I know the job scene in the ad biz is pretty bad over there, over here it’s desperate. And with the news out of the holding companies of their continuing drastic losses of income and declining profits, you know it’s only going to get worse. Particularly when the magic answer to all their problems is always to reduce the head count (management excluded) of their constituent agencies.
Today’s New York Times has an interesting piece titled “For a Select Few, Madison Avenue Has Dream Jobs.” Unfortunately, those dream jobs seem to be as temporary shills for vacation spots and off-beat tourism destinations. The job usually lasts for two or three months, you get paid just enough to cover your expenses, and you are expected to spend every waking hour Tweeting, Facebooking, MySpacing and generally filling the blogosphere with tons of crap.
The most amazing thing is that tens of thousands of people apply for these spots. Remember. Ben Southall, who won the contest sponsored by Queensland Tourism offering the “best job in the world”: a six-month gig to be a caretaker on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef and chronicle the experience via all the social sites that people with nothing better to do spend their lives on. There were 34,000 entries for the competition. Amazing. If you really want to, you can read Ben’s trivia on Twitter (twitter.com/Bensouthall) and a blog (islandreefjob.com.au).
Me, I'm going for a beer. Cheers.
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In case you hadn’t realized it, I am a multi-tasking, uber-achieving prince of the blogosphere… Meaning that apart from writing this occasional blog for BrandRepublic, I also write a US blog, and manage to bore the *** out of people with various articles and books. The rest of the time I drink, smoke and am generally obnoxious. Anyway, I do have a certain propensity to piss people off when I rant about what I consider to be the slavish insanities of users of such phenomena as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
Please don’t get me wrong here; I am not saying that they don’t have a certain appeal to people who can only express themselves in less than 140 characters, or want their home page to look like some art directional nightmare designed by your grandmother. Think email here… Isn’t 80% of the stuff that ends up in your inbox total ***? So why would you want to multiply that with Tweets, friends, pokes, virtual teddy bears and messages on your wall. There are only so many hours in the day. But, if your life is so pathetically barren you need to tell total strangers what you had for breakfast, so be it. I am only raising questions about their current ephemeral (as in short-lived) popularity. Who knows, one day they might be recognized as having been as important factors in the epochal changes of civilization as gunpowder, movable type and indoor plumbing. I doubt it. Think Second Life here… But, moving on…
What is described as “New Media” will, by the time you read it probably be “Old Media.” And will without question have since been replaced by “New-New Media,” or “Uber-Uber New media.” But rest assured, whatever the practitioners of these black arts choose to call them, they will be relentlessly promoted as the next big thing. Something you should definitely climb aboard before the express train leaves the station and you end up in penury for the rest of your miserable life because you didn’t jump aboard. Personally, over the years I’ve realized that sometimes it’s better to grab a cup of coffee, or a beer, in my case, relax, and wait for the next train. Most of the time, you’ll be far better off having missed out on the sheer exuberance and froth of whatever was on offer.
But then, we in the ad biz have always taken the optimistically blinkered view that with the explosion of choices via cable and satellite, the hundreds of magazines that now pander to virtually every niche interest, and the deluge of guerilla, new media, CGC, viral, social, experiential or whatever marketing opportunities are increasingly available, that we now have virtually unlimited ways to reach potential customers. What we conveniently choose to ignore is that the consumer now has unlimited ways to tune you out.
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Anyone who’s ever lived over here for any extended amount of time has to wonder why the American public is brainwashed to the extent that they actually believe they have the best healthcare system in the world… Even though a quarter of the population has zero health insurance, and the vast majority who do, are likely to have it denied if, God forbid, they should actually get something that requires expensive treatment. The bottom line being, they are screwed!
Anyway, this is not a political rant, it’s about advertising. The big news stateside this week that there are a few members of congress who have actually grown some balls and are trying to reign in the rampant, soporific non-stop prescription drug advertising that continues to pollute the airwaves 24/7 in the land of the free. To which I have to say, guys, you have zero chance of passing this legislation.
As I have written about to great lengths, and with a great deal of feeeling in my last opus, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, the drug industry, and their armies of Washington lobyists, was the great savior of the BDA’s in the eighties after the final demise of fags and hard liquor ads, particularly when it came to the cornucopia of massive TV campaigns. That once glorious pig trough, where money was no object, and the resultant residuals pouring in over the transom, were enough to gag a stoat… Although, I’m glad to say that advertising for brain melting booze is on its way back.
So, in summation… Nothing will change. non-stop prescription drug advertising will be a fact of life for the rest of your life, particularly if you watch US, TV. Enfaticos may come and go, but drugs are forever. This is one of the few sources of income and profit BDA's can continue to count on in the foreseeable future.
George Parker
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
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