Working for a living

          When we were both starting out in advertising, I asked my art-director friend Ross what he liked about the work. He said "I get to wear a clean white shirt every day". That was a luxury his dad never had.

           Almost every day I think about how lucky we are. While some people are working deep in a mine, I'm chatting at the coffee machine. While some people are putting doors on cars, I'm critiquing television commercials. While some people are ironing clothes, or drilling teeth, or drilling for oil, I'm writing words on paper.

          I'm grateful. Doing advertising and marketing, and teaching skills that students will use the rest of their lives, are wonderful ways to spend the day.

          I have to admit, when someone asks you what you did at work, it can be embarrassing. "I drew little pictures on paper."  "I came up with a headline at lunch." "We talked about why some men hate to go clothes shopping." It almost sounds like we didn't do anything that kids don't do --- we  played around with words and pictures and talked about stuff.

          But that's how creativity works. The demand on creative people to come up with something new every day can be a horrible burden if you let it. But if you just live with it, go with it, dive right in, it can be an enlightening experience. You'll even surprise yourself with what you come up with.

          When someone on "Mad Men" says copywriting is hard work, don't laugh. There is plenty of heavy lifting, but it's all in your head.

          One day Ross' father came in to visit him at the office. He asked Ross what he was doing. Ross said, "I'm drawing some people driving down a highway". His father said, "You're drawing at work? Don't let your boss find out!"

          It's wonderful to have a boss who encourages it.

You run the company, I'll wash up.

         My friend Dick used to have a sign in his office: "Everybody could do everything if that's all they're doing". I've thought about that many times as I progressed from copywriter to copy supervisor to associate creative director to creative director, and so on.

         At each stage, people conspired to get me involved in more and more things, when all I really wanted was to be left alone to make ads and commercials. Even today, as I teach advertising and marketing, I often slip back into my role as ad maker, and I love it.

         I'm still not perfectly clear about why I love it. On one level, it's problem solving. An assignment to do an advertising campaign is like being handed a puzzle. How do all the pieces fit together --- the market, the product, the strategy? And, of course, what you do with all this?

         On another level, it's the creativity that's so appealing to me. The fun of doing something that hasn't been done before. And spending the whole day playing with the toys the kid inside of you loves: words, pictures, colors, surprises, jokes, visual humor, burlesque humor, shocking truths.

         On a third level, it's the entertainer in me that comes to life. The amateur magician performing the magic of television and the art of persuasion, to the delight of the audience. Even as I write this, I'm conscious of your potential response, and I want to please you.

          Some people run away from being creative. They're turned off by the playfulness of creative people, and the endlessness of questions that are raised, and the daily requirement of having ideas.

          For a person with a rich inner life like mine, an inner-directed person screaming to get out, creative work has been satisfying ever since I studied advertising in college.

          It's been a dance. A dance with a problem to be solved, and a very smart viewer daring me to convince her.