the words, the picture and the idea. Oh, and could the logo be bigger? Hope it wasn’t a late night. Thank god for computers eh? Rightho! I’m off to lunch.”
Alright, it’s not bomb disposal. But in it’s own way it’s dangerous and demanding work. And as I’ve said, the rewards tend to be vanishingly small. Plastic gold statuette anyone? I’ve seen quite a few creative drones fall by the wayside over the years. Booze mostly. Drugs occasionally. Anxiety. Stress. Broken marriages. Lots of those. Even a couple of suicides. But mostly just people temperamentally and emotionally ill-equipped for such a hostile and toxic environment. Curiously, there never seems to be any shortage of eager young worker drones queuing up to try their luck, although I detect that even their bright-eyed enthusiasm is staring to wane. Advertising was the sexy place to be in the eighties. The zeitgeist has move on. And so have most of the bright-young-things.
So how did I survive for thirty years? Well it was a close shave. Very close. And while on the inside I am indeed a ‘delicate flower’ as some Creative Director once wryly observed, I have enjoyed until recently, the outward physical constitution and rude heath of an ox. I mostly hid my insecurity and fear from everyone but those closest to me, and ran fast enough that I would never be found out. The other thing I did, I now discover, was to convince myself that there was nothing else, absolutely nothing, I would rather be doing. That I had found my true calling in life, and that I was unbelievably lucky to be getting paid – most of the time – for something that I was passionate about, and would probably be doing in some form or other anyway.
It turns out that my training and experience had equipped me perfectly for this epic act of self-deceit. This was my gig. My schtick. Constructing a compelling and convincing argument to buy, from the thinnest of evidence was what we did. “Don’t sell the sausage. Sell the sizzle” as we were taught at ad school.
Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…
This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It was’nt really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.
So was it worth it?
Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize. Just a lot of faded, yellowing newsprint, and old video cassettes in an obsolete format I can’t even play any more even if I was interested. Oh yes, and a lot of framed certificates and little gold statuettes. A shit-load of empty Prozac boxes, wine bottles, a lot of grey hair and a tumor of indeterminate dimensions.
It sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself again. I’m not. It was fun for quite a lot of the time. I was pretty good at it. I met a lot of funny, talented and clever people, got to become an overnight expert in everything from shower-heads to sheep-dip, got to scratch my creative itch on a daily basis, and earned enough money to raise the family which I love, and even see them occasionally.
But what I didn’t do, with the benefit of perspective, is anything of any lasting importance. At least creatively speaking. Economically I probably helped shift some merchandise. Enhanced a few companies bottom lines. Helped make one or two wealthy men a bit wealthier than they already were.
As a life, it all seemed like such a good idea at the time.
But I’m not really sure it passes The Overnight Test.
Pity.
Oh. And if your reading this while sitting in some darkened studio or edit suite agonizing over whether housewife A should pick up the soap powder with her left hand or her right, do yourself a favour. Power down. Lock up and go home and kiss your wife and kids.
End of Article.
Each of us would like to believe that we're immune to the effects of advertising and commercialism. Maybe other people are affected by ads, but we ourselves are too smart, too savvy.
Yet are we really immune? A lot of evidence suggests that we are influenced. Think about the nationally-advertised products we buy, the style of our clothes, the kinds of food we eat, the attention we give to our appearance, and our encyclopedic knowledge of brand names. In these ways and others, our lives reflect the ads around us.
Over the years, the sophistication of marketing has increased a great deal. The messages that encourage us to buy are designed by creative, talented people. Modern scientific knowledge of human psychology and of how the brain processes visual information is used in developing ads. An array of technical equipment and resources is also used. Ads talk to our conscious, rational mind and to our subconscious fears and desires.
Of course, no one would advocate a ban on marketing. Ads provide information that can be helpful to us as consumers. Ads increase our understanding of the product choices available to us. And in an economy based on free enterprise, ads play a vital role for the business community. Ads are a valid part of modern life.
