Your Employees Hate Working in Advertising

I hate working in advertising, but not because of the frustrations of the job itself. More the feeling of being a shill for companies selling a pile of useless crap, while everyone else in the industry pretends they're bonafide artists.

Wearing flip flops to work is pretty nice though.

As an advertising professional, most of us know our job is to help our agency stay profitable and help clients build their brand and their bottom line. I will acknowledge some of us don't get that, and they should evolve their perspective.

On the other hand, as a creative, our career advancement largely depends on:

1. Our ability to come up with great ideas

2. Getting those great ideas produced.

If we can come up with those great ideas, but they never get produced due to agency and/or client culture, we are screwed. No creative director in the world wants to hear about all the great ideas that died for no reason. They want to see cool stuff in our portfolios.

Ad agencies and clients that facilitate great ideas getting produced will enjoy fiercely loyal creatives who will quite literally sacrifice their personal lives for them. The fact that few ad agencies, and even fewer clients, care about producing great ideas shows us why our careers as creatives are currently going off of Niagara Falls in a barrel.

@ shutupandwritemeaheadline

i completely agree. i've been saying the same for years, and even tried to get into the non-profit and health care industries, just so I could feel like i wasn't helping some rich prick become richer, but apparently I'm not qualified to be responded to, despite 15 years in the business.

As much as I love good design, and great advertising concepts, I hate how pretentious us designers have become, like we're making any kind of difference, getting someone to puy a swifter instead of a broom, or coke zero instead of water.

too bad i'm too fucking stupid and unqualified to do anything else.

"They should evolve their perspective" is exactly the kind of self deceiving lies that those with either no aptitude for other industries or a sticky moral compass tell themselves to make their sentence in advertising seem less meaningless and bleak. Bottom feeders, fashionably picking at the scraps of industry; that's what ad agencies are. When 30 people in one room try to make an ad campaign they usually end up making only a package of compromises. You're not creating art :)

Who said we're creating art? It's just a job, like any other. Accountants aren't blasted because their tabulations aren't real art. Why don't we poo poo them?
Yeah I know, it's enough like art that we critique it as art. And honestly, the people who are good at this shit and stay in it for a while are the ones who believe it is a form of art. Is that wrong? We all create our own reality based on what works best for our lives.
Like right now, I'm struggling to accept that advertising is ok in my head.
The rest of me is numb with impotent rage.

Ugggh. Get me out of this place.

used to work in advertising, now work in healthcare.

let me be brutally honest, advertising is as soul destroying as finance but for 0.0000000001% of the pay.

Generally the barriers to entry are painfully low -arts degree and addiction to tv/internet and starbucks - you have the added problem of having to deal with morons stuck in a teenage mindset every day of your working life.

Anyone who thinks they work in a "cool office" or "gets to wear flip flops" is oblivious to the fact they are spending their hard earned cash trying to fit in with the other zombies who are uniform in their individuality.