Manipulators & Deceivers

When your so vested in your industry, starting out, waiting to get IN, you tend to forget. Forget what? Forget what the rest of the world thinks of you. I quickly realized it today. In my daily routine of checking my 5 e-mail accounts, 2 advertising trades, 50 advertising blogs and daily news sites I came across this:

"And Then We Came To The End," by Joshua Ferris, a former adman, who explains his old job as follows: "We were the hired guns of the human soul. We pulled the strings on the people across the land and by god they got to their feet and they danced for us." Welcome to the working week!

Joshua Ferris, a former employee of Chicago's Davis Harrison Dion found a gold nugget. While I'm trying to get IN, I lost of what others think of the industry I'm trying to get INto. Ad people are clumped in with used car salesmen. We lie, deceive and manipulate to get sell products people don't need. Somewhere in the dark, locked place in my mind I know this is partly true BUT it does not lessen my desire to get IN. This does give me a reality check.

In the ad industry, there is talk of a thick, viscous, cluttered world. There are models being constructed right now to decrease this in fear of a complete block out of ad messages all together by consumers. One is a movements to make commercials base their success and length of stay on tv by ratings like TV shows. But this is only half of it. What I've realized is that the number of messages out there don't really matter. What matters is the quality of the message. What you say and how you say it. If your product is there just as a filler or to make useless noise then it doesn't matter.

This book is a reminder that it is important not to throw more fuel in the fire. I am here to help quiet it down.