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A tale of local advertising

Part 1: “Those who can’t do Advertise” ~ Myself

After working in advertising for blah blah years, you would think i could’ve written something like this sooner, but i guess there is never a perfect time to share my sentiments for my profession, so lets start from the beginning.

Its no earth shattering fact that its easier to get into advertising in Egypt than it is to get into marketing in a multinational company, from one side turn over is higher and from another side there are just more agencies in the market catering to the small pool of clients that are worth dealing with.

I have to admit that I got into advertising when I graduated because I couldn’t get a job elsewhere and this was supposed to be the “transition” into the marketing world, and in a snooty over particular world of know it all’s, advertising sort of had this open arms / I love you for who you are demeanour.

Why I stayed this long, well to be honest I like the idea of walking into the office on a Sunday morning looking as bad as I did Thursday end of day, I relish smoking indoors, the use of profanity isn’t frowned upon, and I found myself working with a group of individuals that I have to admit are nothing less than inspiring. Over the years I have witnessed how everyone and I developed in ways I have never thought possible. Everyone blossomed somehow in areas that you can’t exactly mention on your resume, but are without a doubt impressive. Whereas I’ve seen my clients climb up the corporate ladder getting longer titles, more wrinkles and a weaker sense of humor and reality.

Throughout the years I’ve seen people come and go into advertising, regardless of the reasons, but they mostly come down to this; in this society its perceived as a “one size fits all”, temporary, non prestigious career, and that those who opt for it basically had nothing better to do or are just using it as a launching pad to kick start their career on the dark side (client side). But again why is that? After 11 years in and out of the field, the reasons behind this trend can be summed up in the bottom 2 statements told by people I work with:

“Working in advertising we are like circus animals, after a certain age we burn out and either have to move or be gunned down” ~ Art Director

“Clients look down on us and treat us like slaves” ~ Every Account Handler I’ve ever worked with

If I dissect statement number 1, a lot of people will be resigning as we speak, so lets not get into that.

For statement number 2: Do you in fact look down on us? Do you consider us slaves or are you having a bad day EVERYDAY?

The answer to that question would simply be YES most of them do because of the cultural perception in Egypt that advertising jobs are the leftovers of the job market. And NO you can’t be having a bad day everyday because some clients are actually Godsends to work with, some are proper, professional and simply brilliant, and by “some” I unfortunately mean a few.

With no intention to offend anybody, the purpose of this is to talk about our clients, why? Because they are one of the main reasons why a beautiful field of work that people admire and look up to around the world is being compromised, forcing the most competent people to either leave or work half-heartedly.

Part 2: “A” Apple, “B” Banana, “C” Cat

Are you familiar with advertising terms and titles? Of course you are they are fairly simple; Account manager, Creative director, designer, ATL, BTL, PDM, PPM… (okay if you aren’t in advertising or a client maybe you wont know ) but I’m assuming that you do work in a related field so you should know.

Imagine this, walking into a meeting, where you are introduced to a bunch of people… lets stop here to state the definition of “introduction”;

“Introduction is a formal presentation of one person to another in which each is told the other’s name” ~ Google

Yes, you heard right “NAME” an introduction entails a name, and then a title, what is a title … lets google that too;

“A name that describes someone’s position or job” ~ Google

Now that we cleared up the confusion, we can all concur that a proper work introduction means that you give your name and title, which should somehow explain what you actually do in the company right? Wrong.

Which brings me back to my clients, the abbreviation lovers, some skip the name part of the introduction, either they are very introverted or they are stingy with business cards, which is fine, but EVERYONE remembers to state their title loud and clear, no let me rephrase that; they state their title loud but “clear” is a relative term.

Impressively enough, every single company has a unique complex organizational structure that almost has the same functions of every other company but with a completely different set of titles. And all these titles have to have an average of 2 sets of abbreviations or more. Cool huh?

Yes it would be very cool if we actually knew what they meant, but it’s nice that you assume that we do, shows respect and trust in a way.

So moving on into the meeting, I don’t know your name, but I know you are the ABC of the XYZ covering the TUV region. Meeting starts...

“ The reason why we called you in is because we want you guys to come up with a campaign to tackle the (Difficult term) of the CCD in the CMO of the brand”

And the plot thickens, my team and me try to look the least perplexed as humanly possible and nod gracefully. We also take notes.

Somehow someone musters the courage to ask what something means, the room goes quiet and they decide to start at the beginning and talk really slow like we are part of a student exchange program, trying their best to spell out the abbreviations but not giving out any information on what they really mean. Meeting ends.

Part 3: The Customer is always right and wrong and everything in between.

Here’s a riddle: What is big and small, out of the box but not creative, mass but targeted, expensive but cheap, simple but complex, sophisticated but mediocre, hot but cold, dark but light and has a client at the end of it?

You guessed right, you have just read a summary of your next brief, which you the advertising person aka: merlin the magician/ mind reader have to work on, and if you think that this is as bad as it gets, it gets worse through the cycle of amends, I have compiled below a collection of some statements said by clients during or after a brief:

“Can we change the color of facebook… its against our guidelines” (don’t ask)

“I love the idea but please come up with something else”, (okay ill try to think of something you hate)

“Shouldn’t take you so long and we are already late”, (I can see how that is our fault, I am sorry)

“You just came up with 3 options?”, (I realize now that the number 3 is bad luck)

“I don’t know what I want but ill know it when I see”, (Lets all pray for the best)

“Change the designer, he doesn’t get the brief”, (@$#@#^$$%#%$%&)

“We changed the direction but forgot to tell you”, (It still amazes me how I didn’t run this person over with my car)

To be fair, not all clients are like this, but those who aren’t are either working with or reporting to someone who is.

Now I’ve always worked with the mindset that the client is always right and have always given them the excuse that they are probably under way more pressure than I am; working in a bloodsucking, soul crushing corporation, turns out I was wrong, some are actually… lets just say confused.

That’s okay, we all get “confused” but we shouldn’t pretend that we aren’t, why take our “confusion” out on others and act like the agency submitted something to be executed in a parallel universe.

Disclaimer: None of the abbreviations mentioned in part 2 have in any way impaired our ability to understand briefs.. you can breathe now.