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‘I
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| Mad Men |
’ may be a little narcissist on this
one! Look, ‘I’ already got it started.
“I must be crazy. What the heck was I
thinking back then?
That I can be the 21st Century Da Vinci, and start the 21st
Century Renaissance? Mind-boggled by the chronicles and accounts of advertising
legends of the 1960s’ Mad Men Era—Bill Bernbach’s Creative Revolution and David
Ogilvy’s autobiography “Confessions of an Advertising Man”—I literally ‘sold’ myself
to the ‘advertising career’, for a while, in the context of which I decided to
specialize in Marketing Management during my final year at the top Business
School so that I could take a shot at the best Creative Agency in the town for
the year-end internship, and that I did! Man, I was an avid advertising maniac back
then. Advertising seemed to me like a Rock n’ Roll part of business. And yes,
it turned out to be a major turning and learning point of my life— mostly not
in a good way. Truth is bitter.
Reality dawned upon me. The sun may rise in the east, but it
will always set in the west. (That’s actually inspired from a dialogue in the
movie “Shanghai Knights”. Great movie! ) I stuffed my brain with the western
advertising philosophies and fancied my success with that knowledge in this oriental
terra firma. How naïve was I to dare to take that for granted? But better late
than never, I was awakened by someone who would like to stay anonymous (one of a
few good outcomes from internship). Philosophy merely gives us hope and creates
a 'false reality'; true reality shatters it down and toughens us up. There is a
fine line between Philosophy and reality, and Philosophy and fantasy.
Advertising as a creative industry and
me as a self-declared narcissistic and so-called ‘creative crazy head’ seemed
like a “no-confusion; great-combination” at first where I could transform my the-then
prospective profession into a workplace passion. Creative pursuit may be my
hobby, and transforming the hobby into a ‘workplace passion’ may sound like a
cool idea. It isn't. When you do something for money, it comes with cost and
misery. There is no such thing as free-lunch, unless you are an American hobo. I'm
no pro-psychologist but this much I know that the 21st century
stress is caused mainly due to faded line between the work life and the personal
life—it’s a no-brainer.
Advertising people are called “Mad Men”
or the “Crazy Ones”. That’s exactly the name of a couple of American TV series
on advertising business (R.I.P. Robin Williams). I wonder why! Advertising is
certainly important, but it may have been overrated today. As I have realized
from my ephemeral life-changing advertising internship, only two parties like to
see the ad: one, the client who spends the money on the ad, and other, the agency
that makes the ad. The rest of us most of the times… we don’t give a damn if
you have come up with the Ad of the 21st Century. (At least not
here. Not in my country.) It’s damned! Even one of the American advertising
proponents, John Wanamaker confessed: Half the money I spend on advertising is
wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
Maybe I have forgotten there was
ubiquitous Google. Thanks to Google, it has literally taken the power out of ad
agencies’ hands and given it to the small business.
Nevertheless, the morning is when you
wake up!
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