Member-only story
The Strange Art of Bringing Daydreams to Life
Documenting advertising campaigns from behind the scenes
No one dreams of working in advertising. I mean, I certainly didn’t. Like most people in this strange industry, I just kind of stumbled into the nerve centre of capitalism in a fit of absence of mind.
When I was young, I thought I would follow in my father’s and my older sister’s footsteps and enter the law profession. But as I got older, I came to realise that, dispositionally speaking, I probably wouldn’t have spread my wings in the courtroom. I mean, if my client got the death penalty because I forgot an argument in mid-sentence, I wouldn’t know how to live with myself – although, to be fair, I suppose my client wouldn’t either.
After a few false starts that involved contacting the New Zealand embassy and goofing about on a hoverboard in a shopping network’s broadcast studio, I eventually landed a gig at an ad agency — a turn of events that would alter the course of my career, and, I suppose, my life.
So what does my job entail? Most of the time it revolves around coming up with ideas for ads, making keynotes about them, and then trying, with all my heart and soul, to convince clients to give my work the green light.
