Easily bored?

Throughout my adult working life I’ve been plagued by rumors that I’m ‘easily bored.’ Having not been bored since discovering The Internet, that my neighbors had no curtains and the relentless joys of masturbation I’ve taken great exception to this.

I’m not easily bored, I’m constantly exasperated.

You see I work in an advertising agency. Which these days means working with second string business graduates caught within the moldy confines of their own, MBA inspired, vocabulary.

It wasn’t always thus. There was a time when advertising agencies were full of fearsome, drug addled alcoholic maniacs prone to rage, violence and occasional moments of genius. Unable to hold down a job anywhere else in the world these men were a half Guinness away from being the urine stained guy that corporate clients stepped over as they left the theatre and looked nervously about for their on expenses Lincoln town cars.

And this was a good thing – because the deviants within an agency had very different ways of looking at the world than did the clients who paid for their thinking. And that’s what Lincoln town car ordering corporate clients wanted from advertising agencies. Fresh perspectives.

But somewhere in the 80s tings changed. Tight men with tight mouths and penchants for acronyms took over the advertising world.

HR people were hired, carpets turned a soul sucking gray and a knee grazingly hard wearing corduroy. Trousers turned a khaki beige and acquired neat creases. Good dentistry started to be the norm, swearing stopped being the norm.

Agencies started to look like their clients – who all looked like each other and profit margins started to shrink. When you have a plethora of identical companies offering identical services to identical clients price tends to become a bigger factor.

To compensate for this the acronym’d holding companies invested in advertising testing companies and demanded that all ads be tested – lest something damaging slip through the net.

Thus the identical agencies started to run their ideas through a hugely profitable marketing wind tunnel – and the ads, like the cars sculpted in a wind tunnel before them, all came out looking the same.

It was around this time that people stopped paying attention to the ads.

It was into this freshly minted hell that I fell. Head full of jingles, instant potato shilling aliens and naked, bald, fat orange men who might just give you a slap if you weren’t careful.

And here the exasperation started.

Exasperated at the number of times I hear the words ‘Out of the box’

Exasperated at having to explain that an ad’ featuring a 13 year old Romanian gymnast that ends with the words ‘full splits, crotch shot’ isn’t right for a brand whose tone is sophisticated, witty, more Noel Cowerd than Noel Edmunds.

Exasperated at the number of suits and identical hairstyles.

But worst of all exasperated to be in an industry where tasseled loafers still abound unpunished.

So these days upon hearing of plans to escape the dreaded box, or upon being slowly read a script that’s heading towards pre-pubescent snatch or approach by a tassel loafer’d suit I run for the hills.

Easily bored? No just in mourning for the industry we lost.