Join the agency
You got it! Your first job in advertising. The salary is more than you expected. The benefits are adequate. You will even have your own office. And the position, as described by your new boss, seems exactly what you wanted. What more could you ask for? All that work researching those agencies, doing all those exercises in this book, writing your cover letters, the resume, preparing for interviews, the tension, the worry well, it is all over now. Now you can kick your feet up, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride into your future in advertising.
Enjoy the ride? Absolutely! Kick your feet up and relax? Not a chance! Getting the job is only half the battle. The other half is keeping it.
How do you keep a job? Get to work on time and do your best each day? That is a start. But it is only a small part of what is involved in keeping a job especially a job in advertising. Some people believe that the only way to survive in advertising is to be smarter and more creative than anyone else in the agency. These same people believe that you are only as good as your last good idea. They spend all their time thinking about how to look good in the eyes of their employer. There are plenty of people just like this in advertising agencies all over the world. And you will definitely run into more than your share. But whatever you do, if you want to stay in advertising, do not become one of them.
Egoitis a deadly disease
The last thing an agency owner wants to deal with is competitiveness within the agency. There is enough of that going on between agencies. As soon as one person becomes more concerned about personal performance in the agency and how that performance is being evaluated by agency management, that person is no longer thinking about the good of the agency. That person is thinking only about self. I call this egotism. And egotism kills more people in advertising than all the stress, the pressure, and rapid pace combined. People who suffer from egotist do not leave advertising burnt out and exhausted because they put such demanding expectations on themselves to be the best. They usually leave because they have been fired.
You may be thinking, what is wrong with trying to be the most creative person in the agency? To be the best or the most creative designer or copywriter or anything else requires a person to constantly make comparisons with someone else. When a comparison is drawn between one person and others, one is the winner and the remaining people are the losers, by virtue of the fact that they are just not as good as the person who is the best or the most. That kind of situation creates rivalry, resentment, and a complete breakdown in the ability of agency employees to trust and share ideas and thoughts with each other. If you are working with someone who is more concerned about showing the boss what a creative genius he is, are you going to be willing to tell him about your terrific idea for an ad campaign for the agency's new account? No, of course not! He might try to pass it off as his own.
Great ideas in an ad agency need to be explored and expanded upon so that all aspects of the campaign can be adapted to them. That takes team input and brainstorming along with an objectivity that can only be maintained when no one in the group is attached to ownership of the idea. Objectivity is essential, because if the idea does not develop into an ad that will produce results for the client, then the idea, as creative as it may be, is worthless.
Advertising is a team sport
Every ad agency is run like a sports team. One player cannot win the game all alone. No matter how great that player may be, nothing can be accomplished without the support and cooperation of the other team members.
In an agency, the goal of the game is to win the approval and devotion of the client In other words, the client approves if he likes what the agency is doing for him. And he shows his devotion by giving the agency another project or campaign to work on. The only way to win the approval and devotion of the client is to give the client what he wants a successful ad campaign. What is a successful ad campaign? One that sells the client's product or service. If one egotistical designer or copywriter is focused entirely on how clever she has been in corning up with a new ad, she may mistake cleverness for effectiveness.
This happens a lot. People think that creativity which means to create something new that never existed in exactly this form before will automatically grab the viewer's attention. It may, simply because people tend to look at something they have never seen before. But that does not mean it will make them want it, recognize it, or ever think about it again. And if an ad catches people's attention but does not make them want to buy what the ad is selling, the client is not going to be happy. So the designer or copywriter who ignores the opinions and judgments of the rest of the creative team in lieu of her own clever ideas may win an award at the next ad show but drive the client away from the agency. Without clients there is no agency. Always keep that foremost in your mind.
To keep your job, you have to help your agency win and keep the approval of each and every client. That means becoming a team player whose focus is on pleasing the client by creating ads, brochures, or any other kinds of promotional materials that sell. To quote the statement that we put on the front of our agency brochure: "Creativity is one thing ... results are something else." And your agency, too, will be working toward one objective: results. That will always come before any one person's great idea.
