In Vino Veritas
“Me,” over at Why Advertising Sucks (who are those people?), writes that advertising people drink too much.
Shocking, I know, and akin to stating the sky is blue.
I can divide my ad monkey friends into a few camps: married/unmarried, kids/no kids and re-hab/drinks like a fish, and it’s a parlor game of sorts at awards shows and industry meet-and-greets to talk about who’s flipped out of one camp and flopped into another (always with a fresh drink in hand).
The best reason I’ve heard for this (other than all the good ones “Me” came up with) came from a long-time friend of mine who works on the music side of the industry. Her theory is creatives, after spending their days, minds whirling, coming up with creative ideas on demand, need time to “empty themselves” before starting all over again.
She’s the daughter of California hippies and I’m the son of Texas ranchers so the lack of firearm and cattle castration references in her explanation threw me off, but I think I know what she means (and you probably do, too).
So why don’t we “empty ourselves” in front of the television, or in meditation, or in blasting some poor noob in Quake?
Some of us do, including me, but those are “alone” times and I know I also need a few social moments to empty myself… together (while emptying a few tequila shots)… with people who understand the business and the up-and-down, crap-i-tude meets best-job-in-the-world cycles we go through.
On a somewhat related note, we finished up a radio production for one of our clients last week and I, arriving at the production in time for the approvals process, had a joke pulled on me by one of the guys on my team.
I walked into the studio, sat down, and my guys asked the engineer to play the spots for me. Funny intro, big announcer delivery in the middle, funny outro. All the expected stuff. And then… this… was tacked on to the end, just after the legal line:
So Jason, my art director friend, you’re fired. Please pack up your shit and meet me at Lee Harvey’s.
RespondEmail Article Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 12:47pm Mack Simpson
Entry Filed under: Ad Monkeys, No Really, A Life, Audio | add this post to del.icio.us
