If Advertising Is So Great, Why Are We So Unhappy?
Clap along if you feel
like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel
like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know
what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like
that’s what you wanna do.
— Pharrell Williams
Look at us.
We work in an industry that is arguably the closest thing to the entertainment business that most of us will ever know. We have a dress code that is virtually non-existent. Some of us get to travel to some pretty exotic places that I’m pretty sure the guy that prepares your tax return every April will never come close to experiencing.
And yet, study after study tells us that we’re not happy. That’s right. I’m talking to you, associate CD in Omaha. You too, newly minted creative technologist fresh out of Hyper Island. And don’t worry, Global Chief Creative Officer in New York City. I didn’t forget about you. Regardless of who you are or what you do or where you do it, chances are, if you’re an advertising creative, there’s something missing.
A recent Campaign US poll claims that 37% of advertising employees described morale in their shop as “low” or “dangerously low” while 70% said they are “actively job seeking”. Unsurprisingly, 60% say that morale is lower now than it was a year ago.
Uwe Hook, former client director at media agency, Initiative, understands those numbers all too well. After 20 years in the business, Hook decided to call it quits. “It wasn’t fun any more. We all used to come up with innovative ideas, but now we don’t. The bravery in work has disappeared. Innovative work is cut immediately because you don’t know how it’s going to perform. So you just repeat what you did last year. It wasn’t this way always.”
Which would explain why an increasing number of young creative people are turning to companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, instead of advertising; companies where creative freedom is virtually infinite in comparison to the frequently suffocating atmospheres of agencies, where their ideas are more likely to result in something tangible and where, rightly or wrongly, there’s a sense of purpose.
So where did we go off the rails? It wasn’t always like this, after all. Long ago in an advertising business far, far away, if you were fortunate enough to be a creative, you spent your days and nights swimming in a universe of ideas. Nobody cared how you got to those ideas as long as you kept coming up with them. Didn’t matter if you did that in a coffee shop or on a toilet seat, as long as you kept killing it, and killing it big, nobody cared.
Then the world turned upside down. The hours got longer. The pay got smaller. The egos got bigger. The layers of approval got deeper. The gratification factor went on life support. If you’re young, pretty soon you’re looking down the barrel at the big 3–0 with no social life, a lifestyle that’s unhealthier than a Chernobyl cockroach, and one hell of a sad portfolio. So if you’re still in this business, that leaves you pretty much screwed, right?
Well, perhaps not. Maybe the reason so many of us are so unhappy with advertising has as much to do with us as it does with advertising.
Not long ago, Lady Gaga was seriously considering quitting the entertainment business. It used to make her happy, until it didn’t. “I started being honest with myself,” the pop diva says. “I thought, well, I don’t like wasting time shaking people’s hands and smiling. It feels shallow. I feel sad that I’ve just become a money-making machine and that my passion and my creativity take a back seat. So I started saying no. I’m not doing that. And slowly but surely I began to remember who I am.”
Maybe you don’t feel much sympathy for someone blessed with so much good fortune. Shaking people hands? Taking the occasional selfie with a fan? Well, boo hoo and cry me a river. I know. But Gaga has a point. In the end, if advertising isn’t making you happy, and if for whatever reason you can’t or aren’t willing to strike off for greener pastures, then at some point you’ve got to start saying, no. I’m not doing that. I’m not letting my passion and my creativity take a back seat anymore. I’m tired of shallow. No. No. No. I’m not doing that.
It’s not easy to do. It could mean pulling up stakes and moving on to someplace where the layers are fewer, where the creative opportunities are richer, where you don’t have to choose between your work and your kids and where the penny-pinching howl of holding companies are a distant echo. No easy thing, I grant you. Unlike Lady Gaga, for most of us, saying no can, and usually does, come with a price. And why would it not. With all due respect to Pharrell, sometimes finding your happiest you takes a little more effort than just clapping.
