Category: advertising

Post-pandemic, I’m looking at what I want my life to look like and what I want to do to make money. And it might not be continuing to work in agencies–especially after reading this piece by Zoe Scaman about misogyny in the ad industry: Mad Men, Furious Women.

…how challenging it is to navigate the pervasive ‘bro culture’ which remains the dominant dogma in agencies today; the desperate need to ‘fit in’ or else risk being booted out, with women feeling that they MUST participate or else be penalised…

The energy it takes to play along, to pretend it’s all just ‘banter’, whilst also watching your every move and every word, in case you come across as too meek, too brash, too abrasive, too confident, not confident enough, too sensitive or just ‘too much’ requires superhuman strength.

And while we’re using up a huge chunk of our mental and emotional capacity on this stuff, day-in and day-out, we’re also expected to work at pace, to deadline, to dream up ideas, strategies, manage challenging clients and not fall over.

[…] trying to fit within agency culture seemed to not only impact women’s ability to rise within ad agencies, but also their desire to. Many had just had enough.

Reading this was way too familiar. Bosses that expect you to laugh at off-color “jokes”? Check. Men getting paid more than me because “they have a family”? Check. Management that allows clients to harass employees because “they’re our biggest client”? Fuck those guys, and check.

I haven’t had a female boss in fifteen years. I currently don’t even have a female team member. And I’m never going to be a boss at my current agency, either. Reading this made me realize why (beyond entrenched sexism and three levels of male bosses, of course): Women my age have had enough and get out, exactly like I’m considering.

Throughout my career, I’ve joked about using my powers for good instead of using them to sell people shit and grease the wheels of capitalism, but maybe now really is the time. “You didn’t just survive a pandemic to put up with this,” after all.

I just saw this ad from Proctor and Gamble. I know I’m coming from a place of privilege; I know P&G is not doing this out of pure altruism. But it’s a well done piece of storytelling–of a story I’ve never had to consider–and good for them for making it.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I’ve been learning new things in my industry (long tail keywords! empathy maps!) and thinking about it a lot as a whole. When you boil it down, we sell things people don’t need. Sometimes we do it terribly (ahem, Pepsi). Most of the time we do it forgettably. And, as diving into content strategy is showing me, there’s just so much of the forgettable stuff being churned out. You can get the science down, but what about any art?

But then, you see a really good commercial before a movie and it makes you think, “This industry might be ok.”

The version I saw in the theater only had “Do what you can’t” as an end tag, which was much more effective (trust your audience to make the leap, guys). But still. There’s good stuff out there to be made.

I’ll be at a shoot for a TV commercial today, and up until last night’s pre-production meeting I was convinced the script I wrote for it was terrible and the actor wouldn’t be able to read it well and that everyone would see through me as a fraud. Then I read it again in the meeting and thought, “Hey, this isn’t too bad”– and remembered this very accurate summary of the creative process:

I think I need to remember this other truth when I’m stuck in steps 3 and 4:

(Drawn and animated by this gentleman. The cat just hitting keys makes this perfect.)