[syadasti]

Random article on the feed this morning.

'IT'S NOT WORTH IT': Ad Exec's Brutal Rant Before He Died Of Cancer Is Absolutely Chilling
Jim Edwards | Nov. 8, 2012, 10:10 AM

Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at aged 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer.

Redding also kept a blog, and after his passing an essay he wrote about the ad business, titled "A Short Lesson In Perspective," has gained a new and sudden life, on the SF Egotist and on Adfreak.

It will not make happy reading for the many people who knew Redding, know of his work, or anyone who works in the creative department of an ad agency.

In sum, Redding, wrote, life as a creative isn't worth it. "It turns out I didn’t actually like my old life nearly as much as I thought I did," he wrote, after he was diagnosed.

The screed addresses the existential problem at the center of anyone's career in advertising: Can you marry art and commerce and be fulfilled as a human being?

Redding concludes the answer is no. His story could apply to anyone's job, in any industry. It's sobering stuff. Here's an excerpt of the most brutal bits (you can read the full essay here.)

And here’s the thing.

It turns out I didn’t actually like my old life nearly as much as I thought I did. I know this now because I occasionally catch up with my old colleagues and work-mates. They fall over each other to enthusiastically show me the latest project they’re working on. Ask my opinion. Proudly show off their technical prowess (which is not inconsiderable.) I find myself glazing over but politely listen as they brag about who’s had the least sleep and the most takeaway food. “I haven’t seen my wife since January, I can’t feel my legs any more and I think I have scurvy but another three weeks and we’ll be done. It’s got to be done by then The client’s going on holiday. What do I think?”

What do I think?

I think you’re all f*cking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f*cking TV commercial. Nobody gives a sh*t.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn't really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.

 

[syadasti]

He must have seen this video:

 

[stevew]

mountain biking should never be marketed.

 

[kidwoo]

mountain biking should never be marketed.

But it's so damn funny when it is.

 

[jonKranked]

tl;dr

 

[johnbryanpeters]

This essay could apply to almost any "professional" career.

 

[Pesqueeb]

Work to live, not live to work. Advice that has served me well.

 

[syadasti]

This essay could apply to almost any "professional" career.

Except in marketing you are not only potentially wasting you life away by working too hard for little of real value - the fruit of your labor is a legal con game measured by how many people you trick.

 

[stevew]

But it's so damn funny when it is.

if they marketed it beyond honkies.....

 

[AngryMetalsmith]

I entered art school with the intention of becoming a commercial artist specializing in either illustration or graphic design. During the first two grueling years of foundations courses I took Communications Arts Survey and found it to be pretty much what he was talking about. The pressure to succeed and out do your fellow student was unreal, and that was just the intro class. Screw that.

Now twenty years after graduating with a BFA degree in painting and a few metals classes under my belt, I find my career as a metalsmith/jewelry designer to be quite rewarding. I make things with my hands that people not only appreciate but will treasure and pass it along as a family heirloom. I have had the privilege of making pieces that affect the owners life in a positive way. Sometimes they are intended to heal, symbols of love, and sometimes as status symbols. I get fan mail from time to time from couples telling me about their wedding or thank you notes from art teachers who thank me for giving a demo to grade schoolers.

But to this day, I despise marketing and all the lies and misdirection used to promote and sell products. To me the work either speaks for itself or it doesn't.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

most of the ad-world people i know, (specially the high-end creative ones) take 2-3 hours for lunch, start work at 10am and get to bang the models/actresses and blow rails of their asses.

i didnt think of it as such a crappy occupation.

 

[kidwoo]

if they marketed it beyond honkies.....

"Trek's patented VIVA suspension system works in conjunction with the aerodynamics of your specific mustache configuration for the most efficient climbing possible"

 

[$tinkle]

He must have seen this video:

or had a deathbed conversion to judaism

Everything Is Meaningless

1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

Wisdom Is Meaningless

12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

15 What is crooked cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.

 

[$tinkle]

perceived racism + madison avenue + tin foil + "prestigious" degree = http://www.technologyreview.com/view/510646/racism-is-poisoning-online-ad-delivery-says-harvard-professor/

 

[stevew]

But to this day, I despise marketing and all the lies and misdirection used to promote and sell products. To me the work either speaks for itself or it doesn't.

apply this thought process every 2/4/6 years...

 

[syadasti]

perceived racism + madison avenue + tin foil + "prestigious" degree = http://www.technologyreview.com/view/510646/racism-is-poisoning-online-ad-delivery-says-harvard-professor/

With absolute certainty nobody cares about your degree or racist opinion...

 

[stevew]

:yawn:

 

[jimmydean]

I'll just leave this right here...

Another year, another job change. Seems I've accepted a new 9-5 Creative Director gig to once again gauge how much I'd rather be freelancing. Stay tuned for updates...

 

[JohnE]

most of the ad-world people i know, (specially the high-end creative ones) take 2-3 hours for lunch, start work at 10am and get to bang the models/actresses and blow rails of their asses.

i didnt think of it as such a crappy occupation.

Can you get me an address to forward my resume to?

 

[$tinkle]

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.”

balls.
deep they are.