Welcome to the Creative Advertising Copywriter blog
Posts here are mostly about the world of advertising and advertising agencies.
For older entries, please go to the blog archives
If you're after some freelance copywriting, or if you want to comment on a blog post, please just contact me
April 11th, 2008
Who in advertising drinks the most? Part 2
When I started in advertising, the long lunch was still customary. And serious drinkers would be tolerated. Nowadays, of course, some agencies won't even allow you a half of shandy at lunch time.
But back in the day, in my experience you only really found the alcoholics in two specific roles. Not traffic people - although they certainly drank their share, they had to be on the ball too much. Not planners, at least not in my experience. Maybe planning didn't particularly attract boozy types. Not art directors. They had to be capable of not just walking in a straight line, but of drawing one.
No, it was the account handlers. They had the opportunity. The contact report could wait. They had the motive (God, did they have the motive; who'd be an account handler in most agencies?). And they had the means - wining and dining the client and access to a decent expense account.
The other category was us copywriters. If it didn't actually help the writing (and it rarely did) we could always just about get away with claiming that was the case. And, of course, we were tortured souls, our work always in danger of rejection for no good reason.
I can't remember coming across anyone in an agency in the last few years with an obvious drink problem. Back in the day, though, I could point you to half a dozen account men and even more writers with drink problems. But who generally got away with it.
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Who in advertising drinks the most? Part 1
No, not individuals, though I can think of a few, but departments. Another poll from the Scamp blog this time, to find out adland's biggest imbibers.
Here's the link:
http://scampblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/friday-poll-great-press-debate.html
But to save you the click, the results aren't that interesting. Creatives, planners, traffic and account handlers were all pretty evenly divided, with TV producers slightly down the list, but probably because many agencies don't have TV producers, whereas they all have creatives and the rest.
There were 60 odd responses, which is pretty good for an online poll of this kind. Of course, the real answer is that in the old days (lack of internet aside) most ad people wouldn't be participating in polls like this. They'd be too busy out getting smashed.
And in the old days, in my experience, certain categories of ad people were much more likely to be not just boozers, but alcoholics. More next time.