Some people are concerned about all the advertising we're exposed to. They feel that the constant message to buy influences us in ways that are not to our benefit. One concern is that the message to buy overshadows other messages about helping each other, caring for our environment, and contributing to community.
What follows is a summary of concerns about the influence of commercialism in our lives. The information is not presented as an objective argument on the pros and cons of commercialism. In fact, this list and essay were put together by an organization that works to fight commercialism. Do you think these concerns are valid? Why or why not?
What are the effects of advertising and commercialism?
- Commercialism distorts our culture by turning every event into a reason to consume. Anthropologists say that holidays reflect a culture's values. In America, every holiday is a sales event.
- Advertising projects false images. For example, some ads imply that you're not cool unless you drive an expensive car, that smoking means you're an independent spirit, or that to be mature means drinking alcohol.
- Commercialism contributes to environmental problems by encouraging wasteful use of natural resources. Over-packaging, disposable goods, and buying things we don't really need all contribute to unnecessary use of limited resources. The manufacture and disposal of the things we buy cause other environmental problems, including habitat loss and increased air and water pollution. Billboards cause visual pollution.
- Advertising perpetuates stereotypes. Examples include stereotypes related to race (African-Americans as musicians and athletes), gender (women as sex objects, men as business people), and class (middle-class whites as the social norm).
- Advertisers influence the content of publications and broadcasts. Government censorship of the media is illegal. Yet it is well documented that newspapers and other media are censored by advertisers. For example, a beer producer may pressure a magazine in which it buys ad space not to print articles on the dangers of drinking.
- Corporate sponsorship of civic, environmental, or other non-profit groups may influence those groups. For example, tobacco industry contributions may discourage an organization from joining anti-smoking campaigns.
- Commercialism has influenced our political process. Many politicians try to attract votes with an image created by advertising and media coverage. In the past, candidates tried to attract votes by their stand on the issues.
- The public's perception of a company's activities and priorities can be distorted by image advertising. For example, ads can portray major polluters as environmentally conscious companies that give to worthy causes.
- Advertising costs us money. Businesses pass many of their advertising costs on to us. Also, the price of a product increases when ads successfully cultivate the idea that a certain product can give us status or a cool image.
- Ads cost us more in taxes, too. Advertising is a fully tax-deductible business expense. Because of this, state and federal treasuries receive billions of dollars less in business taxes each year. Tax rates for citizens must make up for this, so individual taxpayers indirectly subsidize advertising.
- Ads can be misleading. They emphasize the benefits of products and services and ignore the drawbacks.
- Ads encourage a brand-name mentality, or buying on the basis of the maker rather than quality or price.
- Advertising fosters dissatisfaction, envy, and insecurity. It can make us feel unattractive, uncool, and unhappy with what we do or don't have.
- Our commercialized society places a strong emphasis on appearance, encouraging us to care about our own and others' appearances rather than about characters, talents, and personalities.
- Constant exposure to ads may encourage materialism and selfishness. This may make people less inclined to help others. Statistics show that giving to charitable causes has decreased in recent years. Similarly, there has been a decline in public support for government programs to aid the least fortunate members of our society.
- Corporate sponsorship may influence content and undermine the objectivity of exhibits at science and art museums. For example, is an exhibit sponsored by a company that makes insecticides likely to examine human/insect relationships in a fair and balanced way?
- Ads take a lot of our time. The average person spends almost an hour a day reading, watching, or listening to ads through TV, radio, theaters, videotapes, newspapers, magazines, mail, or telephone. By the time the average American is seventy-five years old, advertising will have taken four years of his or her life.
- Paid product placements influence the content of movies, TV shows, books, and board games. This compromises artistic integrity.
- Advertising promotes alcohol and tobacco use, which kill half a million Americans annually. Problems related to alcohol hurt more people's lives and cost society more money than all illegal drugs combined.
