| Advertising: the Glitz, the Glamour, the Stress People think of advertising as glamorous—and it can be. There are extravagant Christmas parties at the big agencies, ballgames with clients, client dinners at excellent restaurants, two-hour lunches courtesy of the magazine rep, trips to film on location in Fiji or Rio de Janeiro, and opportunities to befriend the famous people who star in the ads. But behind the bright lights and the glitz are thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. While most people in advertising work the kind of hours that get you home in time for dinner, when a deadline is approaching the hours can skyrocket. We’re talking 90 hours a week during crunch times. And what happens when the client makes a request for some information or a revision to an ad? Well, you can kiss your dinner-and-a-movie date good-bye—and your weekend trip to the beach, too. Even the creatives, who can really slack off when they’re not under the gun, can be at the office until late at night when there’s a deadline approaching. “I work between 35 and 90 hours a week,” one creative says. “It’s all project-based work, so it’s feast or famine in terms of the hours.” Along with the hard work comes occasional high stress. You might be in account management, and freaking out because a mechanical that had to go out at 5:00 isn’t ready at 5:15. You might be in production and freaking out because the account executive who’s waiting for you to finish that mechanical is standing over your shoulder, freaking out herself. And there’s a lot of money riding on your work in an advertising agency, so you don’t want to make mistakes. “You have to be able to handle pressure,” says one creative. If you screw up—or even if you don’t, but some bigwig at your agency or the client thinks you have—you can end up out of a job in a hurry. And if your agency loses a key account, you might be out of a job no matter how well you do your work. So why do people go into advertising? Again and again, insiders tell us the same thing: It’s a lot of fun. People who are drawn to advertising are either creative themselves or have a great appreciation for creative work. They’re also young—one insider estimates that the average age at his agency, including senior management, is 28. And of course they’re smart, curious, and into popular culture. People in advertising also tend to congregate outside of work. They go to happy hour together on Friday evenings, invite each other to parties, date, and sometimes even marry. Which means that in the bigger advertising cities, if you get a job you’re likely to get a social life as well. All of this creates a looseness and sense of humor that you might not find in companies with more rigid processes or older, more conservative staffs. This might not be an absolute rule throughout the industry—things can be more uptight at the bigger, account-driven agencies—but it’s fairly safe to say that those that work in advertising enjoy the ride. |
