That said, it's still pretty funny.

But it must be a spoof. Right?

Hat tip - and read more from the always excellent Ad Contrarian: Self-Hating Grown Ups.

We hear it all the time: wild claims from the world of online and digital about what it can do and what traditional advertising is failing to do. Of course, as we often suspect, must of it's rubbish.

But here, with actual facts, is the excellent Bob Hoffman taking these people to task:

The Top 10 Double Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising

Nobody I know who works in advertising these days appears to be having fun. Nobody seems to be happy.

When I say people, I of course mean the creatives. Account handlers don’t count. They’re not supposed to have fun. To many of them, working in an ad agency is just another office job. They may as well be working at Norwich Union.

The thing about working in advertising is that it’s meant to be fun. As everyone knows – as every single study will tell you – if you want people to be creative and come up with great ideas, let them have fun.

I was lucky when I started in advertising because I worked at an agency that prided itself on doing genuinely good creative work. My bosses, Steve and Ian (at The Point), were of the opinion that although they were in Norwich there was no reason they couldn’t run an agency in the same way as they ran agencies in London. On my first day I was handed a copy of David Olgivy’s seminal On Advertising and was told that this was essentially the bible on how things should be done. As it was, that way of doing things was already out of date. This didn’t bother them though because that way of doing things was the best way of doing things. It still is.

The company’s motto was Ogilvy’s contention that “when people aren’t having fun they seldom produce good advertising.”

I remember going home in that first week, amazed I was doing a job where I got paid to be clever. Where I got paid for sitting around thinking. Where I got paid for coming up with stupid ideas and off the wall concepts. Where I got paid for sitting around laughing and joking all day. Where I got paid for doing work that I was genuinely proud of. It was really great. And so was most of the work.

What was particularly good was that I came into an agency where the copywriter was still properly respected: as someone who came up with the ideas. Who, along with the art director, sat around doing scamps and doodles and crap drawings. It was all about ideas. Big ideas. These days you meet people calling themselves copywriters who don’t do ideas. Who believe that the business of coming up with ad campaigns is best left to somebody else. These are the same people who made me embarrassed to call myself a copywriter. When I was working freelance I had to tautologically call myself a ‘Creative Copywriter’ because otherwise clients would assume all I did was the words. Of course, it should have been a given that I was a creative.

Anyway.

So why aren’t creatives having fun any more? I think it’s because the rise of account people has brought in a culture of office ploddery. I reckon they must have sat there, these account types, getting annoyed about the fact that the creatives often came in to work late, often had long lunch hours and often seemed to be just sitting around having a laugh. What they failed to understand – and what they still fail to understand – is that creatives aren’t paid for the hours they put in. They’re paid for being clever. And if being clever takes place over a pint or two, or late at night, or during a marathon joke session, then so be it.

It was basically resentment. I used to hear it quite often: “It’s not fair that you get to stay at the pub while we have to be here to answer the phones.” My response was always: “If you don’t like it, why not leave, get a bit of training under your belt, get a new brain, and re-join the agency as a creative?”

This resentment, of course, wasn’t just down to the creatives’ lack of 9 to 5-ism. It was also down to the fact that the creatives were at the top of the tree. Quite rightly so – because the most important people in any agency should be those who actually create the ads. Right?

Sadly, this is no longer the case. In many agencies now, the account handler, the suit, is King. Or Queen. But not just the account handler. Even traffic people have more power than creatives. Imagine that. Someone who is good at spreadsheets and timetables has more power and influence than the people who actually create the ads – more power and influence than the very people who make an ad agency an ad agency. Amazing.

What this leads to is low morale and mediocre work. As a rule, creative people tend not to be management types. And they tend not to be very ambitious. They’re usually a bit delicate, occasionally a bit arsey, and often away with the fairies. Apart from the odd swearing fit, they’re fairly easy to handle. They’re never going to be bothered with the business of going for management positions in order to fight back. So they’re often easily pushed around and manipulated. (This doesn’t tend to happen, by the way, in agencies that are run by creatives or that have a strong Creative Director.)

This is why people – creatives – aren’t having fun any more. Of course, the account handlers will just blame the clients. That clients are so demanding, so stupid and so unreasonable that this is how agencies have to be run these days. But clients are only as stupid and as unreasonable as the account handler allows them to be. Given that many account handlers think they’re just a messenger service for the client, it’s hardly surprising that things are as they are.

So how can we get creatives happy again? The problem with a lot of agencies is that while they’ve lost creativity, they’ve become extremely efficient. It’s hard to argue against figures that show that the agency has never been more profitable. So the solution has to lie with the creatives themselves. As I said, I don’t meet any that are happy. But at the same time, I don’t meet any who are prepared to do anything about their unhappiness. Of course, that might be due to them fearing for their jobs in the current climate. But I think it’s basically that many agencies are now hotbeds of timidity where confrontation and rocking the boat are absolute no-nos. They have management teams and HR types and all sorts of non-essential people to keep everything smooth and efficient. And extremely dull.

Ultimately, if creatives want to be creative, and have fun, they’re going to have to sort it out themselves. First, they need to realise that they’re the ones that make an ad agency an ad agency. Anyone in the agency who isn’t a creative is basically an admin assistant. So creatives should take pride in what they do and what they’re capable of. And they should be aware of the power they have. Because without them, an ad agency is just another office. Creatives should also remember that they’re supposed to be marketing experts. That they should know a thing or two about pesky things like strategy. They really shouldn’t leave that kind of thing to the account people. A good creative should be on top of a campaign from start to finish – including getting involved in writing the brief. No-one in the agency should know how to do advertising better than the creatives.

So creatives should work towards clawing back power and getting back a bit of respect. Once they do that, they can start thinking better and working better. From there they can start having fun again and enjoying what they do. Obviously, this happy state of affairs won’t just benefit the creatives themselves – it’ll benefit the agencies and help to improve the overall state of advertising. Which, let’s face it, is pretty bloody dire these days.

Which leads me to my next blog post: when was the last time you saw a genuinely good 48-sheet poster?