The Tumbler of Scotch Blues

In between my daily routine of cranking out banner ads and email blasts, you know, the glamour work of Advertising 2020, I like to comb through the griping boards over on the Fishbowl app.

There's something soothing about reading the tales of misery from my fellow practitioners of advertising who are now decades younger than me.

With the benefit of hindsight and a whole new perspective -- now a client side perspective that will preclude me from ever working inside an ad agency ever again -- it's funny to see what occupies the minds of these noobies.

"Ive been working my ass off for 3 months, can I ask for a raise now?"

"My art director is weak on concepting, should I request a new one or tell the CD?"

"Advertising sucks, is it too late to get into HVAC repair?"

Most of it is inane. And it makes me cringe to think I sounded just like them, not too long ago. OK, long ago.

But one gripe remains and I suspect it has only gotten worse since I roamed the halls at Chiat/Day, Saatchi, Y&R, BBDO, ETC& ETC.

And that is the inability to get work produced. I suppose I'm more fortunate than some, but I can't help looking back on a career with many more stumbles than successes.

Take the Chivas Regal campaign pictured above. It's one of my favorites and included perhaps the most personal manifesto I have ever written.

My partner John Shirley and I did this work twenty years ago. It never got produced. That didn't stop John and I from putting it in our portfolios. Nor did it appear to stop Canadian Club from doing the same campaign (albeit executed differently) and winning a shit ton of awards about 15 years ago. Perhaps even after some creative saw our spec campaign.

And as a testament to the resonance of the idea, you might even recognize the folks at Progressive Insurance have made quite a bit of hay from this same premise.

Sadly, there are horizontal art files full of work just like this. Work that never saw the light of day. I immodestly believe I have enough unsold, unproduced work that would fill the portfolios of 5 copywriters.

I am not alone in this endeavor. This is a truth lived by every copywriter and art director who has ever cut a rubylith. Just as there is nothing I could do about then, there is nothing I, or we, can do about it now.

It's the cost of doing business, Or as Hyman Roth in Godfather II so eloquently stated,

"This is the business we have chosen."