FTT Off Topic: Nine To Six Morality

Some of you know by now that my day job is in advertising, and 99 days out of 100, I'm completely fine with that. My gig is something like a lawyer; I make the best case for each client, regardless of my personal feelings about their brand or offer, and trust that the marketplace and the consumer will make the right decision. While I do love me some Don Draper and Mad Men, I don't have a ton of ego about my own little corner of the industry. It's direct marketing for the most part, and what the offer is and who the offer goes to makes up about 90% of the equation as to whether the campaign works or not. Plus, I work in digital, which is to say a baby medium that needs to be accountable to a spreadsheet. It's sexier than direct mail, but only just, and people in my line of work are used to getting short shrift from the overpriced brand and offline media types. (And now you know why there's such an undercurrent of steel in the Top 10 NFL Ads column.) Anyhoo...

Most days, the work that people in my field do ruins the campaign, rather than makes it happen. I learn a lot, test everything I can, and don't really know what I'll be doing a week from now. I like the people I work with. I could have a million worse jobs. It pays the bills. And I'm rarely bothered, for even a minute, by what the clients are actually selling. Many times, it's not nice, or anything that I'd ever buy or use, or hope that my friends and family would partake from, either.

Again: nose has 100% capacity of skin.

And then there's a project like this week, when I had to bend my brain around my department's biggest cash buyer of the year. A client so important that they had to be wined, dined, and showed, which is why I'm writing this from a train that's leaving town about four hours later than usual, and I've missed putting my kids to bed. A client that sells a service that documentaries have been made about, with highly negative PR. A client that sells something that one of the best people I've ever known in my life has worked tirelessly against. A client from an industry that has given heavily to political parties that are diametrically opposed to my own ideals, and has contributed more than its fair share of human misery.

They reviewed, and utterly loved, my team's work tonight.

They pay their bills. Full price, too. We might all eventually get raises from this.

And I know a million little tricks, and have seen literally thousands of ads in their consumer category, and probably made hundreds of them, too. There might not be 100 people on the earth that have seen and done more in this category, for this product.

It was easy to be in their company. If my commute wasn't ruinous, I'd probably still be.

If they were to make me an offer -- and Lord knows they have the money to make things highly interesting, and if they upped the ante by letting me work from home, sparing the relocation expense (and that's something of a dealbreaker, given the House Arrest nature of buying before the real estate market cratered)...

Well, I'd pretty much have to say yes. And I'd sleep well enough at night.

Because the simple fact remains that while we may claim to love our fellow man, and hope to vote for people who do the least harm, I have a greater responsibility. To my wife and children, who depend on me for pretty much all things financial, and for whom I willingly give my life to.

And this is why, really, I believe in the role of law and government and regulation, and all of those things that went down in flames at the ballot box this week. Because as an individual, I have to act in my own self-interest, and that includes chasing dollars in many ways fair and less fair, so long as I don't go to jail over it.

The industry that I so ably served today? In a better world, some of its proprietors would be taking perp walks. It's that vile. But so is the casino that I go to when I try to make bucks from poker. Some of the sites that buy ads on this here site might also not be deep in my wheelhouse o' love. And so on, and so on, for a thousand other things about the Ways Things Are, and the Way Things Have To Be.

The great comedian Louis CK has a routine in which he walks about how, every day that he owns his expensive car instead of just settling for basic transportation and giving the rest of money to charity, he is actively killing poor people. (Hey, what can I tell you? It's funnier when he says it.) And he's right, of course. And so long as he's not related and responsible to the people who are starving, he'll continue to drive that car. And I'll continue to make these ads.

(But probably still turn down work for churches. Stupidly.)