Please Feed The Animals

You may or may not remember my first “Huzzah! I was unceremoniously laid off, too!” guest post here at PFTA back in April, ‘09. No worries if you don’t; feels like thirty years ago. Which would have made zero sense, considering I would have been twelve…and, let’s be honest, why should a pre-teen have expected to get, let alone keep, a job in advertising? Aren’t there child labor laws, even in professions where people rarely sweat or have digits lopped off in horrific textile machinery accidents? Chris Hansen needs to look into this when he’s through nabbing suburban pedophiles.

Anyway, the gist of that original piece was this: we layoff-ees, in order to land our next ad gig, might have to cast a wider net and abandon our comfort zones creatively, financially or geographically. After all, that’s what our forefathers did when their personal Swords of Damocles fell during their Depression, one that – let’s face it — due to the glaring absence of Twitter, Facebook, Dunkin Donuts, Hulu, venti lattes, ESPN and/or online porn, was far greater and more depressing than our Depression. They didn’t whine, they didn’t waste valuable time on hypothetical “If I’d only done this better…” or “Why wasn’t that weasel hack suck-up [insert name of weasel hack suck-up here] canned instead of me?!”-level armchair quarterbacking. They just did what they had to do in order to provide and survive. Period.

(For what it’s worth, it wasn’t all just bullshit preaching sans practice, either: I ended up moving my family 2,000 miles from Boston and taking a pretty sizable pay cut for a new job…but did so happily, knowing how lucky I was to have found a job in the first place.)

But enough about the past. Like Mark McGwire, I’m not here to talk about the past. (Yet unlike McGwire, my testicles are not ‘roid-shrunken Ocean Spray Craisins.) I’m here to talk about the future. Specifically, the bright future of all the people whom I’m watching/listening to in “Lemonade” even as I write this. I’m now on my fourth or fifth viewing, yet I’m always blown away by the strength, good humor, innovation, and almost otherworldly insight and perspective demonstrated by those in the film whom I’m lucky enough to know well (Bob, Lawson, Lisa, Erik), barely (Michelle, Kevin), or not at all (everyone else). And watching “Lemonade,” I always, albeit momentarily, find myself envious of those who’d escaped the business – yes, I know envy is one of those meddling Deadly Sins for which Kevin Spacey mangled all those people in Seven (poor Gwyneth!) – found their “calling,” and are now basking in the glow of a reinvented life and a new, uber-positive outlook powerful enough to inspire and enlighten friends and strangers alike. (Those lucky bastards! Painting…roasting coffee…doing yoga!? Just who in the hell do they think they are – people with actual lives!?)

Okay, I lied. More about the past. I’ve been canned twice: first in 1996 by a small, now-defunct agency; second last March by a large, still very much alive one. And while I have happily left under my own power a couple times (versus being chloroformed and dragged out, KGB-style) to do some other writing, whenever I was subjected to those inglorious, soul- and ego-crushing layoffs – nothing worse than having that pink slip forcibly jammed down your esophagus with a battery acid-soaked toilet brush — I typically pretended to be quasi-amused and wholly optimistic about my new (to steal from the film’s tag line) “blank page” in life. But, truthfully, I was always surprised, embittered, confused, a tad emasculated (speaking of shriveled gonads), and, more than anything else, scared. Especially last March, with our second child on the way, a mortgage to pay, et cetera et cetera bla bla woe is me you’ve all been there so I won’t whine.

Worse, it made me even more disdainful of a business that, frankly, I was always a tad suspicious of in the first place. Each time I was exiled, all the stuff I enjoyed about advertising – endless collaboration, the thrill of cracking a tough assignment, the pride of watching younger teams come up with ideas I wish I’d conjured up, and just laughing my ass off several dozen times a day and not being shushed – those things instantly vanished, replaced by warts that grew uglier and more pronounced: empty claims of “New and Improved!” when a product remains “Unchanged and Shitty!” Vapid, meaningless, slaved-over tag lines that are as disposable as the client “relationships” fostered by legions of hand-wringing, ass-covering account types. Rude, discourteous, imagination-starved clients who, when they aren’t rolling their eyes, have their faces buried in their Blackberries while you tapdance like a trained monkey for their elusive approval. Poseur, wannabe rock star creatives who skulk around complaining about the bleakness of life and their misunderstood “art” when, in actuality, they’re hawking 99-cent double cheeseburgers or $99-per-month Jettas as shamelessly as the late Billy Mays hawked Oxi-Clean. Awards shows that couldn’t get farther up their own asses were they literally held inside giant, anatomically correct human rectums. And, most glaring of all, shoddy talent- and character-evaluation on the part of the powers-that-be. (After all, if we were fired, those poncy, powdered wig-wearing Bonnie Prince Charlie ECDs and HR cyborgs couldn’t possibly know what the hell they’re doing, right?!)

