Advertising Careers and Drug Dealing

Every article on the state of advertising today bemoans the fact that “we don’t attract bright people like we used to”. The truth is that advertising pays poorly, demands long working hours and often involve nothing more than grunt work. Advertising could get “bright people” in the good old days when career opportunities were limited, but with the economy growing at 9%, good jobs are not very scarce. However advertising still surprisingly attracts people who will throw themselves into grunt jobs with an unstinting devotion.

A rather clever analysis of this phenomenon has been made in Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The authors see drug dealing and advertising careers as akin to participate in a tournament. In advertising you must start at the bottom to have a shot at the top. You must be willing to work long hours at substandard wages. And in order to advance to the top you must, you must prove yourself as not merely above average , but spectacular. All this for the extremely small chance of winning the big prize, the chance to be a Prasun Pandey or a Mike Khanna. However many people are now convinced that it is not worth playing the game and quitting advertising to play tournaments where the chances of winning are not so slim.

And advertising has to take a long hard look at itself and how it treats people, or we will keep hearing this lament time and again