- Marketers compile detailed electronic portraits of shoppers. Companies sell mailing lists for everything from foreign car ownership to sexual preference. These computer databases present a staggering potential for abuse.
- Commercialism has spread into almost every aspect of life. Being unable to escape it is annoying to many.
- Advertising aimed at young children intrudes on the parent-child relationship, can undermine parental authority, and can create friction in the home.
- Commercialism may erode values - such as sharing, co-operation, and frugality - fostered by families, religious institutions, and schools.
- Commercial foods and the ads for them tend to encourage unhealthy eating habits.
- Commercialization of school materials and equipment may undermine objective, unbiased education.
- Heavy promotion of shopping and buying distracts us from other activities such as reading, thinking, and playing. All the ads we're exposed to make it easy to forget how many different kinds of activities we enjoy.
- Our commercialized culture encourages people to spend money that they don't really have. The number of Americans with financial problems has increased steadily in recent years.
- Advertising implies that there's an easy solution to everything, from being healthy to having friends.
- Many ads imply, even if they don't say outright, that happiness is something we can buy. When we act as though this is true, our personal horizons and ability to find fulfilment in life are limited.
- Commercialism does not just promote specific products. It promotes consumption as a way of life.
Commercialism has clear parallels with industrial pollution. Just as modest amounts of waste can be absorbed by the natural environment, so modest amounts of commercialism can be assimilated by our cultural environment. Large amounts, however, can totally overwhelm either environment, and such is the case today.
For decades we failed to recognize, let alone control, the harm caused by industrial practices. In some cases, such as air pollution from coal-burning furnaces, the problems were obvious but were either ignored or justified on the basis of short-term economic gain. In other cases, such as toxic chemicals that pollute the air and water, the dangers were not even recognized. So it is with commercialism: We excuse its obvious defects in the name of economic progress; we don't even try to identify more subtle effects.
Again as with pollution several decades ago, the consequences of excessive commercialism remain unexamined and unproven. Our understanding rests on a handful of often preliminary or inconclusive academic studies. The fact is that, despite the dominance of commercialism in our culture, social scientists have barely begun to explore its nature and its consequences. Moreover, government regulatory programs are inadequate to contain commercialism. Agencies that focus on deceptive advertising have such small budgets - totalling only about one thousandth as much as what is spent on advertising - that only the most blatantly dishonest advertising can be stopped. Other forms of commercialism go completely unexamined.
What, then, is the impact on our society, when, as Advertising Age [a technical journal for people who work in the advertising industry] wrote, "mass-media advertising explodes out of a shotgun and sprays everyone in its path, kids included"? And beyond advertising, what are the effects of living in a culture where even schools, museums, sports and non-commercial broadcasters have been commercialized? Does commercialism turn engaged citizens into mere consumers?
End of Article.
''A Short Lesson in Perspective'' from www.lindsredding.com
Many years ago, when I first started to work in the advertising industry, we used to have this thing called The Overnight Test. It worked like this: My creative partner Laurence and I would spend the day covering A2 sheets torn from layout pads with ideas for whatever project we were currently engaged upon – an ad for a new gas oven, tennis racket or whatever. Scribbled headlines. Bad puns. Stick-men drawings crudely rendered in fat black Magic Marker. It was a kind of brain dump I suppose. Everything that tumbled out of our heads and mouths was committed to paper. Anything completely ridiculous, irrelevant or otherwise unworkable was filtered out as we worked, and by beer ‘o’ clock there would be an impressive avalanche of screwed-up paper filling the corner of the room where our comically undersized waste-bin resided.
On a productive day, aside from the mountain of dead trees (recycling hadn’t been invented in 1982), stacked polystyrene coffee cups and an overflowing ash-tray, there would also be a satisfying thick sheaf of “concepts.” Some almost fully formed and self-contained ideas. Others misshapen and graceless fragments, but harbouring perhaps the glimmer of a smile or a grain of human truth which had won it’s temporary reprieve from the reject pile. Before trotting off to Clarks Bar to blow the froth of a pint of Eighty-Bob, our last task was to pin everything up on the walls of our office.
