So you want to work in advertising...

I did an 8 year tour in the advertising agency world before I finally decided I had enough. Working for an ad agency is like being in a dysfunctional family. You have account people who are trying to make everyone happy, creative people who day in and day out watch their work get destroyed by a clueless client (and are rightfully a little bitter), traffic managers who are just trying to get the thing out the door against impossible odds, and production managers who are given too little budget and no time...oh, and the media folks who are putting together actual measurable numbers in a completely ambiguous industry. It's one big cage match.

I'm cursed for the rest of my life to think about the back-end process every time I see some new ad on TV. In ever crappy ad you can almost hear the dialogue that went on back at concepting stages, or the changes that were made because of the (shudder) focus groups. Next time you see a crappy ad on TV, trust me, it probably didn't start out that way.

I came across this site randomly which is probably the best satire I've seen into what it's really like to work in advertising. Unfortunately a lot of it is true. I've had this conversation way to many times:

Yeah... I'm glad to have moved on.

What does this have to do with cycling? Not much, except now I'm working 8 hour days instead of 12 hours days plus weekends (and actually have a training plan) My wife says I'm actually acting like a real human.