Three Minute Happiness

James Cooper

The dot com boom has been the single most important thing for our industry in the last 50 years let alone Tony Blairs decade. What did it mean to someone who started their career the same time New Labour started theirs?

I was just finishing the copywriting and art direction course at Watford in May 97. Just for the record I don't think I even passed. I didn't have a book you could speak of the end but, under Tony Cullingham's brilliant tutelage I did have a pretty good idea of how to get a job in a creative department.

Of course back then it was all about TV and posters. Some will say that it's still all about TV and posters and to some extent they are right - but that's another post.  My year had some pretty good people on it. Teams that have gone on to do very well indeed: Matt and Pete at DDB, Rob and Andy at Mother and so on. I was the only one on the course to have an email address. I think I may have been the only one to have a mobile, but they were certainly still pretty rare in studentsville. I also remember always bringing in copies of Wired (UK edition - cool) and no one being interested in them. Everyone read Loaded. I read Loaded too, but also Wired. I think that was the point. I never thought, I'll do digital instead of TV it just sort of happened.

In those days agencies didn't have email systems either. I honestly remember a very precocius new AD sending round a photocopied memo to everyone of a an uninteresting newspaper article - just to show she had arrived. I don't think it was until I got to Ogilvy in 1999 that offices really relied on email. That seems pretty strange now.

The bubble meant that the whole digital thing was kicking off. I had always had a nascent interest in the web, primarily through music (and a wee bit of football) so I just sort of went along for the ride. I ended up working for a company that went from 30 to 220 and back to 50 in the space of two years. I vividly remember  reading articles from the States about people being laid off in their hundreds while we took more people on. At the time we laughed thinking we were immune. Now I keep a very beady eye on what happens over there becuase it's an inescapable truth that our industry will replicate theirs.

So everyone went along for the ride. I can't help feeling that the labour government did the same thing. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have been credited with sorting out the UK economy but I honestly believe the dot com boom / bust / boom did all the main work for them. It's been a relatively minor tweak for them compared to what the global economy has been doing. Harsh? Probably, but not one said politics was easy.

In part 3 I am going to look at how agencies have changed in the 10 year period. It's nothing short of radical!