Hangovers not withstanding, the next morning at the crack of ten ‘o’ clock we’d reconvene in our work-room and sit quietly surveying the fruits of our labour. Usually about a third of the ‘ideas’ came down straight away, before anyone else wandered past. It’s remarkable how something that seems either arse-breakingly funny, or cosmically profound in the white heat of it’s inception, can mean absolutely nothing in the cold light of morning. By mid-morning coffee, the creative department was coming back to life, and we participated in the daily ritual of wandering around the airy Georgian splendour of our Edinburgh offices and critiquing each teams crumpled creations. It wasn’t brutal or destructive. Creative people are on the whole fragile beings, and letting each other down gently and quietly was the unwritten rule. Sometimes just a blank look or a scratched head was enough to see a candidate quietly pulled down and consigned to the bin. Something considered particularly “strong,” witty or clever would elicit cries of “Hey, come and see what the boys have come up with!” Our compadres would pile into our cramped room to offer praise or constructive criticism. That was always a good feeling.
This human powered bullshit filter was a handy and powerful tool. Inexpensive, and practically foolproof. Not much slipped through the net. I’m quite sure architects, musicians, mathematicians and cake decorators all have an equivalent time-honed protocol.
But here’s the thing.
The Overnight Test only works if you can afford to wait overnight. To sleep on it. Time moved on, and during the nineties technology overran, and transformed the creative industry like it did most others. Exciting new tools. Endless new possibilities. Pressing new deadlines. With the new digital tools at our disposal we could romp over the creative landscape at full tilt. Have an idea, execute it and deliver it in a matter of a few short hours. Or at least a long night. At first it was a great luxury. We could cover so much more ground. Explore all the angles. And having exhausted all the available possibilities, craft a solution we could have complete faith in.
Or as the bean counters upstairs quickly realized, we could just do three times as many jobs in the same amount of time, and make them three times as much money. For the same reason that Jumbo Jets don’t have the grand pianos and palm-court cocktail bars we were originally promised in the brochures, the accountants naturally won the day.
Pretty soon, The Overnight Test became the Over Lunch Test. Then before we knew it, we were eating Pot-Noodles at our desks, and taking it in turns to go home and see our kids before they went to bed. As fast as we could pin an idea on the wall, some red-faced account manager in a bad suit would run away with it. Where we used to rely on taking a break and “stretching the eyes’ to allow us to see the wood from the trees (too many idioms and similes? Probably.) We now fell back on experience and gut-feel. It worked most of the time, but nobody is infallible. Some howlers and growlers definitely made it through, and generally standards plummeted.
The other consequence, with the benefit of hindsight, is that we became more conservative. Less likely to take creative risks and rely on the tried and trusted. The familiar is always going to research better than the truly novel. An research was the new god. The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Lois Vutton luggage are not.
It takes a certain amount of courage, thinking out loud. And is best done in a safe and nurturing environment. Creative Departments and design studios used to be such places, where you could say and do just about anything creatively speaking, without fear of ridicule or judgement. It has to be this way, or you will just close up like a clamshell. It’s like trying to have sex, with your mum listening outside the bedroom door. Can’t be done. Then some bright spark had the idea of setting everyone up in competition. It became a contest. A race. Winner gets to keep his job.
Now of course we are all suffering from the same affliction. Our technology whizzes along at the velocity of a speeding electron, and our poor overtaxed neurons struggle to keep up. Everything has become a split-second decision. Find something you like. Share it. Have a half-baked thought. Tweet it. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Seize the moment. Keep up. There will be plenty of time to repent later. Oh, and just to cover your ass, don’t forget to stick a smiley
on the end just in case you’ve overstepped the mark.So. To recap, The Overnight Test is a good thing. And sadly missed. A weekend is even better, and as they fell by the wayside, they were missed too. “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother turning up on Sunday!” as the old advertising joke goes.
