How a Job can Cure an Existential Crisis

Posted by Pink Wrangler

October 11, 2010

“Maybe existential malaise comes from lack of obstacles.”

–Spoken by David Mitchell, author of “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” in an interview with Terry Gross, host of the NPR show, “Fresh Air.”

Ever get to that point in your life where you’re sure you know what’s going to happen next–the words, “I coulda seen that coming,” ever ready to tumble out of your yawning face?

It’s happened to me a few times and when it does, I respond by shaking things up but good. Sometimes too good. This time, I left everything I knew, including my home, dog and friends, to take an advertising job in San Francisco. It wasn’t easy but enduring boredom infused with sameness and predictability seemed worse at the time.

So now I’m back to doing what I’ve done before–writing copy, thinking about brands, and coming up with strategies and tactics designed to take markets by storm (or at least get some attention). This time though, I’m finding things are different.

Though the job title is the same, the ad business is no longer the free-wheeling, crazy and creative world it used to be. Blame on lawsuits or the lousy economy but clients sure have become a whole lot more cautious and restrictive in what can be said and done to get the brand out there. So much so that I now find, I’m more of a copymover–or as a woman in the editorial department put it, a copypaster. What this means is the account team tells me exactly what the client wants, and I dutifully move the “approved” copy around the page.

Care to see my ad, doctor?

This leads to conversations like this:

“What’s the call to action?” I ask the account manager, Frank, as he briefs the team on a new ad for a pharma client.

“We want the doctors to call the sales reps,” he says.

Now what I want to say at that point is, that’s not going to happen unless the sales rep is giving out free lap dances. But as we just had a workshop on sexual harassment, I keep my mouth tightly zipped and nod seriously as though I’m thinking hard.

“I know, I know,” says Frank suddenly, waving his hands excitedly. “You can use the bullets with the new data from the clinical trial.”

As I am now a devout team player, I nod my head vigorously and dutifully return to my desk for more copy-and-pasting of approved language. Later, I will be asked to add footnotes, disclaimers, caveats, and references so that by the time I get done with the “ad,” it will look like exactly like a page in a medical journal article.

Some call it advertising. I call it torture. At which point I realize I have traded general boredom with the frustration of trying to be “creative” in a tight little box. I also realize Mitchell is right because I’ve been spending all my “reserve” creative energy trying to figure my way out of that box and in the meantime haven’t had a single existential crisis.

And to think, I get paid for this.