By Lawrence Parmenter

 

 

We were chatting to Steve Henry (we being me and Nathan) about the current state of the

advertising industry. How clients are billed per meeting and for the amount of people in the room

rather than for each idea. As such agencies may purposefully drag out the process to make more

moolah and CMOs being cautious for the safety of their jobs will let them.

 

Ideas rarely pass because no one wants them to pass. They want the safety of meetings.

 

Our idea just got bought for the scholarship competition. Two hundred and fifty pounds for what

amounted to maybe twenty minutes of discussion and presentation building. That’s twelve pounds

fifty per minute of work, well above the minimum wage. Or in language you can understand that’s

three pints a minute or two and a half non-discounted jaegerbombs. I was earning drinks faster

than I could actually physically consume them… but only just.

 

We’re not being paid by the minute we’re being paid for that intangible asset which is creativity,

creativity which has been honed over many years of living and collecting and thinking.

 

Of course the idea didn’t come to us just because we sat down and put pen to paper. It came to be

because we were us, because we had lived.

 

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/gerry-graf-explains-why-getting-paid-
hour-nuts-152655

 

That article probably summarises the whole conundrum better.

 

I am not Gerry Graf sitting in traffic churning out award winning Superbowl commercials… yet.

 

But I appreciate that living is as important as sitting down and working.

 

And that’s why I try and do as much living as I can and as little working as I can get away with.

 

Work smarter not harder.