A week would be nice. A month would be an unreasonable luxury. I’ve now ‘enjoyed’ the better part of six months of enforced detachment from my old reality. When your used to turning on a sixpence, shooting from the hip, dancing on a pin-head (too many again?), the view back down from six months is quite giddying. And sobering.
My old life looks, and feels, very different from the outside.
And here’s the thing.
It turns out I didn’t actually like my old life nearly as much as I thought I did. I know this now because I occasionally catch up with my old colleagues and work-mates. They fall over each other to enthusiastically show me the latest project they’re working on. Ask my opinion. Proudly show off their technical prowess (which is not inconsiderable.) I find myself glazing over but politely listen as they brag about who’s had the least sleep and the most takaway food. “I haven’t seen my wife since January, I can’t feel my legs any more and I think I have scurvy but another three weeks and we’ll be done. It’s got to be done by then The client’s going on holiday. What do I think?”
What do I think?
I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a fucking TV commercial. Nobody give a shit.
This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.
The scam works like this:
1. The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally out of control ego. We tend to set ourselves impossibly high standards, and are invariably our own toughest critics. Satisfying our own lofty demands is usually a lot harder than appeasing any client, who in my experience tend to have disappointingly low expectations. Most artists and designers I know would rather work all night than turn in a sub-standard job. It is a universal truth that all artists think they a frauds and charlatans, and live in constant fear of being exposed. We believe by working harder than anyone else we can evaded detection. The bean-counters rumbled this centuries ago and have been profitably exploiting this weakness ever since. You don’t have to drive creative folk like most workers. They drive themselves. Just wind ‘em up and let ‘em go.
2. Truly creative people tend not to be motivated by money. That’s why so few of us have any. The riches we crave are acknowledgment and appreciation of the ideas that we have and the things that we make. A simple but sincere “That’s quite good.” from someone who’s opinion we respect (usually a fellow artisan) is worth infinitely more than any pay-rise or bonus. Again, our industry masters cleverly exploit this insecurity and vanity by offering glamorous but worthless trinkets and elaborately staged award schemes to keep the artists focused and motivated. Like so many demented magpies we flock around the shiny things and would peck each others eyes out to have more than anyone else. Handing out the odd gold statuette is a whole lot cheaper than dishing out stock certificates or board seats.
3. The compulsion to create is unstoppable. It’s a need that has to be filled. I’ve barely ‘worked’ in any meaningful way for half a year, but every day I find myself driven to ‘make’ something. Take photographs. Draw. Write. Make bad music. It’s just an itch than needs to be scratched. Apart from the occasional severed ear or descent into fecal-eating dementia the creative impulse is mostly little more than a quaint eccentricity. But introduce this mostly benign neurosis into a commercial context.. well that way, my friends lies misery and madness.
This hybridisation of the arts and business is nothing new of course – it’s been going on for centuries – but they have always been uncomfortable bed-fellows. But even artists have to eat, and the fuel of commerce and industry is innovation and novelty. Hey! Let’s trade. “Will work for food!” as the street-beggars sign says.
This Faustian pact has been the undoing of many great artists, many more journeymen and more than a few of my good friends. Add to this volatile mixture the powerful accelerant of emerging digital technology and all hell breaks loose. What I have witnessed happening in the last twenty years is the aesthetic equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The wholesale industrialization and mechanistation of the creative process. Our ad agencies, design groups, film and music studios have gone from being cottage industries and guilds of craftsmen and women, essentially unchanged from the middle-ages, to dark sattanic mills of mass production. Ideas themselves have become just another disposable commodity to be supplied to order by the lowest bidder. As soon as they figure out a way of outsourcing thinking to China they won’t think twice. Believe me.