Put it this way: not too long ago, someone who’d be on advertising’s Mount Rushmore (if there were such a thing) said to me, “Reading your books, it’s pretty clear you didn’t like advertising too much.” Damn. Was I that obvious? I guess at times, no, I didn’t like this business. At all. Which is not a condemnation of any one particular agency at which I’ve worked. Rather, those aforementioned “warts” are fairly emblematic of all agencies, so, admittedly, advertising in general and I had always had a love-hate thing. I loved the creativity, the people whom I was lucky enough to work with and learn from, the un-tethered freedom, the reward of seeing the fruits of your labor (an actual, finished product on TV or the Web or wherever), but I barely tolerated all the accompanying headaches (see “cyborgs-comma-HR,” “creatives-comma-sulking” and “layoffs-comma-heartless”).

All of which makes me thankful that “Lemonade” came out when it did versus when I was most recently canned. Because had I seen the film in March of ‘09, I might have been inspired to say “Piss off, Ad World!” once and for all and pursue something I deemed more fulfilling and/or world-changing. Which would have been a shame because, in a shocking turn of events, my latest layoff, when the smoke cleared, did something I never would have imagined: it re-ignited my passion for advertising.

So why have I, of all people, become a Born Again Ad Guy, so to speak?

Maybe my layoffs, and accompanying fear, uncertainty and emasculation, have matured me, or simply put more of my life into perspective. Maybe, prior to this past August when I started my new gig, despite having worked at some great places with some great people, I just hadn’t found an agency that seems completely in lockstep with how I like to live and work — i.e. a place that, rather than being a rest stop on a haphazard journey to some other nebulous “more fulfilling” destination, just might be, instead, the destination itself.

Maybe it’s a byproduct of knowing that I had to take some chances in order to avoid stagnation, being thrust back into a hyper-kinetic creative environment, surrounded by new and innovative coworkers, and pushed and challenged by some truly trusting, very sharp clients. Might be the thin mountain air depriving my brain of vital oxygen. Hell, maybe after playing Charlie Brown to advertising’s Lucy one too many times, I’ve finally wisened up and learned how to kick the football before that mischievous bitch can yank it away again. Who knows, really.

But I do know this: while “Lemonade” will (rightfully) inspire scads of people to abandon this occasionally maddening, heartless business altogether for greener pastures and reinvented, non-tagline-writing-and-logo-resizing-lives – and I couldn’t be happier for those in the film and others who’ve found their true callings despite (because of?) an economy morphed into a post-apocalyptic wasteland that would make Cormac McCarthy shudder – I hope you never, ever feel bad, let down or guilty if and when you end up right. Back. In. Advertising. Don’t feel like you’re cheating yourself, or compromising, or settling for a less “film-worthy” life. Don’t question your talents, drive or ability to reinvent yourself if it turns out that advertising – that aforementioned means — once again becomes your end (at least for now…or forever…it doesn’t matter.) And don’t feel like some kind of karmic turncoat for collecting a paycheck from the cold, soulless Marketing Man, as if you’re a lung cancer survivor going to work for R.J. Reynolds.

Because, trust me, I worried that I’d feel all of the above and then some. But I didn’t. And if the last six post-pink slip months have taught me anything, it’s that doing something you love and working in advertising are,  amazingly, not as mutually exclusive as I once feared. Even with its many warts, we really are lucky to work in an industry that demands so much of our minds. That lets our synapses explode and run wild even down insane, irrational paths, and reminds us nearly every single day, to quote Steve Martin, “There is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.”

We’re not digging ditches, working in the kill room of a slaughterhouse or testing rectal thermometers (if that’s even a job, which I pray it isn’t). And despite the cruel, unanticipated, anvil-fisted blows advertising has occasionally landed straight to your solar plexus (which is how Houdini died, mind you, so it’s no minor assault), temporarily knocking out your wind, confidence, faith and trust, once the layoff smoke clears and you land your next job — and keep the faith, you will get another job — you just might discover that making ads is still a perfectly admirable, personal, fulfilling way of making lemonade.

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Mark St. Amant is an ACD at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and the author of two books: “Committed” and “Just Kick It.”