We invented dandruff you morons

Yesterday evening I had a bit of a conundrum on my hands, you see my mother refused to let me out of the house due to my rather troublesome insomnia, whilst Richard, the probable cause of this insomnia, was hell bent on playing a few rounds of Hold ‘em. That part of things was just trouble spot one, easily put away by hosting the game at my house. But then came trouble spot two, Yash, beloved pot snatcher, could not come to my house. Richard, the much vaunted check – raiser, quickly informed me of this. After all, I couldn’t leave home and now just had to play a few hands, so I instantly called Yash and told him to come over. A few well placed words here and there and Yash, without much hesitation (I sense it has something to do with a compulsive gambling problem) agreed. My next phone call was to Richard, who was shocked and amazed that I actually got him to agree. My only words were “hell, I don’t work in advertising for nothing”

Though I hardly achieved anything at all by getting Yash to come over, the advertising industry as a whole really does convince people of some of the most ludicrous things ever. And here’s the real kicker, people actually believe it, en masse. My argument last night to have the game at my place had several logical reasons and causes, but most of what advertising churns out has neither. A lot of it in fact is utterly bogus. (think Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted ‘bogus dude’) Let me give you a fun fact about how bogus advertising really is….

We made up dandruff. Yes, we did. Think back to the old days, the days before the 90’s, yes I know its hard cause most of you were two years old but, just try. Rely on past life memories if you have to. Now think situations that involve social stigma, yes, you know horrific disfigurement, polio, leprosy, the Indian cricket team. Yes now you’re getting the idea. Now think really hard, I know it’s difficult, you haven’t thought very hard for a while (also advertising’s fault) but just try. Try and remember where on that list of social stigmas was dandruff. Oh yeah, wait, pre 90’s dandruff wasn’t on anybody’s social stigma list. It wasn’t even comparable to being an opening batsman for India. But then something changed, rather drastically at that. We put a bunch of guys in shiny black shirts in front of your face and told you that if you had dandruff you could never wear black again!!!! “Oh my god, what a loss, now what shall I wear to Jimmy’s funeral.” But it soon became much worse than that. We got Shahrukh Khan to come on board and put his hands through his digitally enhanced hair and then a parade of other stars to do the same. Before this happened, none of us had heard of dandruff, apart from those with chronic conditions, but who cares about those losers anyways. Out of nowhere and without rhyme or reason dandruff was the only thing on everyone’s head. Actually, it had always been on everyone’s head, it was just that some idiot scientist at P&G accidentally stumbled on a way to get rid of it. They then of course had to sell this damn thing so they decided to make dandruff the worst social stigma since leprosy. We’re good people really. No, really.

A Heaven for advertising

Somewhere up there is an advertising heaven. Yes, I’m sure most people would disagree with me on this primarily because they believe that advertising’s place is a little further south, but I for one am rather convinced of an advertising after life up there. It’ll probably be an awesome place, if advertising is your cup of tea.

In fact it’ll probably be like the perfect agency. Servicing and creative get along really well, the clients are all awesome and once in a while they all sit down and do scam ads for Jesus or something. An all round fantastic day at the office, apart of course from award season where Mr. Burnett and Mr. Ogilvy engage in their own little proxy war to represent their namesake agencies. But then they both win a bunch of stuff and everything goes back to normal.

Ad heaven sounds fabulous but how does one get in, especially in this economy. No one is hiring, but that’s not entirely true. They’re just not hiring new people. They’re hiring people from other agencies. In essence their keeping the pool of talent in the advertising industry from growing hence, keeping the number of people who work in advertising the same, hence putting people like me on the street and the on the wrong side of those pearly gates.

Now I’m not saying I’m on the fast track to ad heaven. I’m not even close. But I’d like a shot at the very least. And how am I supposed to get that shot if agencies only poach people from each other and flat out refuse to give anyone else a look in. For god sake’s the new writer here used to work at Ogilvy and before that at Contract and somewhere else before that. And he’s the NEW guy. How the hell am I supposed to compete with that? Every agency just hires from each other when they want someone new and no one actually hires anyone ‘new’.

In fact they seem so against hiring new people that the time will soon come that O&M will probably go into a backroom, take an embryo out of storage, Piyush Pandey will fertilize it and voila, 18 years later you have a state of the art copy writer. Stupid genetically enhanced creatives. It’s like Gattaca all over again.