So where does that leave the artists and artisans? Well, up a watercolour of shit creek without a painbrush. That one thing that we prize and value above all else – the idea - turns out to be just another plastic gizmo or widget to be touted and traded. And to add insult to injury we now have to create them not in our own tine, but according to the quota and the production schedule. “We need six concepts to show the client first thing in the morning, he’s going on holiday. Don’t waste too much time on them though, it’s only meeting-fodder. He’s only paying for one so they don’t all have to be good, just knock something up. You know the drill. Oh, and one more thing. His favourite color is green. Rightho! See you in the morning then… I’m off to the Groucho Club.”
Have you ever tried to have an idea. Any idea at all, with a gun to your head? This is the daily reality for the creative drone. And when he’s done, sometime in the wee small hours, he then has to face his two harshest critics. Himself, and everyone else. “Ah. Sorry. Client couldn’t make the meeting. I faxed your layouts to him at his squash club. He quite liked the green one. Apart from the typeface, the words, the picture and the idea. Oh, and could the logo be bigger? Hope it wasn’t a late night. Thank god for computers eh? Rightho! I’m off to lunch.”
Alright, it’s not bomb disposal. But in it’s own way it’s dangerous and demanding work. And as I’ve said, the rewards tend to be vanishingly small. Plastic gold statuette anyone? I’ve seen quite a few creative drones fall by the wayside over the years. Booze mostly. Drugs occasionally. Anxiety. Stress. Broken marriages. Lots of those. Even a couple of suicides. But mostly just people temperamentally and emotionally ill-equipped for such a hostile and toxic environment. Curiously, there never seems to be any shortage of eager young worker drones queuing up to try their luck, although I detect that even their bright-eyed enthusiasm is staring to wane. Advertising was the sexy place to be in the eighties. The zeitgeist has move on. And so have most of the bright-young-things.
So how did I survive for thirty years? Well it was a close shave. Very close. And while on the inside I am indeed a ‘delicate flower’ as some Creative Director once wryly observed, I have enjoyed until recently, the outward physical constitution and rude heath of an ox. I mostly hid my insecurity and fear from everyone but those closest to me, and ran fast enough that I would never be found out. The other thing I did, I now discover, was to convince myself that there was nothing else, absolutely nothing, I would rather be doing. That I had found my true calling in life, and that I was unbelievably lucky to be getting paid – most of the time – for something that I was passionate about, and would probably be doing in some form or other anyway.
It turns out that my training and experience had equipped me perfectly for this epic act of self-deceit. This was my gig. My schtick. Constructing a compelling and convincing argument to buy, from the thinnest of evidence was what we did. “Don’t sell the sausage. Sell the sizzle” as we were taught at ad school.
Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…
This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It was’nt really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.
So was it worth it?
Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize. Just a lot of faded, yellowing newsprint, and old video cassettes in an obsolete format I can’t even play any more even if I was interested. Oh yes, and a lot of framed certificates and little gold statuettes. A shit-load of empty Prozac boxes, wine bottles, a lot of grey hair and a tumor of indeterminate dimensions.
It sounds like I’m feeling sorry for myself again. I’m not. It was fun for quite a lot of the time. I was pretty good at it. I met a lot of funny, talented and clever people, got to become an overnight expert in everything from shower-heads to sheep-dip, got to scratch my creative itch on a daily basis, and earned enough money to raise the family which I love, and even see them occasionally.
But what I didn’t do, with the benefit of perspective, is anything of any lasting importance. At least creatively speaking. Economically I probably helped shift some merchandise. Enhanced a few companies bottom lines. Helped make one or two wealthy men a bit wealthier than they already were.
As a life, it all seemed like such a good idea at the time.
But I’m not really sure it passes The Overnight Test.
Pity.
Oh. And if your reading this while sitting in some darkened studio or edit suite agonizing over whether housewife A should pick up the soap powder with her left hand or her right, do yourself a favour. Power down. Lock up and go home and kiss your wife and kids.
End of Article.
